NW 20. Research in Innovative Intercultural Learning Environments

This workshop is aimed at reflecting on how interculturality can make an impact on emerging researchers experiences and hence the emerging research identity. For emerging researchers, it is a generic process to shift research environment or even go abroad to universities and conferences, and there participate in intercultural dialogues and bringing research communities together. In this process, being an emerging researcher, is linked with social networking issues and the emerging researcher will have to reflect on the role of culture, diversity and participation or the process of promoting inclusion. This developmental and identity creating process in fact equals the process of integrating the ‘big narrative’ – aka as the research community with the ‘small narrative’ – aka as the individual emergent researcher.

After this introduction, setting the scene, the content will reflect on the collaboration across institutional and disciplinary boundaries, which called this network to life. To think in a critical way and encapsulate the philosophical and political potential of intercultural and inclusive education was the original intention of the founders. Additionally, NW20 was, is and always will be, open to generate, formulate and bring into reality the emergent potentialities of education research and consequently NW20 has a strong innovative character. This means there is a special focus on 5 themes: Intercultural Education and Issues of Inclusion, Innovative Research Methodology, Cross Cultural Research and Intercultural learning, Intercultural Education and Learning Environment in Higher Education and Innovative Arts Based Educational Enquiry covered by the activities in the network. Find more information here.

The ambition and focus for this workshop is to present, reflect and have a conversation about the current issues at focus in the network and in the research community as well. These issues include questions concerning themes addressed during conferences, relations within and outside EERA, publication strategies, event management and activities beyond ECER and EERA. Four areas, stated below in the dots, have been identified as in particular need of being addressed and these will be presented related to specific core themes for the network like culture and interculturality, inclusion and exclusion, literacy and art: 

• Capacity building strategy
• Identity politics
• Visibility
• Social and institutional embededness

To reach the above-mentioned objectives, the workshop will be organized in two sections. First the concept of interculturality related to being an emergent researcher will be presented in a model and in a narrative perspective. Thereafter projects and former capacity building workshops will be introduced. Within this framework, ‘The Cultural Learning, Identity and European Project’ will be outlined as the first joint initiation of two networks of EERA (NW20 and NW17). This will be followed by examples of a Symposium and a Capacity Building Workshop presented in Copenhagen. Both events in a way stands as ground-braking in the EERA history.

In the second part of the workshop there will follow an interactive group work fostering inter-sectoral and partnership co-working to exemplify the intercultural and the inclusive perspective to reflect upon our role as engaged academics and to generate new understanding what an innovative network is and what it can be.