Chapter 3: From Transmission and Influence to Dialogue and Understanding: Rooting International Curriculum Work in Democratic Ethics

International Curriculum Work (ICW) of necessity has a pragmatic orientation, solving pressing problems on limited budgets, under tight time constraints, often amidst great logistical hurdles, piles of documentation, and financial reporting. The work lends itself to efficiency, and practical knowledge about how to conduct such work effectively is highly valued. The circumstances of ICW typically do not leave much time for reflection on the process itself. The opportunity to shift to a focus on ethics and how such work should be conducted is quite welcome.

The shift from pragmatic concerns to ethical ones, however, can be made at a surface level of practice, or at a deep level that engages theory and epistemology as well. Though a chapter of this length cannot do justice to the underlying theoretical and epistemological issues that relate to ICW work, it nevertheless hopes to initiate exploration of some of the deeper levels by shifting our attention both to the cross-cultural relationships that are at the core of ICW, and in particular, to the issues related to understanding that are essential to ethical conduct of ICW partnerships. The chapter draws upon anthropological concepts and research to help people involved in ICW to reconceptualize the relationships in which they participate. Three specific aspects of these relationships draw our attention here: how resources may impinge on ICW relationships; how organizations and people involved in ICW are inevitably non-neutral and thus must be considered as advocates, with all the implications that the label carries; and how contextual and cultural factors complicate traditional notions of transferring an idea or practice across cultural contexts.