This paper looks at 2010-11 research conducted in thirteen European Union countries via  on-site interviews of twenty one researchers/professors and ten statisticians. It focuses not only on the perspective of statisticians and issues of classification and Europeanization of data collection processes and content but also on intercultural education researcher / professor perspectives on the meanings of interculturalism within the problematic area of “social data.”  These data are operationalized under the categories of race and/or ethnicity, social class and gender, and are investigated within the context of data provided (or not) by Eurostat and by individual country-specific national statistical institutes (NSIs).  There are competing notions of the current “social model” of the EU (Rasmussen et al., 2009);  these notions tend to contrast researcher with statistician perceptions. Within the researchers are competing notions about the conceptualizations and validity of categories like race and ethnicity (Morning, 2008) as well as the research and societal value of such information conveyed within a network society (Stoer and Magalhães, 2009).  Getting important social data to bolster critical research is tied into European Union and Canadian national contexts. This type of research is essential for a more nuanced understanding of teacher education pedagogy in which diversity awareness and commitment thereto can effectively take place.

Using a critical variant of the grounded theory approach (Weiss, Fine & Dimitriadis, 2009) and a social reconstructionist  / critical multicultural framework (Sleeter and Grant, 2009), this paper focuses on intercultural conceptualizations in the context of  contested notions of social class and gender, but primarily on the problematic categories of race and ethnicity, and how these notions are filtered through national as well as transnational perceptions (Rizvi, 2011) of the utility and legitimacy of data collected and/or organized at the national and European level.  Luciak (2004) reports on the overall problem of a lack of comparable ethnic data, in the (15 member, 2004) European Union, of “different categorizations of groups used in the data collections, differences regarding the availability of differentiated data” (p.v).  He thus calls for “comprehensive and comparable data on the educational situation of migrants and ethnic minorities at the national as well as at the EU level” (p.126). Rather than focusing (as does Luciak, 2004) on elementary, secondary, or tertiary education data, this current research looks at some of the general dynamics around (input and output) harmonization of data not only within national European statistical institutes but also within Eurostat, and at an overall group of conceptual as well as communication issues. This paper thus will shed light on seldom studied groups – researchers and statisticians in their construction of meaning about the categories of race and ethnicity, about concepts like interculturalism and multiculturalism, and the complexities of European and Canadian contexts.

Association of Canadian Deans of Education (2010). Accord on indigenous education. Retrieved Nov. 11, 2011 at http://www.csse-scee.ca/acde/accords . Horst, C. & Pihl, J. (2010). Comparative perspectives on education in the multicultural Nordic countries. Intercultural Education, 21(2), 99-105. Luciak, M. (2004). Migrants, minorities and education: Documenting discrimination and integration in 15 member states of the European Union. Luxembourg: Office for the Publications of the European Communities. Lundy, J. (2005). Exploring race, class and gender relations in pre-service teacher education: Relevant uses of computer technology. Journal of Preservice Education. Retrieved Nov. 11, 2011 at: http://www.nipissingu.ca/jpe/Issues/John_Lundy.pdf (8 pp). Morning, A. (2008). Ethnic classification in global perspective: A cross-national survey of the 2000 census round. Population Research and Policy Review, 27(2), 239–272. Rasmussen, P., Lynch, K., Brine, J., Boyadjieva, P., Peters, M. & Sünker, H. (2009). Education, equality and the European social model. In R. Dale & S. Robertson (Eds.), Globalization and Europeanization in Education, pp. 159-177. Oxford, United Kingdom: Symposium Books. Rizvi, F. (2011). Experiences of cultural diversity in the context of an emergent transnationalism. European Educational Research Journal, 10 (2), 180-188. Sleeter, C. & Grant, C. (2009). Making choices for multicultural education: Five approaches to race, class and gender (6th edition). Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons. Statistics Canada. (April 4, 2006). Study: The high educational aspirations of visible-minority youth. The Daily. Retrieved Nov. 11, 2011 at http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/060404/dq060404b-eng.htm . Stoer, S. & Magalhães, A. (2009). Education, knowledge and the network society. In R. Dale & S. Robertson (Eds.), Globalization and Europeanization in Education (pp. 45-63). Oxford, United Kingdom: Symposium Books. Weis, L., Fine, M. & Dimitriadis, G. (2009). A critical theory of method in shifting times. In M. Apple, W. Au & L. Gandin (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Education (pp. 437-448). London: Routledge.