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Intercultural Education
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Theoretical reflections on intercultural education

Jagdish S. Gundara & Agostino Portera
a b a b

Institute of Education University of London, UK

Universit degli Studi di Verona, Italy Version of record first published: 19 Dec 2008.

To cite this article: Jagdish S. Gundara & Agostino Portera (2008): Theoretical reflections on intercultural education, Intercultural Education, 19:6, 463-468 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14675980802568244

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Intercultural Education Vol. 19, No. 6, December 2008, 463468

EDITORIAL Theoretical reflections on intercultural education

Intercultural 10.1080/14675980802568244 CEJI_A_356992.sgm 1467-5986 Original Taylor 2008 0 6 19 j.gundara@ioe.ac.uk JagdishGundara 000002008 and & Article Francis (print)/1469-8439 Francis Education (online)

IAIE and the 25th anniversary During the late autumn of 2008 it is a great pleasure for us, as members of the Board of the International Association for Intercultural Education (IAIE), to edit this special issue of Intercultural Education. This issue contains articles written by several members of the Board of the organisation to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the IAIE. It is perhaps interesting after 25 years to briefly reflect on the not-too-distant past. In 1979, Pieter Batelaan visited London to meet people at the Community Relations Commission, the Inner London Education Authority and the International Centre for Intercultural Education at the Institute of Education at the University of London. Upon his return to Utrecht, The Netherlands, Pieter published a Report on issues of intercultural education in The Netherlands and multicultural education in Britain. This document generated an interest amongst teachers, teacher education institutions, national agencies and the Council of Europe. It subsequently formed the basis of a successful conference held in Nijenrode (The Netherlands) in 1982. A core group of people were entrusted to follow up this Conference with a further event which would address issues of intercultural education in practical terms and at the classroom level. The Second International Conference was held at the Institute of Education at the University of London in 1984. At this Conference, it became very apparent that the multicultural initiatives in Britain and other English-speaking countries were very different from those being undertaken by non-English speaking members of the Council of Europe. In an attempt to develop a more common and shared approach, the International Association for Intercultural Education was set up in London in 1983. In many of the member states of the Council of Europe, the climate for initiatives to develop intercultural education were very favourable and Michelene Rey had undertaken work on some of these issues in Project Number 7 of the Council of Europe. The group that chose a new direction in teaching about the intercultural included Pieter Batelaan (The Netherlands), Steffan Lundgren (Sweden), Gerd Hoff (West Germany) and Jagdish Gundara (UK). The first Board consisted of Pieter as the Secretary General and Steffan and Jagdish as the Board members. The issue of educational inequality in socially diverse and multicultural societies and absence of social justice in societies was of particular interest to the founder members. In many English-speaking countries, teachers and schools were developing multicultural initiatives based on their understanding of problems within classrooms. The main focus of this work was on providing second language teaching to immigrant pupils to better absorb them into the existing school structures and education systems. However, the issue of the relationship between the immigrant students and the others in many schools was not considered an issue. In countries like The Netherlands, France and Britain many of the immigrants were also nationals or citizens of the countries where the families had come to settle after de-colonisation. Teachers in schools, however, only saw the acquisition of the
ISSN 1467-5986 print/ISSN 1469-8439 online 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14675980802568244 http://www.informaworld.com

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second language as a main problem for students and their first languages were perceived as a problem. No consideration was given to the connections between first and second language learning, or the teaching of second language and its role in enabling or disabling access to the school curriculum. One consequence of this was the designation of students as being in need of special education and systematically being consigned to special schools. A few generations of students were therefore unable to participate in the fuller life of their new societies after leaving school. In United Nations terms, they were not able to reach their full potential. They were consigned to lesser roles during their work lives and began to be considered as a social problem. These early problem-centred multicultural approaches directed to students of immigrant origin were a double-edged sword: it led to them being labelled as being disadvantaged and increasingly issues of difference became constructed as deficit. This led to the deepening of the racism of the dominant and majority populations who defined the others by their ethnicity. In some contexts these measures were being challenged by radical teachers and others by using the rhetoric of anti-racism, but not many meaningful policies of substantive educational measures were implemented by education systems. Most of these policies did not lead to the improvement of the life chances of the so-called ethnic groups who in inter-generational terms have complex social class, hybrid and mestizo identities. The English-speaking multicultural policies were mainly developed across the Atlantic and increasingly were being defined as advantaging minority communities, leading to cultural wars which deepened group differences even further. Religious bigotry became another powerful weapon to be used against the maligned minorities. The founding members of the International Association decided that these not only had educational implications, but also had socio-economic consequences that were in fact denying full social, economic and political rights of all groups and citizens who lived in Europe. The formation of the IAIE was a result of understanding how overt and covert racism, xenophobia and marginalisation through social class was leading to not only educational but political and economic injustices, and that social and public policies were necessary to address these mounting social exclusions. Pieter Batelaan, our first Secretary General and President, was very active and throughout this period ensured that we grew from strength to strength, and we would like to pay particular tribute to him and the enormous amount of work he did for the organisation and the intellectual articulation of this field. One important focus of the IAIE throughout, due to his influence, has been to challenge the narrow definitions of teacher training and to develop more inclusive and intercultural methods of teacher education. The emphasis at this level was on developing the professional intercultural competences of teachers through the provision of knowledge, skills and understandings of teacher educators themselves. It was during Pieters term of office that we adopted the journal, which from its very small beginnings has grown to its present stature and size. It is here important to recognise that Barry van Driel has taken both the organisation and the journal to the next stage of is evolution and deserves all our thanks for all the work he has put in. Ten years ago the journal was published three times a year. Today it is published six times a year, demonstrating the interest in both the journal and the variegated issues covered in it. Illness has forced Pieter Batelaan to retire from the field and devote his life to his children and grandchildren. Role of intercultural education It is our belief that the field of intercultural education is one of the most important approaches, among a range of educational initiatives, which can potentially address the

