Third culture kids : examining their impact in school communities, a case study
Authors:   , Magee Erinn A. 
Published: April 2021

The purpose of this case study is to explore the impact that Third Culture Kids have on one international school community. Third Culture Kids or TCKs are children who live in a culture that is not the culture of their parents (Pollock and Van Reken, 1999). Not to be confused with immigrants, these children move from country to country and do not settle in a single place. At the same time, they grow up expecting to return to their passport country (Cockbum, 2002). These children's lives are influenced both by their parents' culture (which they may have limited first-hand experience with) and the culture (s) they have grown up surrounded by. The result of the constant exposure to different cultures develops into a unique, "third," culture for the child. (Nineteen Third Culture Kids in an international school in the Republic of Panama were interviewed in order to explore with the aim of understanding how their experiences as transient students affected their school community. The Third Culture Kids in this study have lived, at a minimum, in two different countries. Neither the children nor their parents held passports from Panama. Combined, the nineteen students speak ten languages fluently: English, Spanish, Italian, French, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese, Arabic, Singhalese, and Hebrew. The students speak an average of 2.8 languages each, with one child speaking five languages fluently. Every student spoke at least two languages. In their brief lives, they have lived in 28 countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Netherlands, Panama, Peru, Rwanda, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, United States, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe. On average, the students have lived in 3.8 countries each, with two having lived in six countries. These children understand the advantages of being Third Culture Kids. They understand that as a whole, they are more tolerant, mature, have a wider worldview, and they appreciate human differences. In the international schools they have attended, they observed how challenging it is to make friends in schools without other Third Culture Kids, and they feel they can make the biggest difference when they are in a school includes other TCKs. The case study found that TCKs contribute greatly to a school's culture. They attribute this to their willingness to participate in efforts to create an open and caring attitude. More than one TCK expressed that they feel free to be himself or herself in this particular school, in contrast to other international schools they have attended. Despite published results that suggest difficulty in establishing friendship with local students, they report making great friends not only with fellow TCKs, but also with Panamanians students. In understanding how TCKs can be embraced and introduced into a school's efforts to create an inclusive environment, academic institutions can instill openness, maturity, and a broader worldview in students who are not TCKs. In such an open community, instead of remaining on the sidelines, TCKs and their accepting attitudes can influence the entire school--building a powerful community of children whose collective interests and experiences reflect the need for inclusiveness to spread throughout the entire globe.