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European Educational Research Association

EERA

Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Lisbon, 11-14 September 2002

Internationalisation of Vocational Education:
A Case of a Music Teacher Becoming Multicultural

Dr Johanna Lasonen

Institute for Educational Research

PO Box 35

FIN-40 014 UNIVERSITY OF JYVÄSKYLÄ

E-mail:

Fax: +358 14 2603 201

Tel: +358 14 2603 307

Paper Presentation for the

Vocational Education and Training Network

Lisbon, Portugal

11-13 September, 2002

Internationalisation of Vocational Education:
A Case of a Music Teacher Becoming Multicultural

by

Professor Johanna Lasonen, University of Jyväskylä

Abstract

Internationalisation of training and education may be contradictory concepts to intercultural education. The former supports globalisation of the economy and the latter explains intercultural communication and mutual learning.The paper will map the role of intercultural/multicultural competences in a vocational teacher’s work in the field of music. The informant of the case study is a music teacher. The method that was used is a thematic interview with a narrative and biographical perspective. The multicultural dimensions of the music teachers’ work is related to the field itself and to the teaching profession. Although internationalisation is a part of the objectives of official educational policy and vocational teachers’ expertise, their experiences may not be explicitly utilized in teaching and learning and in staff development.

Keywords: intercultural education, multicultural competence, learning environment

Introduction

Education operates in a globalising world. Educational establishments, teachers and students live daily in a society that discusses the consequences of a global economy, changing work, wars, offences against humanity, racism and environmental problems. Such issues are covered by development, peace, human rights, environmental and cultural education. The focus of my presentation is a cultural perspective on education, multicultural education, that is expected to draw its riches and contents from the ethnic, political, religions and linguistic diversity of human communities.

Multicultural competence is acquired largely outside official education in work- and hobby-related environments. It is true that internationalisation is a goal also of official educational policy because there is demand for multicultural skills in the economy and in trade and industry. Foreign student and teacher exchanges, instruction delivered in foreign languages and credit transfer across national boundaries organised as a part of regular educational provision are established but not unproblematic practices in university and polytechnic degree programmes. Internationalism and interculturalism are a part of the operations and activities of higher education establishments. But how far are experiences being consciously exploited when developing curricula? What are the paradigms that guide instruction? My presentation takes a look at the conceptual background to multicultural education and multicultural competence. I shall also present some findings of a preliminary study based on a case study.

Globalisation, Internationalisation and Europeanisation

The aim of the internationalisation of education is student and teacher and eventually workforce mobility; European educational and research programmes were created with a view to promoting efforts to achieve this aim. They may have been first launched as experiments but since then they have become established practice. Educational organisations and above all some of their members have enthusiastically applied the European Commission for funding for projects designed by them and carried out these projects. However, this is not yet enough to ensure that such European programmes and the projects that implement them will have long-term and permanent effects on education and workforce mobility. On the contrary, it seems that during their operation European projects are what may be called flashes in the pan of internationalisation and of exercises in cultural competence. When the project funding ends, so does the relevant activity within the educational organisations.

Vocational education and training has been a part of the process of creating the European Community since the 1950s, but the first political recommendations appeared and the systematic gathering of relevant data began only in the 1970s. The higher education and vocational education and training programmes, Erasmus and COMETT respectively, were launched in the 1980s. The PETRA programme focused on the transition from education to working life. The Maastricht Treaty of 1992 further expanded the role of vocational education and placed increased emphasis on its importance. Since then, transparency of vocational qualifications and its promotion have become increasingly important as a precondition of workforce mobility. The Leonardo programme established in 1995 has made transparency a central consideration.

Globalisation involves the national and international expansion and intensification of markets. It is manifested above all in the freer and more large-scale mobility of capital and in the economic, political and cultural changes that this triggers. Globalisation is not straightforward progress towards a specific goal; instead, it is a constantly changing, even contradictory force. In this way it gradually creates social reality of new kinds where both individuals and societies come under pressure and where new avenues of action open up. Internationalisation, and regionally, Europeanisation are associated with new independence for the individual and considering people as subjects instead of citizens.

Globalisation stresses flexibility, efficiency and versatility, but simultaneously it may aggravate social inequality and fragmentation. The pressures it generates can be met by emphasising competence across the whole range of educational provision and forms of knowledge production and application from basic education to research and product development of a high standard. By favouring the mobility and concentration of resources globalisation increases regional inequality, a trend that can be countered only through the creation of centres of competence based on local-level cooperation.

