The topic of my doctoral thesis is teacher’s intercultural learning and intercultural competences. My main research questions are how do teachers describe their intercultural learning processes and what kind of life experiences are important for teachers’ intercultural learning. Investigating teachers’ intercultural learning processes is important if we aim at educating teachers who would have the willingness and competences to work and act in a globalised world. Studies on intercultural learning have often focused on experiences of visiting, living and working in a foreign country or on the impact of short term educational interventions (e.g. Bennett, 1993; Landis & Bennett, 2004; Munro 2007; Taylor, 1994). My study takes a different stance, as it describes teacher’s intercultural learning as a lifelong process, which does not necessarily start during a stay in a foreign culture or during teacher training: teachers' attitudes towards diversity, their awareness of cultural, global and societal issues as well as their skills to encounter diversity may have already started to develop in childhood. I further argue that this process can be very diverse depending on the person’s background and experiences.
There is relatively little research on intercultural learning processes and their relation to various learning theories. Taylor (1994) has located intercultural learning within the framework of transformative learning theory (Mezirow, 1991, 2000). I have argued (Jokikokko, 2009) that while transformative learning theory offers one perspective through which to study intercultural learning, it does not adequately take into account the emotional and social characteristics of reflection and transformation (also Taylor, 2007). I have also concluded that intercultural learning does not necessarily require the disorienting dilemma or major life change as assumed in transformative theory but it may also occur gradually through many different, sometimes ordinary everyday life experiences cumulatively (Jokikokko 2009).
I have used the concept of intercultural competence (see Jokikokko, 2005; Kealey, 1992; Lustig & Koester, 1996; Talib, 2005) to describe the outcomes of intercultural learning. However, intercultural competence should be considered a process rather than an outcome; one is never fully interculturally competent. I understand cultural diversity broadly, including not only ethnic but also e.g. social, geopolitical, linguistic, gender/sexual and religious differences. From that perspective all teachers need intercultural competences. Although in my earlier studies (Jokikokko, 2005) I have divided intercultural competence into certain dimensions (knowledge/awareness, skills, action, attitudes), I have also argued that intercultural competence is most of all an ethical philosophy which as its best can guide our thinking and action.
In addition to intercultural learning and intercultural competences the third important theoretical framework in my study is critical pedagogy (e.g. Freire, 1972; McLaren, 2001; Nieto, 2005; Räsänen, 2007). The theorists of critical pedagogy argue that it is not enough for an interculturally competent person and a teacher to be technically skillful in intercultural encounters but the commitment to promoting equity and acting against racism should be seen as essential characters of intercultural competence.
