Multilinguismo, CLIL e innovazione didattica - Libera Università di ...

Integrating global citizenship
appear to be of lesser ability (linguistic or otherwise). The task therefore
needed to be framed to take into account these unavoidable shortcomings.
3.2.2 Internationalised Task Design
Tuckman and Jensen’s (1997) now well-known 4-stage group formation theory
(storming, forming, norming, performing) is only partly successful when
describing student group experiences. Unlike workplace teams with predefined
hierarchies, students are less able to assign functional roles based on
status as there is an implicit egalitarian ethos to student interactions (Bressan
& Cribb, 2007). Moreover, student group interactions are episodic and shortlived
and will finish once an assignment has been completed.
However, a constant recurring theme which has been raised by students
(home and international) who embark on multicultural group work is the
perception that international students by virtue of language and cultural
differences lower the overall performance of the group (see Bressan and
Green, 2011, De Vita, 2002).
Research (e.g. Gibbs, 2009, Ledwith, Lee, Manfredi & Wildish, 1998) shows
that monocultural groups move from Tuckman and Jensen’s Storming>Forming>Norming>Performing
stages more quickly than multicultural
groups and therefore the incentive to work in a multicultural group is lower
as students are less likely to feel comfortable in more demanding situations
and communicate better with peers of similar ethnic backgrounds (Osmund &
Roed, 2010, 114).
The twist then is to shake students out of their comfort zones without forcing
them into unnatural alliances. However, if the task necessitates intercultural
collaboration, the entire dynamics will change: there is now a clear incentive
to learn from other cultures, as it will no longer be possible to perform the
task as effectively without cooperating with students from other cultures.
In fact, it makes more sense if the incentive is so strong that it is impossible to
do well without working collaboratively with each and every member of the
group and with each and every nationality. The learning experience is conse-
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