While globalisation has increased mobility and demographic developments, technological advancements bridge continents and creating arenas for cultural exchanges. Within the Finnish context, these developments have manifested growing demands for intercultural and linguistic competences as student cohorts and population has become increasingly diverse (e.g., Calenda et al., 2018; Hummelstedt-Djedou et al., 2018). This development can be also seen in the polarisation and populistic tendencies of public arenas and political interactions. Attempts to counter the precautions are slow, but our objectives, strategies, and expectations for higher education institutions call for cultural and linguistic competences understanding diversity.

Even though digital tools and solutions, including AI agents and automated translations, are beneficial in addressing various linguistic and even cultural challenges, there is an increased and almost overwhelming need for increased intercultural and linguistic awareness training in  education and professional development (e.g. Helm, 2015). In Finland, the educational field and profession – including pedagogical qualifications – remains protected with restricted access typically granted only through rigorous application processes that have historically required proficiency in Finnish or Swedish (Saarinen, 2014). While importance of national languages has not diminished, quite on the contrary, this creates a dichotomy and division that separates competences and interests while the previously emphasised competences are no longer sufficient in the contemporary environment. For an attempt to create a sustainable society and educational system, we need something more.

Contemporary discussions and developments increasingly emphasise the need for internationalisation and home internationalisation (e.g. Weimer et al., 2019). This has created a slow development in options and offerings that have emerged and are often emphasised and called for in strategy, mission and vision statements of e.g. universities. But still, too many in student populations as well as staff still mistakenly conflate international, intercultural and linguistic competences as something not important for teachers. At times, internationalisation is simply conflated with exchange programs. In a performance-oriented culture, directing our attention, energy, and focus, we need to explicitly address and almost enforce our values and attitudes in policy papers. Especially, if we wish to fill the task to educate students to serve their country and humanity at large as the universities act directs.

As of November 21^st, 2025, the StudyInfo.fi portal lists eight programmes found with search term ‘pedagogical studies’ in English and twenty-four in Finnish. However, these initiatives are often separate and disconnected from one another and especially disconnected from Finnish-medium programmes creating a dichotomy of competences. We talk about diversity but cannot facilitate a genuine interaction and exchange to address and educate competences related to it. This has also been the situation at our university, where long tradition in providing pedagogical training in Finnish exists, but only lately, broader attempts to do same in other linguistic arrangements have emerged. It is important to make a deliberate attempt to critically reflect and rethink, rearrange and even unlearn existing conflated meanings and interpretations relating linguistic and intercultural competences relating internationalisation (e.g. Aarnikoivu et al., 2025).

This study investigates the experiences and interpretations of students in a year-long pedagogical intermediate studies programme that provides teachers qualification in Finland, which utilises a mix of bilingual (Finnish and English), flexible language, and monolingual practices and interactions within one programme. This marks the first occasion on which English-medium instruction and interaction have been introduced to the programme at this level. By employing Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), aim is to understand the lived experiences and interpretations of students (Hartman & Squires, 2024). The findings will contribute to the educational design and development of this teacher education programme, as well as further elaborate adult pedagogical theory and practice.

Principal data for this study were collected through interviews with students, forming six Finnish-speaking and one English-speaking learning group. The students participating in the programme comprised a mix of degree students, university graduates with at least a master’s degree, and faculty members. Hartman and Squires (2024) purposefully frame IPA as a research tool that can inform educational design by bridging the gap between the perspectives of researchers acting as educational planners and other stakeholders, such as participating students. In this study, aim is to investigate the perspectives of the students participating in the programme. Rajasinghe et. al (2024) define a study as utilising innovative IPA when: (a) it uses a relatively large sample, (b) the process involves multiple researchers and analysts, (c) the researchers are part of the community and have direct experience of the phenomenon being investigated, and (d) additional analytical steps are included. In this study, the amount of principal data, consisting of six focus group interviews, is not exceptionally large for IPA. However, these are complemented with observations and notes collected throughout a yearlong teacher training programme, as well as development documents and meeting recordings preserved during the preparation and implementation of the programme. Within our framework, linguistic practices and experimentation contribute directly to the lived experiences of participants. Along the progression of the APO program, processing and critically reflecting these experiences, within facilitated reciprocal interaction underpinned by equitable opportunities (‘power with’), activities seek to create ‘fractures’ that foster an environment conducive to productive tensions that prompt critical reflection and reflexive action, seen as key elements in transformative learning. Targeting these, the experiences and interpretations were gathered from students in interview style focus group discussions. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. By employing the qualitative research approach of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), this study aims to explore these lived experiences and investigate how students make sense of them from their respective standpoints, thereby generating a range of participant interpretations. In accordance with IPA methodology, these interpretations are further analysed through a double hermeneutic process (e.g. Smith et al., 2009).

One key objective in the program is to develop autonomous and flexible educators who can operate in a rapidly changing world and in variety of interpersonal situations. Within the design, this is achieved with transformative process intertwined with critical reflection of lived experiences and theory driven facilitation. The underlying theoretical frameworks include transformative learning and critical reflection (Mezirow, 1991), as well as three intertwined principles: (1) appreciation of lived experience, (2) emphasis of reciprocal interaction, and (3) enactment for power with (e.g. Malinen & Piirainen, 2023). In the contemporary environment, particularly in interpersonal situations, intercultural and linguistic competences and skills are essential. Programme introduced bilingual and flexible language practices that students were nudged to participate, in informed but not always in purely self-directed and even voluntary way. By bringing together almost enforcing mixed groups, we were able to provide authentic lived experiences and interactions within an environment conducive to fruitful collaborations that students would not have selected autonomously. The value of lived experiences as transformative fractures challenged the original values and expectations of students, changing the original scripts and learning allowing emergence of unimagined outcomes. Nudges towards transformative fractures and experiences were needed and their benefit became visible for students and in hindsight were appreciated by students, as one participant mentioned: “If it would have been possible, I would have chosen a Finnish group. I thought that I would not benefit from an English-speaking mixed group but, in the end, I was lucky that I did not have a choice, my learning was much more profound and something that I did not see beforehand”. While we need to produce self-directed and adaptive expertise from higher education, we cannot rely just on students’ self-direction but need to steer and direct, nudge, them towards learning scripted in our curriculums.

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