Revitalizing Interculturality In Education

China is often seen as a monolith outside its borders. However, heterogeneity and interculturality have characterized the Middle Kingdom for centuries. Today, China’s take on diversity is too easily disparaged or perceived as ambiguous – as if China was not legitimate to take part in conversations about it. The authors wish to contribute to global discussions about interculturality in education, which have often been dominated by ‘Western’ voices, by problematizing a very specific Chinese perspective called Minzu (‘ethnic’) education. Minzu is presented as a potential companion to other forms of diversity education (multicultural, intercultural, transcultural, cross-cultural, global education). Without claiming that they have found a miraculous and one-size-fits all recipe, they argue that the lessons learnt from researching various aspects of Minzu in Chinese education can also help students, researchers, educators, and decision-makers unthink and rethink the central issue of interculturality. As such the book introduces the complexity, contradictions and benefits of Minzu while helping the reader consider how compatible and complementary it could be with discussions of interculturality in other parts of the world. The book also aims at making readers observe critically their own contexts. This book was written with an open mind and it should be read with the same.

Offering a unique reading experience, this book examines the epistemologies of interculturality and explores potential routes to review and revisit the notion anew. Grounded in different sociocultural, economic and political perspectives around the world, interculturality in education and research bears a paradoxical attribute of 'contradictions' and 'inconsistencies', making it a polysemous and flexible notion that has no definitive diagnosis and requires constant unthinking and rethinking. The author provides a toolbox of 'out-of-box ideas' in the form of fragmental yet standalone writings and follow-up questions concerning stereotypes about the very notion of interculturality and conceptual and methodological flaws in the way it is used. Readers are encouraged to critically reflect about interculturality as it stands today in global research and education. In identifying the paradoxes of interculturality and proposing alternative directions, the book stimulates a diversity of thoughts about the notion that goes beyond the 'West'. The book will be an essential reading for scholars, students and educators interested in education philosophy, applied linguistics and the broad field of intercultural communication education. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license. Funded by University of Helsinki

This book continues the author’s long-term reflections (over 20 years of scholarship and experience in intercultural communication education) around the fascinating and yet contestable notion of interculturality in education. As an unstable and polysemic notion, interculturality deserves to be opened up again and again and there is a need to engage with it continuously, observing, critiquing and problematizing its complexities. This book urges researchers, students and interculturalists to take the time to think carefully and deeply about interculturality and to find inspiration beyond the dominating ‘Western’ ideological world of intercultural research and education. This book starts from short fragments written by the author for himself over a period of one year. In these short statements and notes about interculturality, the author reflects creatively on the questions he had in mind at the time of writing and offers some (temporary) answers, which, in turn, are questioned and revised. Over the 1000 fragments that the author wrote, he selected about 100, for which he wrote commentaries, referring to and reviewing current research and debates on interculturality in the process. One of the specificities of the book is to be highly multidisciplinary to help us get used to looking for inspiration in other fields of research and creativity. The fragments can be read randomly – the reader may open the book at any page and pick any fragment. The author suggests reading each individual fragment first and then the accompanying explanatory texts. While reading them, the reader is also invited to reflect on any potential addition to what the author wrote – anything they might dis-/agree with, anything they would have wanted to discuss with the author. Questions have been added at the end of each chapter for readers to reflect on and to enrich their own criticality and reflexivity. The book serves as continuous guidance for engaging with interculturality.

This book is unique in presenting new perspectives on how to introduce interculturality to children. It proposes critical ideas for introducing sensitive topics around culture, race and intersectionality. The book develops the reader’s criticality and reflexivity, providing original and concrete tools to introduce interculturality to children and to make children aware of how intercultural issues matter in their lives and in the world at large. It includes case studies of children’s realities from across the world, and provides insights into how to approach sensitive topics such as culturalism, discrimination, inequality and racism in relation to diversity in different contexts. Written in the spirit of critical interculturality, the book will be of great interest to researchers and students in the field of intercultural studies, global childhood and early childhood education, as well as trainee teachers and educators.

This book deals with the importance of interculturality in teacher education and training. It is mostly through the concept of intercultural competence that interculturality has been constructed and problematized for educators. However, different approaches and paradigms are available and differ and/or share similarities in terms of ideology, method, practice, theoretical frameworks, and ethical considerations. There is no global agreement on the meanings of interculturality in teacher education and training, although some principles might be common across national borders. There is thus a need for educators to consider these aspects of interculturality in education to be able to become better teachers in a diverse world like ours.

This book explores the notion of interculturality in education and supports scholars in their discovery of the notion. Continuing the author’s previous work, the book urges (communication) education researchers and educators to 'interculturalize' interculturality. This book corresponds to the authors’ endeavor to complexify the way interculturality is discussed, expressed, (co-)constructed and advocated in different parts of the world and in different languages. To interculturalize interculturality is to expand the way we deal with the notion as an object of scientific and educational discourse, noting the dominating voices and allowing for silenced voices that are rarely heard around interculturality to emerge. This book is based on broken realities and (the authors’) rebellious dreams. As two researchers and educators with a long experience examining discourses of interculturality, this book represents the authors’ program for the future of intercultural communication education. The book is divided into three 'tableaus' (living descriptions) depicting today’s 'broken' realities of interculturality and two 'rebellious' dreams of what it could be in research and education.

This book does not instruct the reader how to communicate interculturally but supports them in reflecting on how they can (re-)negotiate and (re-)construct knowledge(s), ideologies and relations around the notion of interculturality. Anchored in the author’s original and thought-provoking perspectives on interculturality, this interdisciplinary and global-minded book explores how communicating around the notion cannot do away with ideologisms, issues of language and translation or the problematization of voice and silence in research and education. Written in an original and stimulating way, relying on different writing genres and styles to ‘mimic’ the dynamism and flexibility of the very notion under review, the author urges us to (un-)voice, scrutinize, nurture and galvanize our ways of dealing with interculturality alone and together with others in academia. The very specific focus of the book, communicating around interculturality (instead of ‘doing’ interculturality), represents a fresh and important move for observing, analyzing, speaking of and contributing to today's complex and divided world. The title is aimed at researchers, students and educators interested in examining and enriching their own takes on interculturality, from a more reflexive and interactive perspective.

This book provides a comprehensive study of professional learning courses in intercultural settings, exploring how this impacts teachers and brings about change in classrooms, culture across schools as a whole, and children’s lives. The authors argue that teachers and schools must raise the stakes globally in an intercultural practice grounded in educational equity and anti-racism. Identifying the attributes that make a difference in teacher intercultural learning and change through analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data, the study throws up marked tensions and contradictions between the desire to explore both an abstract personal concept and achieve practical outcomes in schools. As case studies of two primary schools dig deep into teachers’ lives, the book proposes a model of personal teacher interculturality which is constructed from the inside out. The potential of neglected spaces in schools for intercultural identity is also highlighted by images of new practice. This book is a supportive resource for schools or educational institutions, in any global context, that are seeking a fresh approach to intercultural education and holistic change.