Abstract:

Preconceived notions or prejudices are pre-expressed, immature, unproven, unfounded judgments, attitudes or opinion. Prejudice is a negative attitude and feeling towards a person based solely on their membership in a certain social group (Brown, 2010, and etc.). Prejudice is common towards people who belong to an unfamiliar cultural group. It is a concept that has individual, group and social aspects. Although theoretically, prejudices can be positive, in real life, negative prejudices are more often encountered, which can eventually turn into stereotypes towards certain cultures or cultural groups. A stereotype is a specific belief or assumption (thoughts) about individuals, based only on their membership in a group, without taking into account their individual characteristics what is very negative in intercultural, multicultural communication. It is clear that both prejudices and stereotypes, especially negative ones, have an impact on our communication and behaviour in general, negatively affecting our thinking and attitude not only towards people of other cultures, but also the possibilities of constructive communication, cooperation and coexistence. For these reasons, multicultural communication and multicultural education in general are very important not only for today's world, but also for the future. And this can only be done by using various interactive educational tools and methods, such as e.g. LEGO series play methodology, experiential learning, case studies, reflections, using various cards, etc. On the basis of the experience of Šiaulių valstybinė kolegija the possibilities of using these tools and methods to overcome various existing prejudices and culturally based stereotypes will be explored in this presentation.

Keywords:

Cultural preconceived notions, prejudices and stereotypes, multicultural and intercultural communication, interactive educational tools and methods.