Data and Methods: A Conceptual Approach to Intercultural Dialogue

Abstract

In this chapter, we discuss the constructivist perspective on concepts and explain how we utilize this in our analysis of concepts used by the Council of Europe and the European Union in their education policy documents. In this perspective, political language and administrative documents not only describe the reality of administrated issues but also participate in their construction and meaning-making. The authors emphasize the performativity of language and discuss its significance for political rhetoric. Besides the theoretical and methodological frameworks, we describe the data and elaborate on the genre of education policy documents. We also provide an overview of the development, contents, and goals of European education policies in general and discuss their challenges as 'soft law' instruments based on non-enforceable recommendations and incentives.

Dialogue on Ethics, Ethics of Dialogue: Microgenetic Analysis of Students’ Moral Thinking

“…These emotions are said to be linked to moral development because they are evidence to, and reflective of, an individual's set of moral values; moral values which must have undergone beforehand a process of internalization. The values we focus on are the three main values at the heart of DIALLS: tolerance, empathy, and inclusion (Lähdesmäki et al 2020;Chapter 4this volume). Empathy, inclusion and tolerance are not emotions, but are studied especially within the Social Domain Theory perspective, according to which children pay attention to different variables when judging or evaluating exclusion.…”

“…The detailed analysis of the hic et nunc processes of co-elaboration of students' ideas on moral issues in specific dialogues can provide situated accounts of their moral thinking and pave the way for the study of its development across longer timescales. Within the framework of the DIALLS project, we take as reference points students' understandings ("conceptions") of three ethical concepts: tolerance, empathy and inclusion (Lähdesmäki et al 2020). However, given that their definitions are largely stipulative, in official EU texts, understanding how they are in play in real interactions requires significant work in order to render them operational.…”

Intercultural Education for the Twenty-First Century: A Comparative Review of Research

“…Moreover, cultures are perceived as 'containers' and intercultural dialogue "as the interaction of stable and cohesive units which mutually accept and appreciate one another but which remain closed to mutual influences" (Gropas and Triandafyllidou 2011, 413). Therefore, a focus on the 'etic' aspects of culture as implied in the general definitions of intercultural dialogue often found in European policy documents (Lähdesmäki et al 2020) weakens, if not cancels, the 'inter' (Portera 2008) dynamics of dialogue and their implied transition of knowledge and learning as part of an emic negotiation (Allmen 2011).…”

“…At the same time, intercultural competence perceived as sensitivity and adaptability to different cultural contexts may be enhanced through people's engagement in dialogue and learning with and from each other. The three interrelated concepts, namely dialogue, learning and competence are important pillars of intercultural education, as policy documentation analysis shows (Lähdesmäki et al 2020; see also Chapter 4 in this volume). However, it is not yet clear how the three concepts have thus far been operationalized and assessed by empirical educational studies.…”

Identifying space for mainstreaming multilingual pedagogies in European initial teacher education policies

“…Therefore, educators meet children and youth who make creative use of increasingly complex and fluid linguistic repertoires as they navigate through the various environments of their everyday lives (Crul, 2016; De Backer et al, 2019; Sierens and Van Avermaet, 2017; Spotti and Kroon, 2017). European key policy documents state that education plays a central role in educating the youth and contributing to sustainable social cohesion (Lähdesmäki et al,2020). There is strong evidence that the dominant cause of underachievement in school is the interaction of three factors: families’ socio-economic status; cultural capital; and language (Beacco et al, 2016).…”