The cultural dimension in focus : promoting awareness of diversity and respect for difference in a Finland-Swedish EFL classroom

This study addresses the role of EFL education, its potential and shortcomings, and the challenges the future of EFL education will bring. It is argued that new societal demands and the limited time we have at our disposal in the classroom make it necessary to rethink goals and content and move away from the transmissionof limited sets of facts and information to helping students develop awareness and competences that can be applied in many different situations, also in a perspective of lifelong learning. The overall aim of the current study is to problematize and increase understanding of the implementation of cultural aspects in the language classroom by addressing the interrelated what, why and how of the cultural dimension within EFL education. This has been conducted by means of theoretical explorations into the area, alongside an attempt at promoting intercultural competence (IC) in a more systematic and insightful manner within my own educational praxis. The focus of the intercultural work in the classroom was on the promotion of awareness of difference and diversity, as well as respect for such difference through the ability to decenter from cultural norms and behavior that previously have been taken for granted. These are two elements that have been suggested as fundamental for other work with IC in the classroom and for the realization of important aspects of the underlying values of basic education. In the context of this study, IC comprises several interconnected components supportingeach other in a variety of ways, with the further aim being interaction with and respect for difference in general, not only concerning e.g. representatives ofcertain English-speaking communities. The methodology was informed by action research, with myself in the role of the teacher-researcher or the reflective practitioner. For the purpose of the project I was authorized to take on the EFL education for the three years of upper comprehensive school of one random class of students originally assigned to one of the language teachers of the selected Finland-Swedish school. Thus, the class of 17 students was not specifically chosen for the project, and the aims and contents chosen for the development project were placed within the framework of the ordinary curriculum. By exploring the students¿ insights concerning different English-speaking cultural groups, mainly through a set of questionnaires, it was possible to outline the work with the cultural dimension in the classroom for the following three years. Work progress was evaluated at specific stages, and the final project evaluations were conducted through individual student interviews in grade 9. The interviews were focused on possible development of students¿ insights concerning different aspects of the cultural dimension. In particular this concerned awareness of difference and diversity, including modification of stereotypes, as well as the ability to decenterin order to be better able to respect such difference. I also explored students¿ awareness and views of the activities and approaches used in class, as well asaffordances both inside and outside the EFL classroom in relation to these intended insights. A further focus area was the perceived relevance to students of different aspects of the cultural dimension. The frameworks and approaches adopted for the work in the classroom all have in common that they are based on a constructivist framework, where knowledge is constructed and reconstructed through interaction with one¿s social and cultural environment, including interaction with others. Reflective processes precede or are simultaneous with the learning of basic factual knowledge. This entails a view of learning as a progression from simple to more complex models rather than as a progression from facts to understanding and analysis. Here, the development of intercultural competence is seen asa cyclical process, or along a spiral curriculum, from simple to more complex levels through a combination of cognitive, affective and behavioral elements within a framework of experiential learning. This project has shown one possible wayforward concerning the development of intercultural competence within EFL education through a more systematic and comprehensive approach regarding linguistic and cultural aspects. The evaluation of the educational process explored in the study suggests the possibilities for work with the promotion of awareness of difference and diversity concerning some specific context that, based on students¿ prior knowledge and preconceptions, would benefit from further work. In this case, the specific context primarily concerned different aspects of both cultural and linguistic conditions in the UK. It is also suggested that many students developed the ability to decenter, described in the study as integral to being able to respect otherness. What still remains to be explored are more individualized approaches considering students¿ different levels of departure. Further work alsoneeds to be put into how to apply insights gained in these specific situations to more general contexts. It is also necessary to explore the use of the suggested approaches in a wider range of different contexts.

In pursuit of an intercultural dimension in EFL-teaching : exploring cognitions among Finland-Swedish comprehensive school teachers

