Third Culture Kids (TCK's)

 

Sunday, 14 October 2012

While teaching in Macau I have been learning about Third Culture Kids ( TCK’s). I am reading a book by David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken which explains TCK’s – Growing up Among Worlds. It is really interesting. A TCK is a person that has spent part of their developing years (childhood) outside of their parent’s culture. This person then builds a relationship to all the cultures they are exposed to without ever really creating their own culture. It is an interesting idea. Many of the students that I work with at school fit into this idea. TCK’s also fit into another classification of a cross-cultural kid (CCK). There are four main ways that CCK kids fit into a culture. This is the PolVan Cultural Identity Model:

· Foreigner – look different, think different

· Hidden immigrant – look alike, think different

· Adopted – look different, think alike

· Mirror – look alike, think alike

I think the challenge with living in a culture doesn’t mean that you know everything about that culture. Since language plays a huge part in helping adjust to new cultures. The Third Culture Kids have problems because they run into these different situations when they arrive in different cultures. Since they travel so much and spend time in many different countries they often experience many different cultural identities.

For example, if they are a foreigner it is ok because no one in the home culture expects them to know anything.They don’t look the same and they don’t have to act the same as the home culture. However, if the kid is a hidden immigrant then it is challenging because the home culture expects them to know the language, rules, norms and culture. They look the same. They should fit in. I think this must be the hardest for a TCK . This is something I see often with student who look like they would be a Chinese National but they are Canadian and they speak perfect English. It always throws me off because I have made assumptions. It confuses people when the kid is adopted. They don’t look the same but they have the culture or the language. So there are always challenges for these TCK’s.