Internationalisation and multicultural cooperation are no new phenomena in national education systems. What is new is that in the last few decades, internationalisation has increasingly become an option available to everyone, including those teaching and studying in vocational education establishments. A regional programme for Europe, Leonardo da Vinci, a vocational training programme launched by the European Union, may be mentioned as an example of internationalisation in this area. Traditionally, vocational education provision has been local and national. This is because the contents of vocational competence are more mutable than, those of, for example, general education. The ways in which expert workers are trained tend to change in response to shifts in national occupational structures, technological development, changing natural resources and economic factors, and the current employment situation.

The factors that have led to the internationalisation of vocational education and training provision include both trends towards democracy and equality and globalisation itself, the internationalisation of the economy. There is an indirect link between globalisation and how the structure of vocational training and vocational qualification requirements have been developed at national level. Workforce preparation is shaped by a more and more international labour market, the exchange of consumer goods and services, and multinational commerce.

Globalisation is distinguished from internationalisation, which covers interdependence between countries that is guided by national policies. Internationalisation is both a process parallel to globalisation and, on the other hand, a step towards it. As for Europeanisation, it can be considered an intermediate form of mutual economic dependence and globalisation that is in the process of freeing itself from the national foundations.

Internationalisation and the related concepts seem to be political and policy concepts. They do not necessarily include any consideration of the effects of internationalisation on curriculum development or learning outcomes, discussed more often under such headings as multicultural and intercultural education. The literature on internationalisation and that on multicultural/intercultural education do not seem to have many links. The aim of publications on multicultural or intercultural education is to make visible the effects of interaction across cultural boundaries.

Multicultural Education

The concept multicultural education covers a way of thinking, a philosophical perspective, a set of decision-making criteria and a value orientation. Its aim is to give people frames of reference for acting in intercultural situations and for meeting and serving diverse citizens and fellow workers. My conceptual explication of multicultural education reflects a multidisciplinary - anthropological, psychological, sociological and educational - approach. Multicultural education involves questions linked with and reflections on conceptions of the human being and knowledge, curricula, teaching, learning, administration and learning environments. Education includes beliefs and explanations that reveal how far ethnic diversity is being valued. An education that sees the surrounding diversity in a positive light shapes the experiences, life styles and identity of individuals and groups towards an acceptance of a multicultural world.

Culture is a multidimensional concept, and education has been given the task of transferring the cultural heritage. We speak about dominant and subcultures and macro- and microcultures. Teachers active in formal education find themselves obliged to ask whose knowledge, values and tradition are being passed on to increasingly diverse students. Educational establishments, homes, and teachers and students as individuals represent, in terms of their views of life, values, norms and communication methods, different cultures. Cultures play a crucial role in the formation and dynamic development of individual and group identities.

Depending on its particular manifestations and varying background contexts, multicultural education is defined in a variety of ways. The goals of international education are based on the UN Declaration of Human Rights and on recommendations laid down in other official documents, binding also on Finland. These aims, which stress the peaceful coexistence of nations, human rights, equality, and foreign language studies have been a part of our educational objectives since after the Second World War in the 1940s. Global education has been associated with the implementation of world citizenship programmes. Global education emphasises knowledge, skills, attitudes and responsibilities linked with perceiving and understanding the world as a single interconnected entity. Multicultural education and intercultural education have found increasing use in schools, colleges, polytechnics and universities as we have become aware of the diversity of student and work communities.

The concept of multiculturalism has been linked with what is known as the two-dimensional model of the acculturation process. Acculturation theory that emphasises multiculturalism argues that both minority and majority cultures learn from each other. Ethnic minorities preserve their traditional ways while simultaneously adapting themselves to the majority society. The majority culture, too, changes and adapts to diversity. (Laroche et al., 1998.) Intercultural education is of more recent origin as a concept, emphasising interaction between different people. Adopted in Finnish as a loan word, interculturalism is intended to stress the intersubjective nature of knowledge or action (Räsänen, 2002).

Multicultural education can be considered also as an educational reform movement and process where the aim is to change the structure of the educational system. In this context, the concept of multiculturalism brings to the fore the revision and reform not only of structural factors but also of process-like and content- and value-related components of education so as to make them reflect cultural, ethnic, racial and linguistic diversity. Kalantzis and Cope (1999) have pointed out that multiculturalism has the potential to change the environment of education as a whole, educational policy, modes of interaction in the classroom, learning materials and the allocation of resources, formal and informal learning, the assessment system, educational guidance, and school rules.

An emphasis on multiculturalism in education and on making education multicultural first surfaced in Finland in the 1990s, but international education had become a focus considerably earlier. Other countries have been implementing multicultural education as a conscious policy much longer. In the USA, abundant publication on the subject began as early as at the turn of the 1970s. The topic was discussed also in Canada, the UK and Australia. The most well-known conceptualisers of multicultural education included James Banks (USA), James Lynch (UK) and Brian Bullivant (Australia). These countries shared an experience of waves of immigrants and the resulting wide range of vernaculars, religions and different customs to be met in workplaces, schools and streets. It has been another thing how far teacher education, teaching practices and curricula have been reformed with a view to developing intercultural understanding. In Finland the University of Oulu established in 1994 a special teacher education programme with a focus on familiarity with multiculturalism and internationalism and on the ethics of education, Master of Education International Programme. Its theoretical foundations are grounded on an “intercultural” pedagogy (Räsänen, 2002).