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problem of educational inequality around the world. It has been able to make connections with those who work in diverse fields of education such as comparative, human rights, citizenship, conflict resolution and multilingual education. The issues confronting education systems in the twenty-first century are far deeper than the political elites from dominant and majority populations tended to project. These are not problems and issues emanating from immigrant minorities but are issues for all groups in society. They are concerned with historical aspects of difference and diversity, as much as with the increasingly complex contemporary aspects of diversity. The measures necessitate a total re-consideration of establishing formal, informal and life-long learning communities. Since many communities have different ways of learning and expectations about the learning process and learning outcomes, processes of intercultural learning and teaching need to take cognizance of these issues. In multi-lingual communities this necessitates the development of intercultural bilingual education to enable first languages of learners to be used to develop the learning of second and other languages. Multilingual educational contexts necessitate intercultural bilingual competences to enhance better communication across linguistic and national divides. In developing measures of multilingualism and non-centric curriculum, educational provision needs to become more accessible to larger numbers of students and lead to greater levels of equality in educational terms. Many critics have suggested that such measures would water down education, but within the Board of the Association the emphasis is on providing quality and equality to all learners. Much of the work on intercultural education still relies on hunches and attempts to do good. This is, however, not the way in which work should be structured in the future since it needs to rely on evidence. Evidence-based work can be ethnographic, qualitatively or quantitatively based. It also needs to be informed by different academic disciplines as well as having a multi- and inter-disciplinary basis. In different communities, institutions, localities, regions and states there will be a different focus. Issues raised by socio-economic inequalities, and the poverty associated with certain communities, may have historic origins and may necessitate joined-up policies which include education and skills training. At this level in different national contexts, there might be a very different focus when tackling either historically entrenched divides or more contemporary based exclusions. In educational terms, issues of language, social class, race, nationality, religion or secularism may all be relevant in different combinations. These issues present profound challenges to local, regional or central governments. Initiatives cannot remain marginalised and isolated as they have been hitherto in many nation states, especially if societies would like to remain peaceful, safe and secure. The evidence and academic basis of work in the field of intercultural education will inevitably lead to the formulation of different theoretical and conceptual frameworks. At the same time, the work over many decades can also be used to formulate certain preliminary conceptual and theoretical constructs which can be tested in schools and education systems. In either case, the work in this field in the future has to have a rigorous intellectual academic basis and cannot remain on the fringes of the curricula or get lost in academic crevices. In our view, theoretical and conceptual work in this field has to have an original basis and will manifest itself differently in societies and cannot be dominated by English speaking, North American or European paradigms. Especially the field of intercultural education demands that we listen to voices that have been traditionally silenced. This does not mean that all the good work which has been done in the English-speaking world and by international bodies such as the European Union, the Council of Europe, OCED, UNESCO, OSI