This thesis is about the educational purpose of foreign language teaching (FLT) in an increasingly internationalised world.The past 20-30 years have witnessed a fundamental rethinking of the aims of FLT, entailing a shift in emphasis from linguistic competence over communicative competence to intercultural competence. The growing emphasis on cultural issues, called for by research and international curricular documents, places new demandson language teachers. The overall aim of this study is to deepen the knowledge about the attitudes of teachers at the upper level of the Finland-Swedish comprehensive school towards the treatment of culture in English foreign language (EFL) teaching. The questions in focus are: 1) How do teachers interpret the concept"culture" in EFL-teaching?, 2) How do they specify the cultural objectives of their teaching? and 3) What do they do to attain these objectives? The thesis strives to reveal whether or not language teaching today can be describedas intercultural, in the sense that culture is taught with the aim of promotingintercultural understanding, tolerance and empathy. This abductive and largely exploratory study is placed within a constructivist and sociocultural framework,and is inspired by both phenomenography and hermeneutics. It takes its starting-point in language didactics, and can also be regarded as a contribution to teacher cognition research. The empirical data consists of verbatim transcribed interviews with 13 Finland-Swedish teachers of English at grades 7-9. The findings are presented according to three orientations and reviewed with reference to the 2004 Finnish National Framework Curriculum. Within the cognitive orientation, "culture" is perceived as factual knowledge, and the teaching of cultureis defined in terms of the transmission of knowledge, especially about Britain and the USA (Pedagogy of Information). Within the action-related orientation, "culture" is seen as skills of a social and socio-linguistic nature, andthe teaching aims at preparing the students for contacts with people from the target language areas (Pedagogy of Preparation). Within the affective orientation, which takes a more holistic approach, "culture" is seen as a bi-directional perspective. Students are encouraged to look at their own familiar culture from another perspective, and learn to empathise with and show respect for otherness in general, not just concerning representatives of English-speaking countries (Pedagogy of Encounter). Very few of the interviewed teachers represent the third approach, which is the one that can be characterised as truly intercultural. The study indicates that many teachers feel unsure about how to teach culture in an appropriate and up-to-date manner. This is attributed to, among other things, lack of teacher insights as well as lack of time and adequate material. The thesis ends with a set of recommendations as to how EFL could be developed ina more intercultural direction.

Makt som fullmakt : ett vårdvetenskapligt perspektiv

The aim of this study is to deepen understanding and knowledge of the concepts and phenomenaof power and authority from the standpoint of caring science. The overall questions of the research are: What is power? What is authority? How do power and authority manifest themselves in the context of caring? How are power and authorityto be understood as caring science concepts? The overall research inception is determination of the concepts in accordance with the hermeneutic approach based on Eriksson's model. The process of understanding follows Gadamer's (1999) hermeneutics. The thesis consists of three part studies. An ontological determinationof the character of the concepts is carried out where a hermeneutic interpretation is made of texts in the Old and the New Testaments in the Bible. The pragmatic features of the concepts are studied on the basis of nurses' written stories of authority and patients' written stories of power and authority. Beside the review of literature concerning power and authority a qualitative meta-analysis ofthe concept and the phenomenon of empowerment are made. The ontological determination shows how a human being's power is the authority to hold every living thing in trust, to tend and care life. To anyone using this authority, serving onesfellow-being is the purpose. Understanding the pragmatical features of authority in the stories of nurses reveals the life-giving nature of serving. By serving the nurse draws near her true mission as a human being, her authority to care for life with love. The service of the nurse and her ability to see and confirm the patient's otherness creates confidence and results in her authority. The nursedoes not abandon the responsibility associated with authority. When the patientdoes not entrust the nurse with authority the nurse employs her inherent authority to alleviate the suffering of the patient. The pragmatical features of the concepts of power and authority in the patients' stories indicate how the nurse puts her power to an improper use if she only makes use of the authority conferred by the hierarchy of power in the organisation, assumes all power and fails to use her faculty for loving care. Patients feel that their existence is threatened when the nurse tries to deprive them of their authority; they experience homelessness, despair and impotence. Patients' struggle for existence and absolute dignity deprives their health processes of strength, and their suffering becomes unbearable. Patients recognize their vitality when encountering a nurse who uses her authority to alleviate the patients' suffering. The power of compassion is strong, and the patients' dignity is recreated when they are able to serve fellowpatients or nurses. The purpose of human life can be understood as the use of one's own inner power and strength. Love.

Ruumiillista globalisaatiota

Kirjallisuusarvostelu

Hvordan øve hellige handlinger? : en profesjonsdidaktisk studie av øving av muntlige ferdigheter innenfor en norsk presteutdanning

