Fred Dervin

A guide to interculturality for international and exchange students: an example of Hostipitality?

Abstract As in many countries, internationalization and interculturality have become two key concepts in Finnish higher education. As such, several documents (often called ‘survival guides’) have been published by universities in this context to help international and exchange students to adapt to Finland and Finnish ‘ways.’ This article examines such a document dedicated to intercultural communication on Finnish campuses. We demonstrate by analyzing two different versions of the document that the constructed discourses contain rather culturalist, judgmental, and ethnocentric discourses about self and other. We argue that it represents a ‘defeat of hospitality’ or hostipitality. As such, interculturality and hospitality are reduced to ‘educating’ the students to adjust to certain stereotypical Finnish manners rather than teaching them to negotiate and co-construct new ways of being together. Our approach to interculturality is critical, constructivist, and relies on a pragmatic discursive analysis of two versions of the document.

Towards post-intercultural teacher education: analysing ‘extreme’ intercultural dialogue to reconstruct interculturality

The ‘intercultural’ is now omnipresent in most departments of teacher education in Europe and elsewhere. It can be implemented under the guise of, amongst others, multicultural, transcultural, global and/or development education. In this paper, I problematise post-intercultural teacher education. The context of this study is that of Finnish education. Famed worldwide for its ‘miraculous’ educational system, Finland is rarely talked about for dealing with diversities in education. In this article, I explore the impact of a course on ‘multicultural education’ given to a cohort of ‘local’ and international student teachers studying to become Newly Qualified Teachers. I taught the course myself and decided that since only 8u2009h would be devoted to the issue of interculturality, the course would have to help the students to learn to develop quickly critical competences towards the many and varied approaches to diversities that are ‘available on the market’. The methodology rests on the use of a documentary on ‘extreme’ intercultural dialogue that the students discussed at the end of the course. Set in Israel, the documentary follows a class in a multicultural school in Tel Aviv during the second Gaza War in 2008–2009. I hypothesise that the documentary, which is often conflictual, would help me to evaluate the students’ learning and how they discuss and problematise such a case of ‘intercultural dialogue’ in education and relate it to their future practice.

Exploring ‘new’ interculturality online

The way the ‘intercultural’ is taught and researched today is experiencing many transformations. As such from an approach based on the knowledge of how ‘cultures’ interact with each other, the ‘intercultural’ is now examined, amongst others, in relation to the aspects of context, identity construction, intersubjectivity, and power relations. Based on chat sessions between university students studying intercultural communication in two European countries (both ‘local’ and international students), the article proposes to put discursive pragmatics (DP) (French pragmatics and Dialogism) into practice to examine how the students construct interculturality online during several chat sessions. The results show that the students have to negotiate and ‘defend’ their national and ethnic identities but also construct each others perceptions.

Turbulence in intercultural communication education (ICE): does it affect higher education?

This article examines a rather neglected context of intercultural education: intercultural communication education (ICE). ICE can be found in different fields such as business, applied linguistics, intercultural communication and health education, amongst others. The authors start by reviewing the latest and ongoing changes (‘turbulences’) in the way that ‘intercultural’ is conceptualized in this field and form a template for analysing a focus group with lecturers focusing on intercultural communication in the Nordic country of Finland. Our analysis shows that these practitioners, who are also researchers specialized in intercultural communication, share discourses about the importance of the ‘intercultural’ in education, but that they are unable to clearly position themselves within the existing polysemic definitions and approaches. The current turbulences seem to have very little coherent impact on the way they talk about the ‘intercultural’.

Developing a Portfolio of Intercultural Competences in Teacher Education: The Case of a Finnish International Programme.

The concept of intercultural competences is contested, although it is omnipresent in varied fields of research and practice. Its assessment is also questioned: how can it be done? By whom? When? Should assessment be summative or formative—or both? In order to be able to assess anything, learning and teaching objectives must be clear, coherent, and consistent. Yet intercultural competences are often polysemic and rely heavily on problematic concepts such as (national) culture and identity. Here we revisit the concept and reflect on its use for formative assessment within international teacher education. Having developed a Portfolio of Intercultural Competences (PIC) to be used by student teachers in an English-medium teacher education programme in Finland, we explain how the portfolio came to life (theory, methods) and how it can help develop students intercultural competences. We report on three components of the portfolio: the students reflexive and critical essays on five stories of meaningful and/or memorable intercultural encounters written during a course on multicultural education, and focus group discussions amongst the students. We analyze the data with discursive pragmatics, a linguistic method which looks deeper into participants discourses.