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and the OSCE should be ignored. Much of this work and many good practices can be used as a starting point to provide a sounder basis of developing policies and practices which impact on educational outcomes. Moving towards conceptual clarity As mentioned earlier, each society will add its own circumstances to the way in which intercultural education is conceptualised and practised, but there is a need for conceptual clarity. In the course of the last decades, multiple terms have been used interchangeably to refer to sometimes the same approach and sometimes to quite different approaches. Some of the key terms that have been given credence by researchers and scientists in the field of education include: transcultural, multicultural and intercultural education. In several countries, and in many English-language books, no sharp distinction is drawn between the concept of multicultural and intercultural education or pedagogy. Sometimes, multicultural education is used as a synonym for the intercultural approach to education, and sometimes the manner in which multicultural education is described makes it clear that multicultural education is quite distinct (Portera 2006; Portera and Grant, forthcoming). In the USA, multicultural education became a topical issue in the early 1970s, when the first scientific articles and contributions were published, and has been the most frequently used term up to the present time (Sleeter and Grant 2007). Likewise, curricula relating to multicultural education were introduced in Canada in the 1970s, mainly in response to Franco-Canadian movements and other anti-anglicising minorities. Also, in Australia the first educational answers with a multicultural orientation were introduced in the 1970s. It has only been in recent years that some authors in English-speaking countries (Canada, USA or Australia) have referred to the concept of intercultural education in the manner in which it is presently intended (Gundara 2000). In Europe, even though several documents on education (Council of Europe, European Parliament) and in many countries, have incorporated principles of intercultural education into their school policies, numerous studies and research (Allemann-Ghionda 1999; Perotti 1996; Portera 2000), lack clear semantic definitions and common epistemological formulations. With this special issue of Intercultural Education, both editors hope to start a global conversation between IAIE members and other researchers to agree on a common language, at least in pedagogical terms. Such discussions need to take both theory-forming and educational practice into consideration. Conceptual discussions were one of the main ones during the IAIE conference in Verona in 2005 (various contributions from this conference have been published in previous issues of this journal or in Portera 2006), and we hope to move those discussions forward in this issue of Intercultural Education through a number of quite diverse papers and reflections. We, as editors, do not agree with everything that is written in these articles (in fact, some of the contributors would disagree with each other) but we feel that the authors have touched upon a large number of issues that deserve further debate, discussion, action and attention by the educational community. Jagdish Gundaras contribution Civilisational knowledge, interculturalism and citizenship education, inspired by an intercultural pedagogy point of view, argues that citizenship education and civic engagement raise a complex set of issues. He carefully examines the role of inequality and disenfranchisement and the consequences for education in modern society. Intercultural education in Europe: epistemological and semantic aspects by Agostino Portera provides an epistemological and semantic analysis of the concept of

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intercultural education and how it can be distinguished from multicultural and transcultural pedagogy. The article examines the development of intercultural education in Europe and beyond, and supports the thesis that at the moment, intercultural education is the most appropriate answer to globalisation and interdependence. In the article Intercultural education and intercultural learning in Austria critical reflections on theory and practice, Mikael Luciak and Gabriele Khan-Svik analyse current theories and practices of intercultural education and intercultural learning in Austria. Although the focus is on Austria, the article clearly has implications for all modern societies. Francesca Gobbos article On metaphors, everyday diversity and intercultural education analyses the current day metaphorical representations of people and societies. She discusses, from an anthropological perspective, the use of these metaphors and their consequences for the field of intercultural education. Paul C. Gorskis article Good intentions are not enough: a decolonising intercultural education takes the view that despite unquestionably good intentions on the part of most people who call themselves intercultural educators, most intercultural education practices, instead of challenging the dominant hegemony, actually support prevailing social hierarchies, and inequitable distributions of power and privilege. His contribution takes the issue of social justice and plants it firmly into the field of intercultural education. Michele Kahn in Multicultural education in the United States: reflections describes how in US history, the development of civil rights has provided the impetus for changes in schools with respect to multicultural education. She argues that there is a large gap between theory, policy and practice, much like Mikael Luciak and Gabriele KhanSvik find to be the case in Austria. Finally, Krystyna Bleszynskass article Constructing intercultural education examines the theoretical development of intercultural education, especially in Poland and other Eastern and Central European countries. She scrutinises the connection between various sub-disciplines of the educational sciences, such as comparative education, peace and civic education. The European Union officially declared 2008 the Year of Intercultural Dialogue. As guest editors of this special issue, we hope that the various contributions you can read here will ensure that the dialogue and discussion about interculturalism, in all its facets, will not die down after 2008. On behalf of the IAIE and its Board, we invite all scholars and educators who care about these issues to join us in this mission. Jagdish S. Gundara Institute of Education University of London, UK Agostino Portera Universit degli Studi di Verona, Italy

References
Gundara, J.S. 2000. Interculturalism, education and inclusion. London: Paul Chapman. Perotti, A. 1996. Migrations et socit pluriculturelle en Europe [Migration and pluricultural society in Europe]. Paris: LHarmattan. Portera, A. 2000. Leducazione interculturale nella teoria e nella pratica. Stereotipi pregiudizi e pedagogia interculturale neilibri di testo della scuola elementare [Intercultural education in theory and practice]. Padua: CEDAM. . 2005. Main results of the conference: Diversity in Education in an international context. Intercultural Education 16, no. 3, 30914. Portera, A., ed. 2006. Educazione interculturale nel contesto internazionale [Intercultural education in an international context]. Milan: Guerini.

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Portera, A., and C.A. Grant. Forthcoming. Multicultural and intercultural education for the global world. New York: Routledge. Sleeter, E., and C.A. Grant. 2007. Making choices for multicultural education, 5th ed. New York: Wiley.

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