Traditional Sports and Games: Intercultural Dialog, Sustainability, and Empowerment

From Traditional Sports and Games (TSG) we have not only learned different ways of living time as well as inhabit space and a particular mode of practicing sports and games from distinct cultures, but also promoting universal dialog among people. TSG presents sustainable and ecological references for living needed even before the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nowadays, environmentally friendly policies and production methods must be taken more seriously. TSG may reveal a path to sustainable development, considering our corporeality and cultural diversity. TSG are expressions of human groups that historically reproduce their way of life-based on modes of social cooperation and specific forms of relationship with nature, traditionally characterized by sustained environmental management. The purpose of this article is to discuss how TSG promotes intercultural dialog with a focus on sustainability, and how it empowers people and creates equality among its players. We understand that TSG can break socio-cultural barriers. For this study, we considered data from a Brazilian experience of TSG’s Festival held at a public school in the city of São Paulo (Brazil), organized in collaboration with our study group. Data consists of observations recorded in pictures and films during the processes of organization, preparation, implementation, and evaluation of a TSG Festival, held in a public school in São Paulo, Brazil from the years of 2017 and 2018, with the participation of 800 students from the first to the ninth grade of elementary school, aged between 7 and 17 years. The first step in our analysis is taken from a dynamic called “Talking Circles,” where researchers registered dialog about experiences and used specific literature about TSG, from a philosophical perspective. The team and students from our study group that organized these events were invited to participate in four different Talking Circles. Approximately 20 people participated in each one of these meetings. Recurrences that emerged from these Talking Circles are presented in the results and explored afterward. What does this experience–from bodies in movement, artistic or sporting, or both–teach about intercultural dialog and empowerment? Such gestures indicate a cultural heritage and corporeal wisdom that allows humans to face new encounters and understanding in peace, recognizing humanity common to all of us, regardless of our origins. Ethical and aesthetical results of such dialog reveal possibilities to be explored in our relationship with different cultures and the environment, providing points of sustainable development through TSG.

Por uma transformação intercultural da teologia

O anúncio cristão tem se dado mediante um diálogo intercultural que, historicamente, caracterizou-se por uma cerrada polarização entre fé e cultura. Esta polarização foi desconstruída pelo Vaticano II, ao propor-nos a transparência da cultura em relação à fé. A Teologia da Libertação latinoamericana explicitou as contradições internas da cultura moderna, propondo-nos relacionar fé e culturas provenientes do “reverso” da história e do “mundo dos pobres”. Nos dias que correm, as teologias se sentem desafiadas a se submeterem a um processo de transformação intercultural, onde o intercultural seja assumido como perspectiva e método e não apenas como tema.Abstract: The Christian message has been proclaimed through an intercultural dialog that, historically, was characterized by a strong polarization between faith and culture. Vatican II deconstructed this polarization, by proposing to us the transparency of culture with regard to faith. The Latin American Liberation Theology made explicit the internal contradictions of modern culture, inviting us to relate faith and cultures from the “other side” of History and from the “world of the poor.” In our days, theologies feel challenged to undergo a process of intercultural transformation, where the intercultural is assumed as a perspective and method and not just as a topic.Keywords: Faith; Reason; Culture; History; Interculturality.

What is the Purpose of Ethnobiology in Biology Teacher Training?

This article aims to discuss the purpose of ethnobiology in biology teachers’ training based on conceptions of biology teachers before and after their participation in a training course for science teachers that involved ethnobiology. The research was developed in 2009 and involved semi-structured interviews with nine biology teachers of public schools in the state of Bahia (Northeastern Brazil). Analyzes were conducted inductively, using categories based on the teachers’ answers and carefully studying literature on science teaching. Results indicate that teachers expanded their conceptions about ethnobiology after their participation in the training course. They perceived this science as the study of complex relationships between human beings and other living beings. They also perceived the importance of exploring their students’ cultural knowledge to the intercultural dialog and having ethnobiology as a tool in this process. It is concluded that ethnobiology contributes to the biology teachers’ training guiding his/her practices and giving the opportunity to identify students’ cultural knowledge that can be used in an intercultural dialog with the biology taught in schools; hence, it is imperative to offer training courses for teachers as a starting point.

Researching Online Intercultural Dialog in Business

Within a single business day, technical communicators may be challenged to work with colleagues located in a variety of nations. In such interactions, they use several kinds of communication technologies and must constantly adjust in order to effectively communicate with colleagues from other cultures. This is the realm of online intercultural dialog (OID), or online textual conversation between interlocutors from different cultures. Preparing individuals to work effectively within such contexts, however, is no easy task. This chapter will discuss the importance of doing research on such situations, present a methodology for gathering evidence based on widely accepted practices in technical communication, and show how the results of the research can be applied to business and academic practices worldwide.

ICTs for intercultural Dialog (ICT4ID)

This case study will focus on UNESCO’s cross-disciplinary programme spanning the sectors of communication and culture, “Information and Communication Technologies for Intercultural Dialogue: Developing Communication Capacities of Indigenous Peoples (ICT4ID).” It will show a general overview of the five ongoing pilot projects. This programme aims at preserving indigenous peoples’ cultural resources by fostering access to ICT. These are the expected results: • Indigenous community representatives trained in media content production and ICT use. • Indigenous cultural content produced for television, radio and news media. • Awareness raised at an international level of indigenous creativity. • Advocacy made for the importance of cultural diversity and its expression through ICTs. • Reinforcement of intercultural dialogue through the inclusion of indigenous peoples’ cultural expressions in mainstream knowledge societies. In order to achieve these objectives, the programme has begun to implement five pilot projects worldwide. These five projects can be divided into two groups: the first group of projects focusing on the audiovisual and the second group consisting of two projects related to multimedia.