Cultural Essentialism in Intercultural Relations

Edited by Fred Dervin, Regis Machart

The concept of culture has never been as problematic as it is today. Over the last three decades, critiques of the concept have been widespread around the world, especially in anthropology and sociology. Yet in the field of intercultural communication and relations, culture is still omnipresent and is often used to justify certain views on the ‘other’ and also to discriminate, which can lead to understandings and visions of interculturality that are limiting and essentialist.

This collection examines how culture is used in intercultural encounters, but also what it does to people and how they deal with it, with some contributions proposing a move beyond the concept of culture in order to empower individuals and to complexify the analysis of intercultural relations. The volume will appeal to anyone interested in alternative and critical perspectives on interculturality.

MORE INFO HERE

 

Snežana Samardžić-Marković :Pioneering work on democratic competences to transform the way we live and work

16/03/2015 – New Europe / International

We assume our family doctor has a degree in medicine, that the history teacher in the local school passed his history exams and that the producer of our favourite TV chat show has been trained to make television programmes. Rightly, we expect professionals to be qualified for the work they do. Technical expertise is vital for the job.

But it is not enough. The doctor, who does not listen to her patients, will base her diagnosis on partial information. The history teacher, who ignores the Roma girl being bullied in class, contributes to her suffering and failure at school. The producer, who selects three well-known male experts and a good-looking woman for his show, limits the scope of the debate and reinforces existing stereotypes.

We do not all necessarily need to leave school or university with qualifications in biology, history or journalism, but we all need democratic and intercultural competences; that is, the values, attitudes, skills, knowledge and critical understanding that enable us to participate effectively in today’s diverse democracies.

The Council of Europe has been actively promoting human rights and citizenship education for many years, providing comprehensive training programmes, manuals and educational materials both in schools and universities and through youth work and non-formal education. But what has been lacking up to now is a universal and objective system to define and measure the democratic competences required.

This is exactly what the Council of Europe is working on today. It is a Herculean task. After analysing more than 90 existing schemes, we have defined 20 core competences, including: responsibility, tolerance, conflict resolution, listening skills, linguistic and communication skills, critical thinking, empathy and openness.

We are now identifying ‘descriptors’ for each competence, which describe what an individual knows, understands and is able to do or refrain from doing. A descriptor for ‘autonomous learning skills’ might be, ‘judging the reliability of the various sources of information or advice and selecting the most reliable sources from the range available’.

Around 2,000 possible descriptors are to be rigorously tested by teachers in a wide range of cultural settings and at all levels of education across Europe through the Council of Europe’s teacher-training Pestalozzi Programme and its summer academies, run with the European Wergeland Centre in Norway. On the basis of these tests, a questionnaire will be created and sent out to teachers Europe-wide. The resulting data could then be used to define levels of attainment for each competence. No other organisation has embarked on such extensive testing in this field of work.

Gradually, this new system for measuring intercultural competences will be ready to incorporate into teacher-training programmes, recruitment tests and the school curriculum, across Europe and beyond.

This is a demanding undertaking, more challenging even than our Common European Framework for Reference for Languages, which establishes six levels for the core language skills (reading, writing, speaking and listening) that can be applied to every language. But it goes to the heart of the Council of Europe’s mission to promote human rights and democracy and, for us, ‘challenging’ means ‘possible’.

Once the competences become part of the skill set pupils are required to master, they will leave full-time education properly equipped, as responsible citizens, to contribute to our modern, intercultural democracies. When applying for jobs or training, they will be able to cite their level of attainment for ‘empathy’ and ‘critical thinking’, alongside their academic qualifications and language skills. Most importantly, I hope we will see a continuing reduction in discrimination, bullying, violence and – of great concern to us all at the moment – radicalisation, both in schools and in our societies.

FROM:

Sjur Bergan

Head of the Education Department

Dervin, F. (Forth.). Country ‘hyper-branding’ and the internationalization of Higher Education: Is the ®evolution of interculturality coming?

Abstract: In this article I use the current (r)evolution of interculturality to examine the logics, discourses and situated practices of internationalization in Higher Education. Based on a case study in Finland, different policies are analysed to see if and how the construction of internationalization takes place in these documents and what perspective(s) seem to be preferred. As the results show that no real ‘exhausted’ intercultural discourses and logics, called BOTHOPY in this paper, seem to emerge, I look at peripheral documents related to the internationalization of Higher Education in the specific context under review, namely the intersection between Finnish education export, country branding and the internationalization of universities. These documents prove to follow the usual essentialist and ethnocentric approach to the ‘intercultural’ and contradict somewhat the silencing of this dangerous treatment of self and other as found in the policies. The University under review seems thus to be torn apart between different perspectives on internationalization, which is representative of the global neo-liberal zeitgeist.

From the Series Post-intercultural Communication and Education

Sanmao is a comic that takes place mainly during the 1930s and early 1940s and is set in Old Shanghai in its “golden” era. Sanmao lives mostly in misery and stark poverty against a backdrop of war, colonization, and inflation. Created by Zhang Leping in 1935.

A really sweet video to ‘keep us warm’. In mad times like ours, feels good (thanks to Laura K. for the hint)

CFP

Deadline: 30^th May 2015

Volume 18 of the Book Series Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research (Springer)

Book Series Editor: Joseph Zajda (Australian Catholic University, Melbourne Campus)

 

Theme of Volume 18: Globalisation, Social Inequality and Education

Editors: Joseph Zajda, ACU & Fred Dervin, University of Helsinki, Finland

 

Social inequality is a recurrent theme in today’s world. In our times of accelerated globalization, there is also an increasing awareness of how unequal certain practices and situations can be in the context of education, both in the “West” and “East”. No one can claim not to have problems of inequality in their schools and institutions of higher education. This volume examines the links between globalization, education and social inequality. The contexts of formal and informal education are covered as well as all levels of education. The following questions are asked:

• How does one define social inequality in the context of education in different countries?
• Who is most likely to experience inequality in education today?
• What are the consequences of inequality in education?
• How is inequality ‘practised’ in education? Who contributes to its creation?
• What actions are taken by institutions, groups and individuals to fight against inequality?
• Is today’s inequality different from that of the past in education?
• Are teachers/school leaders trained to deal with inequality in schools? If yes how and are they successful? How is the theme dealt with in teacher education?
• Are there examples of ‘good practices’ to reduce inequality?
• At what level can inequality be measured? The institution? A class? At the intersection between society and a school?

If you wish to submit an article please contact Joseph Zajda (j.zajda@jnponline.com) and Fred Dervin (fred.dervin@helsinki.fi) at your early convenience.