INTERNATIONAL AND MULTICULTURAL COMPETENCE (1 CR)

COMPETENCE GOAL 

 

15. You are familiar with the internationalisation strategies and practises of higher education. 

 

ASSESSMENT CRITERIA 

15a) You examine internationalization practices in higher education. 

 

We have all received a nice dose of this topic in practice during the past 6 months here at OAMK. We also already briefly touched this topic when we discussed Eco-social culture at the end of November webinar. Below the  emphasis will be on internationalisation strategies and practises in higher education and how this impacts us teachers.

World is obviously changing and globalising very rapidly. In a global market place it is not only goods that move from one country to another but also people. There is also an acute shortage of workers in some sectors of the industry in Finland and work-based immigration seems to be one possible solution to this. One of the students in the class had just been to Vietnam recruiting nursing students and morning headlines suggested that new possible steel plan would have mainly foreign workers if going ahead. Also geo-political situation is moving people. In my little hometown, that has suffered from a negative population growth for as long as I remember, has had a inflow of nearly 350 women and children over the past year (from Ukraine). So, our societies are changing and this will have an impact in the classroom also.

Like we discussed in November, globalisation also makes the challenges facing us all the time greater and one can argue that they can only be solved by working together. Internationalisation is needed for this too.

Finland wishes to be an active participant in global community by taking responsibility and offering expertise. Finnish Ministry of Education has introduced policies to promote internationalisation in Finnish higher education and research. In a publication Better together for a better world (Min of Ed. & Culture, 2018) the seven main points are:



  1. Greater international attraction through focusing on the latest science and leading edge research.
  2. Finland is the home of high-quality education.
  3. Momentum for sharing Finnish knowledge, expertise and educational innovations.
  4. A warm welcome to Finland.
  5. The Finnish message is heard internationally.
  6. Team Finland knowledge network.
  7. Greater involvement of Finnish experts living abroad and alumni educated in Finland.

 

 


In addition to this roadmap, the Ministry of Education and Culture (OKM) has also required the higher education institutions to draw up action plans for internationalisation already by the year 2020. 

 

Internationalisation of teaching for the past 10 years

So, how has Internationalisation materialized in higher education over the past 10 years:

 


There has been mobility of both staff and students internationally to create a mutual influence. This has resulted in knowledge transfer and co-operation in projects and this has also lead substance teaching and research to become more international. Also, national and supranational policies regarding international dimension of higher education have been developed.

What does the future look like?

What is clear from the education point of view is that there is

  •         Increasing demand for education around the world
  •         Shortage of teachers that are well prepared to face the international and global challenges at all institutional levels
  •         How to find pedagogical approaches to address the growing sociocultural complexity in the field of education?

(Source: Parmigiani, D. (2018)

 

Impact on teachers

So how will this impact us teachers?  In his research paper, Dr Parmigiani suggests that

“New teachers should be able to face complex environments, manage several situations and experience different educational concepts.”

Research suggests that what we also need is multicultural competence and teachers need to be better prepared to teach in culturally diverse classrooms (Hachfeld et al. 2015; Hollins & Guzman, 2005; Vedder et al. 2006.)

In addition to multicultural competence, Dr. Parmigiani suggests we also need intercultural teaching. He argues that this is not so much as whether you have foreign students in the classroom or not, but that teachers should be able to create learning environments where students need to consider multiple points of view while developing their learning.

We discussed this last point with students and there was unanimously positive response to this idea. It was felt that in many subjects critical thinking and creativity was called upon and this was not possible to achieve with the old teaching methods and learning environments.

 

Conclusion

From Dr. Parmigiani’s lecture, it was clear that internationalization of pre- and service teachers is growing in importance as we are living in a more and more global world. He suggested internationalization offers benefits to teachers on two levels:

·       on a personal level this leads into “broadened worldview and knowledge of a foreign education system and culture” and

·       on a professional level  this offers “reflection on  professional skills and new instructional methods and approaches” (Parmigiani et all, 2021b).

 

In conclusion, a multiculturally competent teacher is:

 


 

Sources:

Better together for a better World 2018 - Finland Toolbox

Kehm, B.M., & Teichler, U. (2007). Research on internationalisation in higher education. Journal of Studies in International Education, 2 (3-4), 260-273.

Parmigiani, D. (2018). Intercultural teaching for international teachers. In M. Ranieri, L. Menichetti, M. Kaschny Borges (EdS), Teacher Education & Training and ICT between Europe and Latin America (p. 27-37). Roma: Aracne.

Parmigiani, D., Maraglian,o A., Silvaggio, C., Molinari, A. (2021). Teacher educators and student teachers’ international experiences. Mentoring changes, challenges and opportunities. In L. Shagrir and S. Bar-Tal, Exploring Professional Development Opportunities for Teacher Educators. Promoting Faculty-Student Partnerships (pp. 143-163). Routledge.

Villegas, A. & Lucas, T. (2002). Preparing culturally responsive teachers. Journal of Teacher Education, 53(1), 20–32. doi:10.1177/0022487102053001003.

 

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