Children and Interculturality in Education

118 Pages·2023·2.531 MB·English

by  Andreas Jacobsson, Heidi Layne, Fred Dervin

Children and Interculturality
in Education
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.
Andreas Jacobsson is Senior Lecturer in Child and Youth Studies at the
University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Heidi Layne is Lecturer of Sustainable and Global Education at the
University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
Fred Dervin is Professor of Multicultural Education at the University of
Helsinki, Finland.

Children and Interculturality
in Education
Andreas Jacobsson, Heidi Layne
and Fred Dervin
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
© 2023 Andreas Jacobsson, Heidi Layne and Fred Dervin
The right of Andreas Jacobsson, Heidi Layne and Fred Dervin
to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-24578-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-24579-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-27934-1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003279341
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of figures vi
Introduction: Why children and interculturality? 1
1 Every child is an interculturalist . . . the problem is:
How to remain one? 10
FRED DERVIN
2 Interculturality and children: A global film and media
perspective 51
ANDREAS JACOBSSON
3 Interculturality, race and inequality in early years 76
HEIDI LAYNE
Conclusion: Who are the real ‘interculturalists’? 101
Index 110
Figures
1.1 Knowledge of the World poster (China) 23
1.2 Representation of the Belt and Road Initiative 25
3.1 Examples of how pictures with Finnish words are used to
support children who are learning the Finnish language for
daily routines 83
3.2 Friendship tree (Ystävyyden puu). The word friend is
translated in the languages of the children. Name tags
with the names of the children are tagged to the tree for
grouping purposes 85
3.3 Examples of self-made clothes for baby dolls from fabric
donated by parents 86
3.4 Self-portrait of a young learner representing diversity 88
Introduction
Why children and interculturality?
‘It wasn’t this Mary!’
This is a book about children and interculturality. We find the topic intrigu-
ing for several different and intertwined reasons. Firstly, research on chil-
dren and interculturality has until recently not been a particularly prioritized
topic. With this book we thus provide a contribution to an important aspect
of interculturality that deserves more critical scholarly attention. Secondly,
children as a collective group have been, and to a certain extent still are (at
least in some parts of the world), regarded as qualitatively different from
adults. As such they are often deemed to be in need of special attention
and care, as developing biological beings, and finally in the process of
‘becoming’ adults. This difference motivates a search for new analytical
perspectives and new theoretical concepts to make sense of children and
interculturality. Thirdly, the three of us all share a longstanding interest in a
continuous critical rethinking and updating of the notion of interculturality
in education.
The book focuses on interculturality and children, while arguing that this
strand of research is beneficial to us all, ‘adults’ – in other words: while
examining interculturality and children, we, scholars and educators, are
made to do, undo and redo the notion for ourselves and others, learning
with children in the process. In Either/Or (1843), a book about the conflict
between aesthetic and ethics, the Danish philosopher S. Kierkegaard mar-
vels at ‘what native genius a small child often shows us a living image of
the larger situation’ (Kierkegaard, 2004, p. 32):
How true to form human nature runs! With I was greatly amused today
at little Ludvig. He sat in his little chair and looked about him with vis-
ible pleasure. Then the nanny, Mary, went through the room. ‘Mary.’
‘Yes, little Ludvig,’ she answered with her usual friendliness and came
over to him. He leaned his large head slightly to one side, fastened his
DOI: 10.4324/9781003279341-1
2 Introduction
immense eyes upon her with a touch of roguishness, and then said quite
phlegmatically: ‘Not this Mary, it was the other Mary.’ What do we
older people do? We cry out to the whole world, and when it makes a
friendly approach, we say: ‘It wasn’t this Mary.’
(Kierkegaard, 2004, p. 32)
Working on the highly complex and polysemic notion of interculturality,
we also often exclaim that ‘It wasn’t this Mary’ – referring to ‘our’ take on
interculturality as being different and often better than our neighbours’. As
such, interculturality often sounds like a magical word, brandished in differ-
