The importance of orienting pedagogy and teaching on the actual living world of the students was referenced multiple times in the handbook “Foundations and backgrounds”; see most of all chapters 5.4 and 2.3. The orientation to the living world occupies a central role as well, particulary in view of interculturality and intercultural competences. Incidentally, this also concerns the language aspects of the multilingual society: everyday life multilingualism – living in, with, and between different languages. This is a lived reality which should be examined and appreciated (compare particularly Unit 3 “our languages”).
The HLT child as a subject of his/her living world is also always a member of a society. As such, s/he moves along a plane of subject, living world, and society. With these levels connect multiple intercultural overlapping and interaction situations. These require intercultural learning, examining of identity processes and social framework conditions. At the same time, they ensure that people experience themselves as subjects capable of functioning and self-acting. The following elucidates this important principle more closely.
Subject and living environment orientation
Children and adolescents move about in different contexts: family, public school, spare time, relatives, neighborhood, peer group (circle of friends) etc. Every one of these social contexts represents its own little living world with its own values and norms; their sum total comprises the living world of the individual. The living world orientation as a pedagogical principle means the orientation of the child as a subject in the here and now with his/her previous knowledge, attitude, different roles and internal images.
For children to perceive themselves as self-efficient subjects, capable of acting and able to assume the responsibility for themselves and the shaping of their living environment, they must deal with their identity and with their self-image as well as the perception of others. In doing so, they must develop sensibility for self-awareness and external perceptions and for dealing with inner resistance and external challenges. The orientation to living conditions also means that children and adolescents gain experience as participants in their immediate surroundings that are to be traced back to their temporally, spatially and socially structured living environment. In working with HLT students, one has to expect to deal with at least two kinds of cultural and ethnic backgrounds: those Here and those There. The former are spatially within current range, in the immigration destination country. The living worlds in the country of origin lie within a potential range, owing to the students‘ assurance that there too – e. g. among the relatives there – experience can be gained that they can revert to as resources.
Aside from the spatial dimension, the living world concept also has a temporal dimension. A distinction must be made between a) the subjective, currently experienced perceptions and experiences and b) the social embedding in larger, historically grown social structures. A teaching approach that is daily life oriented ties into both dimensions, thereby orienting itself on the principle of biographical learning. It concerns itself seriously with the notion that the experienced self-efficacy in the present opens perspectives to the individual in order to also remain capable of acting in the future and to realize his/her identity conceptions. Since the living environments represent at the same time historically grown zones, they include also biographical migration experiences, competences and resources related to the past. These can support the children in their self-efficacy, in making them aware of their previous experiences as important resources.
As a third dimension of the living environment concept, in addition to the spatial and temporal dimensions, there is the social dimension. Children of any social environment are embedded in an interaction system that allows them to interpret reality and to adequately conduct themselves within this dimension. In each social environment, children have at their command different stocks of knowledge, different interpretative patterns and often also specific language customs to which they can revert in action and interaction situations. For instance, HLT students of Turkish origin in Switzerland in this sense not only have at their command a (supposedly homogeneous) Turkish and Swiss culture, but also a family culture, a school culture, a specific Turkish-Swiss migration, language and peer culture, a spare time culture, a food culture, a music culture, etc. The different values and norms that apply to these individual social living worlds, are partially in contradiction to each other and relativize each other. Often there arise tensions from the interaction between different living worlds with different interpretative and behavior patterns. A classical example are the conflicts that result from parents‘ still strong orientation along the value system of their country of origin, whereas their children embrace standards that they have acquired through their peers in the immigration country.
HLT can and should play an important mediating role in this case. It can assume this function in that it orients itself on the principle of interculturality and the students‘ different living worlds, seriously engaging in discussions as well as orientations in and between them. New possible actions and perspectives can be developed hereby and the children and youths can be supported in their identity and role as shapers of their own lives.