In the name of interculturality: on colonial legacies in intercultural education

Abstract

This essay scrutinises the ways in which students who have completed a university course on interculturality distinguish between sameness and otherness in attempts to integrate, relate to, and build a bridge to those deemed culturally different. It makes use of interviews to analyse the factors that shape the interpretation of otherness and difference in the students' definitions of interculturality, as well as their statements about the relationships between us and them, and descriptions of instances of learning and teaching that have taken place between parties in different parts of the world. Theoretically, the essay is based on a postcolonial framework, highlighting the continuing influence of colonialism and Eurocentric ways of reasoning inside as well as outside the classroom in today's society. One of the main conclusions of the essay is that in the process of transferring knowledge, there is a risk that the history of modern Europe will be sanctioned as the historical trajectory for the rest of the world to follow, with the accompanying supposition that this can only be made possible by extending a helping hand to the Other.

Linear transmission of “whiteness”: A textual analysis of a year 9 “timeline”

“…Presented as 'specialised knowledge', the 'timeline' (see Figure 1. Below), bears a responsibility as the enacted curriculum for the prescription it represents and therefore a responsibility to recognise what is the "learner's entitlement to knowledge" (Young 2013, p. 101), involving more than one singular culture (Aman, 2015). Aligning with the Year 9 History Curriculum (AC) (Table 1 above), the 'timeline', constructs a historical narrative of Australia's early colonial beginnings.…”

Internationalisation of higher education: A critical analysis of the intercultural dimension of a visiting scholar programme

“…Their point is that in intercultural research, representation (of the contrasting cultural practices) becomes relatively less important, while sensibility to different ontological and epistemological positions becomes more important. Aman (2014Aman ( , 2017 similarly argues that intercultural education is limited by its lack of attention to the geopolitics of knowledge and that those engaged in intercultural learning need to ask critical questions about where knowledge is produced in the world and what forms of epistemology are privileged in intercultural education. Aman goes further, to construct difference not as cultural difference, but as colonial difference, in recognition of the colonial foundation of Euro-Western thinking that informs how interculturalism is conceptualised in education.…”

Intercultural education in transition: Nordic perspectives

“…Some Nordic research has pushed for postcolonial analysis in intercultural education (Aman, 2015) and for questioning the idea of Nordic exceptionalism (Loftsdóttir & Jensen, 2012. Postcolonial perspectives in education investigates how colonial ventures have shaped the worldviews in the Nordic countries, constructing hierarchies between people and a notion of colonial perspectives as considered important knowledge about the world.…”