ent national and global educational contexts as a ‘solution’ to multifaceted
societal problems (among others): ‘dictatorship’, inequality, nationalism,
racism, social justice, stereotyping – all these being often understood in
different ways around the world in both English and other languages. Using
the notion of interculturality globally is equivalent to the hesitation of the
blind monks in a Chinese saying trying to find out together what an elephant
is, touching separately different parts of the animal: is the elephant a rope,
a wall, a tree, a spear or a snake?
Commenting on what the blind monks are attempting to do one of Fred’s
students of intercultural communication education from China puts it nicely
in the following quote:
For most of us, our view on interculturality differs a lot. I also have
some conflicting ideas with my partner when we talk to each other. But
one thing is certain: we are all unable to understand comprehensively
the connotation of ‘interculturality’. All of us grew up in different envi-
ronments, so for example the meaning of culture (which is central in
inter-cultur-ality) in our hearts is not exactly the same. We are like
those blind people who are telling what culture is through what we see
and feel personally.
Another student uses an excerpt from the Zhuangzi (n.d.) to describe this
conundrum that we all face: 夏虫不可以语于冰者, 笃于时也, which can
translate as a summer insect cannot grasp the idea of ice since it knows noth-
ing beyond its season.
This is clearly evident in a call for journal articles that was launched by
colleagues from Europe while we were writing this book. Focusing on the
development of intercultural communicative competence (a central concept
in intercultural scholarship), language learning and children under the age
of 12 years old, the call is clearly anchored within very specific ideologies
of interculturality. What we mean with ideologies here is simple: ‘orders’ to
think and act in relation to interculturality in preferred ways from specific
Introduction 3
geo-economic-political contexts (see Dervin, 2022; Dervin & Jacobsson,
2022). As soon as one utters any definition, any objective and any expected
outcome for interculturality, one falls within the scope of ideology, since
such elements have to do with the way we have been made (‘ordered’?) to
think about self, other, groups, identities, inclusive/exclusive modi oper-
andi, right/wrong, good/bad, etc. In the call, references are made to clear
ideological takes on interculturality (among others): Byram’s model of
Intercultural Communicative Competence; The Reference Framework of
Competences for Democratic Culture: Descriptors for Younger Learners;
Intercultural Citizenship Education. These all derive from clear Eurocentric
positions.
Our book is critical of such one-sided ideologies from one corner of the
world. It represents a contribution to dispelling such obsessions in rela-
tion to children and to ‘interculturalize interculturality’ – a phrase Fred and
Andreas (Dervin & Jacobsson, 2022) have used to urge interculturalists
to see a bigger picture in the way they define, problematize and criticize
the notion of interculturality, looking beyond their own corner (see Aman,
2018; Dervin & R’boul, 2022).
In what follows we strongly refrain from the all-too-common practice
to impose interculturality from a specific perspective, may it be epistemo-
logical, methodological, or ideological perspectives – on children or anyone
else for the matter. We have no intention to propagate and/or preach for a
single ‘true’ definition or understanding of the notion, although we have our
own preferences and ideological takes on interculturality (see Dervin, 2016,
2022; Jacobsson, 2017; Layne & Lipponen, 2014; Layne, 2019). Rather
we propose that an open-minded, pluralistic and constantly changing con-
ceptualization of interculturality is necessary to be able to capture some
of the complexities of interculturality as an object of research and educa-
tion for and with children. This includes the obligation to activate a critical
awareness of our adult perspectives when we consider interculturality and
children. Being alert to what this might entail in different situations and
contexts, and in relation to research results and ideas that we are presenting
in the different chapters of the book, is also essential.
What is a child? Engaging with children in intercultural
research and education
Before we move further, it is necessary to clarify what we mean with the
term children – or at least give the reader an approximation of the age
groups that will be discussed in the book. Anyone can envision what a
child is to them, but to present a clear-cut definition of general relevance
is much harder to do. Children is a notoriously evasive concept capturing