The purpose of multicultural education is to prepare students to adapt to, live, and work in multicultural work communities and in a multicultural society. Education with the aim of promoting intercultural understanding, intercultural education, has the additional goal of training people to act, adopting a cooperative approach, as mediators and interpreters between different cultures.

The Ethical Dimension of the Teacher’s Work

Definitions of teaching have varied from one period of history to another. The teacher’s work has been considered as an art, a skill, an applied science and an ethical profession (e.g. Zeichner, 1983; Tom, 1984). The teacher’s task has been characterised not only as one of transferring culture but also as one of fostering and evaluating it. How far is a teacher able to question prevailing structures of education if a young person’s growth and the world situation call for it? Niemi (1998) and Räsänen (2000) have presented the following arguments to justify a conception of the teacher’s work as essentially an ethical activity:

  • Education and upbringing are value-based activities where the goal is the preservation and promotion of such good things as civilisation, development and growth.
  • These activities are aimed at and find a partner in the child and the young person, whose rights and choices adults are responsible for.
  • The teacher’s work has a societal impact. Teachers educate the next generation.

Giroux (1985) calls a teacher who is capable of making their students see and understand the world and its people from a broad and unprejudiced perspective and who is aware of the ideological background factors and political interests that shape their work a transformative intellectual. An awareness of power and political structures is a necessary precondition for a reorganisation of knowledge and ideas (cf. Freire, 1972). Räsänen (2002) crystallises the following facets of the teacher’s work as the core of the teacher’s professional ethics: the basic task, values and the ethical principles that guide their work, responsibility to the different parties, and human rights documents. The central considerations involved in the teacher’s work include also the pedagogical and learning-related points departure of their instructional activities.

Multicultural Competence

Factors that have contributed to a conscious interest in cultural competence include today’s increasingly internationalised and multicultural work and learning environments. European and national educational programmes intended to promote international cooperation and mobility have considerably expanded the volume of student and teacher exchange and substantially increased the number of multinational cooperative projects between educational establishments. New contexts make understanding diversity, interaction skills and conflict resolution and problem-solving skills increasingly important. Nearly without exception, the starting point is expertise in a particular field or in a specific competence area. Because of this, it is probably impossible to consider cultural competence as something separate from a person’s other occupational knowledge and skills. It is a part of their identity and overall competence.

When talking about overall competence, competencies are considered under the concepts of key/core competences/qualifications. The discussions on key qualifications that began in the 1970s concentrated on the renewal of occupational qualifications and on new types of knowledge and competence structure. There was as yet no emphasis on the transparency of qualifications across national boundaries or on cultural competence.

In educational policy, interpretations of key qualifications or of similar parallel concepts were defined more closely and the terms used to refer to them became established in the 1980s and 1990s. According to Kämäräinen (2002), terms and how they were used varied in different linguistic areas and in the educational cultures of different countries, but certain common denominators were highlighted everywhere. It was emphasised that rapid changes in working life meant that occupational qualifications must be renewed on a continuous basis. Reforms of initial, further and advanced vocational education and training affected the educational system environment, personnel policies of work organisations, and individual learning histories. Competence based on general and shared skills, conceptually explicated in terms of key qualifications, creates preconditions for occupational renewal, reorientation, upgrading and mobility. These discussions and studies made no explicit mention of cultural competence as an aspect of overall competence. According to Ruohotie (1999), general working-life qualifications cover

•life management skills (learning to learn, the ability to organise and manage one’s time, personal strengths, problem-solving skills and analytic skills);

•communication skills (interaction skills, listening skills, oral communication skills, written communication skills);

•managing people and tasks (coordination skills, decision-making skills, management skills, conflict management, planning and organisation skills);

•boosting innovation and changes (perceptive skills, creativity, innovativeness and openness to change, an ability to take risks and an ability to create visions.

Ruohotie’s accounts of general working-life qualifications and competencies foreground very general skills related to life management that go back to Anglo-American literature. Each category includes competencies that would easily accommodate cultural competence. When cultural competence is described more specifically as occupational core competence, it may be represented in terms of occupational profiles and occupational skills. The effectiveness of multicultural cooperation depends on professional expertise and on adaptation and interaction skills. It may be assumed that one acquires an cultural competence as an intercultural awareness develops into the understanding and the knowledge and skills needed to collaborate smoothly, in a varied range of environments, with diverse people.