Valérie Martinez defended her PhD with success today. Her work was under my supervision and Jean-Paul Narcy-Combes (Sorbonne Nouvelle, France). Well done!

Martinez, V. (2015). Construction de l’Est et de l’Ouest : vers des compétences interculturelles. Un exemple de recherche à Hong-Kong en situation de mobilité académique. (Co-constructing East and West : towards intercultural competences? An example of research on academic mobility in Hong Kong). Turku: Annales Universitatis Turkuensis.

Valérie Martinez, Fred Dervin, Muriel Molinié, Nathalie Auger,

Jean-Paul Narcy-Combes and Maarit Mutta.

OFFER AVAILABLE HERE

Name of chapter: Is the Emperor naked? Experiencing the ‘PISA hysteria’, branding and education export in Finnish academia (Fred Dervin)

Abstract: Finland has been at the centre of world attention for many years, especially in relation to her excellent results in PISA studies. This has led to thousands of pedagogical tourists visiting the country but also, and more importantly, the development of Finnish education export. Departments of teacher education, like the one I work in, have been active in partaking in such activities, often masking certain realities about Finnish (teacher) education to sell. In this chapter I am interested in how selling a so-called ‘miraculous’ system of education is embedded in the work of scholars. I describe the main actors of this phenomenon and discuss how they contribute to selling Finnish education. I show that this is a complex phenomenon which occurs at the intersection of global educational competition, academic ‘stardom’, nation branding strategies and the increasing use of social media. Using an auto-ethnographic approach I also share my discomfort with this and propose to peek behind the curtains to look at Finland as a ‘naked Emperor’.

This book investigates cultural and intercultural dimensions of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). Authors discuss how ‘culture’ and the ‘intercultural’ can be understood, theorised and operationalised in ELF, and how the concepts can be integrated into formats of ELF-oriented learning and teaching. The various cultural connotations are also discussed (ideological, political, religious and historical) and whether it is possible to use and/or teach a lingua franca as if it were culturally neutral. The chapters consider the communication and pedagogical implications of the cultural and intercultural dimensions of ELF and offer suggestions for new directions in ELF research, pedagogy and curriculum development.

“This edited volume is exemplary in threading together two hitherto parallel intellectual traditions – Intercultural Communication Studies and English as a Lingua Franca – innovatively and critically through a constellation of theoretical and analytical synergies. The empirical case studies across diverse settings will no doubt pave the way for future research-cum-pedagogy in the above two traditions and their intersection.”

Srikant Sarangi, Aalborg University, Denmark

“This timely book fills a gap in thinking about interculturality by recognising that lingua francas are not cultural vacuums but that in all contexts of language use language and culture are fundamentally connected. The wide-ranging contributions in this collection open up new ways of thinking about lingua francas and cultures and is a must for anyone working in the field of intercultural understanding.”

Anthony J. Liddicoat, University of South Australia, Australia

“This is a rich and multifaceted volume that tackles the difficult question of the relation between interculturality and English as a Lingua Franca. By bringing two fields together, ELF and intercultural communication, that up to now have shown little interest in one another, the contributors to this volume are able to ask provocative questions, present innovative views and make bold suggestions that will benefit research in both ELF and intercultural communication.”

Claire Kramsch, University of California, Berkeley, USA

Dervin, F. (2016). Interculturality in Education: A Theoretical and Methodological Toolbox. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.

This book explores the decades-long use of the notion of interculturality in education and other fields, arguing that it is now time to move beyond certain assumptions towards a richer and more realistic understanding of the ‘intercultural’. Many concepts such as culture, identity and intercultural competence are discussed and revised. Myths about interculturality are also unpacked and dispelled. Written by one of the leading scholars in the field, this book proposes a very useful framework to address theoretical and methodological issues related to interculturality. This somewhat provocative book will be of interest to anyone who wrestles with this knotty but central notion of our times.

“Michael Ignatieff in the New York Review of Books writes that the refugee crisis in Europe and the Middle East has proven Hannah Arendt right about the inevitable failure of human rights declarations in the face of political crises. “The Paris attacks make it easy to forget a scandalous fact: 3,329 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe so far this year. Still more are drowning every week. They are drowning in sight of the island of Lesbos in Greece or off the Italian island of Lampedusa. Others are dying trapped inside refrigerator trucks on the roadside in Austria; they are dying inside the Channel Tunnel, trying to reach Great Britain; as the winter darkens, some may die of exposure on the trek up through the Balkans. Later generations will ask how European leaders let this happen. Hannah Arendt, exiled in 1933, stripped of her German citizenship in 1937, later taking flight from Vichy France and finally reaching New York in 1941, also wondered how Europe had betrayed the stateless in her own time. In 1948, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, she observed that it was citizenship that gives human beings the ‘right to have rights.’ As for stateless persons, she concluded, they ought to have rights simply because they are human, but her own experience had taught her a different lesson: ‘If a human being loses his political status, he should, according to the implications of the inborn and inalienable rights of man, come under exactly the situation for which the declarations of such general rights provided. Actually the opposite is the case. It seems that a man who is nothing but a man has lost the very qualities which make it possible for other people to treat him as a fellow-man.’ The passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the Refugee Convention in 1951, and the European Convention on Human Rights in 1953 was supposed to give the stateless the right to have rights. States who signed these documents were not allowed to let stateless people drown in their waters and were not supposed to send them back home if they were likely to be tortured; they were entitled to a hearing to make their claim to stay. Anyone, in the words of the Refugee Convention, who fled a ‘well-founded fear of being persecuted’ had a right to claim refuge in any country that ratified the convention. Thanks to the human rights revolution after 1945, Europe thought it had proven Arendt wrong. Now that we have seen a dead toddler face down, washed up on the gravel of a Turkish beach, Arendt may have been right after all. The Refugee Convention of 1951 has been overwhelmed by the reality of 2015.”

Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University ELT Department has for many years organised a biennial research conference and we are delighted to tell you that our next event will be held from 12-14th May 2016, in collaboration with the International Association of Research in Applied Linguistics and Foreign Language Education (UDEAD). The theme for this 9th ELT Research Conference is “Interdisciplinary Approaches: Beyond the Borders of ELT Methodology”, and the organising committee looks forward to receiving proposals for papers, posters and workshops under the following headings or other topics which may be considered appropriate:

Applied Linguistics and Language Education
Approaches and Methods in English Language Education
Corpus and Language Teaching
Culture and Literature in English Language Education
Early English Education
English for Academic Purposes
English for Specific Purposes
English Language Teacher Education
English Language Curriculum and Teaching Materials
English as an International Language
Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning
Intercultural Communication
Language Policy
Language Learning and Acquisition
Language Testing and Evaluation
Life-long Language Learning
Lingua Projects
Multimedia and ICT in English Language Education
Teacher Training and Education
Translation Studies and Language Teaching

Keynote speakers:
Invitations to join us as keynote speakers have been accepted by Graham Hall, Simon Borg and Fred Dervin, all well-known distinguished scholars in our field, and we shall be honoured to welcome them in Canakkale and to the conference. We look forward greatly to benefitting from their contributions.

Proposals for papers:
Presenters are asked to submit their proposals online by 15th February, 2016. They will be informed of the result at the end of February and required to register for the conference by March 20th. Presenters will also be given the opportunity to have their paper published in either a book or a journal. All information and details regarding submissions and publications can be found on the conference web site: http://eltresearchconference.com/. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Important dates are shown in the table below:

Important dates:
Deadline for Abstract Submission: February 15, 2016
Notification of Acceptance: February 29, 2016
Deadline for Presenters’ Registration: March 20, 2016
Announcement of the Conference Programme: April 15, 2016
Conference: May 12-14, 2016
Onsite Event Registration: May 12, 2016
Submission of Full-text Manuscripts: May 27, 2016

The Finnish higher education sector is in need of a structural overhaul, but cutting funding from the best university in the country will not improve the standard of Finnish research, nor Finland’s competitiveness, says rector Jukka Kola.
Jukka Kola, rector of the University of Helsinki, thinks there has been a shift in attitudes in society, and the reasons for this change are hard to grasp. Esteem for scholarship and education have diminished, despite the fact that Finland’s success story is largely based on these.

“We have apparently not succeeded in conveying the message of what we do, and what our everyday achievements are.”

The Government is cutting funding from everything and everybody. Cuts targeted at the education sector are massive. On top of the funding cuts, the University of Helsinki will lose the pharmacy compensation, which has constituted an important part of its core funding. To some extent, Kola understands the cuts in general, the state of the national economy being what it is. But, mistreating the University of Helsinki in particular is unreasonable: here the pain threshold is being dreadfully exceeded.

“The level of Finnish higher education and research is certainly not going to get any higher by cutting funding from the leading university.”

It would be better to target the cuts to universities where quality is not as high. The University of Helsinki has for long been advocating national, field-specific quality evaluations, but has been met with opposition. However, the most recent Academy of Finland report on the state of scientific research reveals quite well the level of research conducted at each university and which of them have sufficient critical mass.

“True innovations are not created without cutting-edge basic research.”
According to Kola, the Finnish higher education sector needs to be structurally overhauled for Finnish universities to fare in the international competition to recruit top researchers and to keep Finnish top scientists at home.

In Denmark, the standard of research began to rise when universities and research institutes were merged so that their number dropped by half. Kola has proposed the establishment of five or six higher education regions, which would agree internally on their distribution of duties. He believes that in this system two or three Finnish universities could be ranked among the 100 best universities in the world or at least close to the top 100. Currently, the University of Helsinki is the only Finnish university that is ranked so high.

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Valerie Martinez will be defending her PhD on 8.1.2016 about study abroad and intercultural competences.

Co-supervisors: Fred Dervin (University of Turku) & Jean-Paul Narcy Combes (Paris Sorbonne).

Custos: Fred Dervin

Martinez, V. (2015). Construction de l’Est et de l’Ouest : vers des compétences interculturelles. Un exemple de recherche à Hong-Kong en situation de mobilité académique. (Co-constructing East and West : towards intercultural competences? An example of research on academic mobility in Hong Kong). Turku: Annales Universitatis Turkuensis.

Click on book cover below to read

The international research project EDINA has received an Erasmus+ grant from the European Commission.
EDINA
Project EDINA (EDucation of International Newly Arrived migrant pupils) aims to empower municipalities, schools and teachers across Europe to improve the prospects of a very vulnerable group of pupils: newly arrived migrant children. In order to achieve this goal, the project has received a grant from the European Commission through the Erasmus+ Programme, which supports transnational partnerships among education, training, and youth institutions and organisations. The EDINA project brings together policy makers, schools and researchers from Finland (Helsinki), Belgium (Ghent) and The Netherlands (Rotterdam and Utrecht).
EDUCATION ACROSS LANGUAGE BORDERS
There is a high inflow of migrant pupils in and within Europe. This situation represents a heavy challenge for the European school system. It is important that these children receive an education that corresponds with their cognitive capabilities, but it is difficult for schools to provide this education when they are faced with a language barrier. As such, there is a high need to identify the most successful strategies to improve the education of newly arrived migrant pupils, and to make this knowledge available.