The best and most respected teachers in the world? Counternarratives about the ‘Finnish miracle of education’ in the press

Adored worldwide for its ‘outstanding’ education system, Finland has relied on its excellent results in studies of the Programme for International Student Assessment to advertise and sell its education abroad. One of the keys to this success is often attributed to Finnish teachers, who are said to be ‘the best and most respected in the world’. This article questions this official narrative by examining the way teachers are perceived by Finnish society through analysing the front-page headlines of the Finnish tabloid Ilta-Sanomat in 2000–2013. To the authors’ knowledge, the way teachers are constructed in the Finnish press has not been studied extensively, while international studies, especially from English-speaking countries, highlight negative constructions of teachers in the press and cultural products. The data consist of 81 front pages, which were analysed using three methods: content analysis, discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis. The study of the photographs used on the front covers complements the analyses. The results show that the way Finnish teachers are constructed on the tabloid front pages has changed significantly between 2000 and 2013, and they could signal changes in the way education and the status of teachers are considered in the Nordic country. They also show a shift in the way the power of teachers has been depicted.

Cultural essentialism in intercultural relations

Introduction Fred Dervin & Regis Machart 1. Cultural Essentialism And Foreigner-As-Criminal Discourse Damian J. Rivers 2. Culture Offenses Instead Of Cultural Defense - Criminalization Of Oppression Against Women In The Name Of Culture Gabriel Hallevy 3. Interrogating Cultural Excuses For And The Otherness Of Australian Circus Performers: Implications For Intercultural Communication And Education P. A. Danaher 4. Learning To See Differently: The Asia-Pacific Triennial Of Contemporary Art Margaret Baguley 5. Difference Is No Excuse: Separate Struggles, Shared Concerns, And The Articulation Of Collective Identity In Contemporary Anglophone Poetry Antonio Cuadrado-Fernandez 6. Beyond Culture : Nationalistic And Monolinguistic Ideologies In Quebec Elatiana Razafimandimbimanana 7. Essentialising The Convenient Baba-Nyonyas Of The Heritage City Of Melaka (Malaysia) Sep Neo Lim 8. Intercultural Learning Through Training? A Case Study Of The Training Software Alelo For Military Personnel Karin Zotzmann 9. Afterword Adrian Holliday

From PISA to national branding: exploring Finnish education®

ABSTRACT Since the recent global paradigm shift in the governance of higher education toward business and marketing, internationally competitive education is increasingly considered as an asset for governments. Consequently, governments started to invest in education branding and marketing their educational systems. In Finland, national interest in education branding rose especially since the countrys success in the programme for international student assessment studies created a positive reputation of its basic education. In this article, the authors investigate how this reputation is transformed into a general Finnish education brand, based upon Finlands official Country Brand Report (2010). The governmental discourse on Finnish education reveals a fusion of education and national branding, which is why the authors suggest to discuss the Finnish education brand as Finnish education®. The article provides an analysis of the elements constituting the brand and opens up a critical discussion on the ethics of branding education through cultural and national characteristics.

Introduction: Omnipresent Culture, Omnipotent Cultures

At the end of December 2014 quite a surprising piece of news hit the Internet: Merriam-Webster, the reference book and online dictionary, announced that Culture had been selected as the 2014 word of the year. The list was compiled by analysing the lookups in the online dictionary. According to the Editor at Large for Merriam-Webster: “Culture is a word that we seem to be relying on more and more. It allows us to identify and isolate an idea, issue, or group with seriousness” (Merriam-Webster, 2014).

Informal Preparation of Chinese Students for Study Abroad in Sweden

On my way to a conference on Chinese students’ international mobility in Europe, I came across the above advertisement for an MBA program. Though my first reaction was that of annoyance – use of the Chinese for marketing purposes, ‘war-like’ vocabulary, etc. – after reading the ad a couple of times I came to realize that the equation between change and the competition with 1 billion Chinese was in a sense positive for China.