How can the holy craft of liturgy be trained? A study of approaches to instruction in training oral skills within education of the Norwegian clergy The theme of this study is the competence of expression of clerics performing liturgies as part of their duties in the Norwegian Lutheran Church. The aim of the study is to find a teaching practice which can raise the competence in oral expression characteristic of the clergy profession. The teaching practice is explored and discussed within the context of the basic education of the clergy. The main thesis is formulated as a question: How can the holy craft of liturgy be trained? An underpinning of the study is that liturgical acts are holy, which gives these performances an aspect of otherness. This otherness constitutes a clear agreement between the students and the teacher, and between the professional and the employer. The pre-understanding of the researcher is that these liturgical oral acts are trainable, and that there is a need and a necessity to train in these skills. Three research questions are elaborated on in the explorative section of the study: • What is characteristic of a competence of expression connected to the profession? • How can this competence of expression connected to liturgical performance be developed? • What is the importance of this competence in the holy craft of liturgy for the development of a cohesive professional self-understanding? The study is based on a research and development project where the researcher as the teacher and students from one specific clergy education in Norway (MF) were the source of the empirical material. The empirical data came from practice with two external observers› logs on the coaching, video observations, of the teacher and the students› texts on the practice under study, which is liturgical performance. The researcher›s log and field notes also provide material for the analysis. This is a qualitative project and an arts education project carried out within an interpretative framework. The theoretical framework has three perspectives: a structural approach based on the system theory of Niklas Luhmann, an epistemological approach discussing forms of knowledge in practice or informing practice and an arts education approach. The results indicate that the competence in oral liturgical performance can be considered a trainable skill, and that this training can be understood as an arts education method of instruction based on meaningful communication, dramaturgical thinking and the development of authenticity. The main result from this study can be considered as articulating and sketching the contours of the field of knowledge where the students embody the meaning of the clergy profession ‒ and this articulation has an innovative potential as knowledge combining experience and theoretical understanding.

Lyssnande : en vårdvetenskaplig betraktelse

Denna vårdvetenskapliga studie har sökarljuset riktat mot lyssnande som något fundamentalt för människan. Studiens syfte är att utifrån forskarens traditionstillhörighet och en klart uttalad teorikärna, värdegrund, ontologisk grund samt en hermeneutisk ansats avtäcka nytt inseende om vad lyssnande är samt vad som är vårdande i lyssnande. Studiens avsikt är att bringa ontologisk klarhet, klargöra lyssnandets plats inom vårdvetenskaplig teoribildning samt bidra med bilder av det vårdande med relevans för klinisk praxis. Det hermeneutiska arbetssättet är en ständig rörelse mellan det enskilda och gemensamma. Den vårdvetenskapliga traditionens grundläggande ordning utgör siktet för kunskapssökandet samtidigt som det är gentemot den caritativa vårdteorin som nytt inseende ur historiska källor reflekteras för att lysa upp och synliggöra det evidenta och ursprungliga om lyssnande. Begreppsutredningen av lyssna som begrepp ger förståelse för begreppets historiska ursprung och dess starka band med begreppen lyss, lystra, lyda, följa, iaktta, se samt lust, begär, böjelse och glädje. Läsning och begrundan av filosoferna Bubers, Lévinas och författaren Dostojevskijs livsverk avtäcker vittnesbörd och stillbilder som tolkas för att synliggöra tolkningsantaganden om lyssnandets väsen och gestaltning. Jag har läst och begrundat texterna med öppenhet, lyhördhet och en kvardröjande hållning för att låta dem beröra, tilltala mig och framträda som något nytt. Ur de enskilda texterna avtäcks mönster av en gemensam inre ordning och en gemensam stillbild och tolkningsantaganden om lyssnande formas. När den gemensamma inre ordningen får sammanstråla med studiens vårdvetenskapliga grund synliggörs en urbild och teser om lyssnande samt det vårdande i lyssnande. Avtäckandet visar att lyssnande är en grundhållning till livet självt. Människan lyssnar till sitt innersta väsen för att tillägna sig en inre grundordning samt hörsamma sin tillhörighet i en mera allomfattande gemenskap till den skapande, den andre och det oändliga. I ljuset av kärlekens kraft och bejakandet av mänskligt lidande kan ensamhet och gemenskap sluta förbund med varandra i en mellanverklighet som bär oändlighetens och evighetens kännetecken, och som får toner av det heliga och eviga att ljuda i allt och alla i en närvaro här och nu. Lyssnande är en väsenshandling som uttalas genom en vårdande hållning att tjäna, offra och bära ansvar för den andre med medmänsklig barmhärtighet och medmänskligt medlidande. Band till den andre knyts genom den egna sårbarheten och genom att med ödmjukhet, äkthet och gästfrihet bjuda in och välkomna den andre i sin annanhet. Den vårdande gemenskapen skapar en rörelse som bär på en livsbringande kraft genom vilken människan uppnår frihet att varda, finna näring och försoning.

Etninen muukalaisuus kuningassaagoissa

Kirjallisuusarvostelu

Negotiating home and belonging. Young Kurds in Finland

This study looks at negotiation of belonging and understandings of home among a generation of young Kurdish adults who were born in Iraq, Iran, and Turkey and who reached adulthood in Finland. The young Kurds taking part in the study belong to the generation of migrants who moved to Finland in their childhood and early teenage years from the region of Kurdistan and elsewhere in the Middle East, then grew to adulthood in Finland. In theoretical terms, the study draws broadly from three approaches: transnationalism, intersectionality, and narrativity. Transnationalism refers to individuals’ cross-border ties and interaction extending beyond nationstates’ borders. Young people of migrant background, it has been suggested, are raised in a transnational space that entails cross-border contacts, ties, and visits to the societies of departure. How identities and feelings of belonging become formed in relation to the transnational space is approached with an intersectional frame, for examination of individuals’ positionings in terms of their intersecting attributes of gender, age/generation, and ethnicity, among others. Focus on the narrative approach allows untangling how individuals make sense of their place in the social world and how they narrate their belonging in terms of various mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, including institutional arrangements and discursive categorisation schemes. The empirical data for this qualitative study come from 25 semi-structured thematic interviews that were conducted with 23 young Kurdish adults living in Turku and Helsinki between 2009 and 2011. The interviewees were aged between 19 and 28 years at the time of interviewing. Interview themes involved topics such as school and working life, family relations and language-learning, political activism and citizenship, transnational ties and attachments, belonging and identification, and plans for the future and aspirations. Furthermore, data were collected from observations during political demonstrations and meetings, along with cultural get-togethers. The data were analysed via thematic analysis. The findings from the study suggest that young Kurds express a strong sense of ‘Kurdishness’ that is based partially on knowing the Kurdish language and is informed by a sense of cultural continuity in the diaspora setting. Collective Kurdish identity narratives, particularly related to the consciousness of being a marginalised ‘other’ in the context of the Middle East, are resonant in young interviewees’ narrations of ‘Kurdishness’. Thus, a sense of ‘Kurdishness’ is drawn from lived experiences indexed to a particular politico-historical context of the Kurdish diaspora movements but also from the current situation of Kurdish minorities in the Middle East. On the other hand, young Kurds construct a sense of belonging in terms of the discursive constructions of ‘Finnishness’ and ‘otherness’ in the Finnish context. The racialised boundaries of ‘Finnishness’ are echoed in young Kurds’ narrations and position them as the ‘other’ – namely, the ‘immigrant’, ‘refugee’, or ‘foreigner’ – on the basis of embodied signifiers (specifically, their darker complexions). This study also indicates that young Kurds navigate between gendered expectations and norms at home and outside the home environment. They negotiate their positionings through linguistic repertoires – for instance, through mastery of the Finnish language – and by adjusting their behaviour in light of the context. This suggests that young Kurds adopt various forms of agency to display and enact their belonging in a transnational diaspora space. Young Kurds’ narrations display both territorially-bounded and non-territorially-bounded elements with regard to the relationship between identity and locality. ‘Home’ is located in Finland, and the future and aspirations are planned in relation to it. In contrast, the region of Kurdistan is viewed as ‘homeland’ and as the place of origins and roots, where temporary stays and visits are a possibility. The emotional attachments are forged in relation to the country (Finland) and not so much relative to ‘Finnishness’, which the interviewees considered an exclusionary identity category. Furthermore, identification with one’s immediate place of residence (city) or, in some cases, with a religious identity as ‘Muslim’ provides a more flexible venue for identification than does identifying oneself with the (Finnish) nation.

Multicultural Belonging. Individuals across cultures, languages and places

The article-based doctoral dissertation deals with adult individuals in Western societies who were born into multilingual and multicultural families and have parents of different nationalities. The study’s participants grew up outside their parents’ countries of origin and relate to a multitude of bonds that link them across various cultures, languages and places. The study explores the social dimension of cultural belonging and examines diverse approaches that enable the participants to create notions of belonging and identification despite possessing at times contradictory transnational allegiances. The works offers new perspectives on transnational belonging and makes a timely contribution to discussions in the fields of cultural heritage studies, ethnology and transnational studies. The dissertation combines qualitative research methods with an insider perspective. The empirical material is based on semi-structured interviews with fifteen participants, among which are also the author’s siblings. The study addresses the relevance of the author’s personal situatedness and her multi-faceted roles as well as ethical concerns related to the methodological approach of insider research. The social dimension of cultural identities affect both the participants’ identification with their multiple attachments and language use in everyday life. The key research findings present interrelated discussions of the participants’ notion of being a mixture, the importance of family bonds and multilingualism, a specific mixed family lifestyle, the notion of non-belonging and the study participants’ sense of otherness as a means of creating communality with others. The study discusses the participants’ various life strategies of flexible relativising, juggling with multiple affiliations, the approach of “blending in” and their sense of ironic nation-ness for constructing a coherent sense of belonging. The author argues that multicultural belonging is inextricably connected to an association with multiple languages, cultures and places. Multicultural belonging is relational and depends on the context, social relationships and locations. The study proposes that multicultural belonging creates a tolerant understanding of membership and enables experiences of cosmopolitanism and selected notions of allegiance.