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Purpose: Meeting "others," especially so-called "local" students, is usually seen as a sign of success for intercultural learning and integration in research on study abroad and internationalization of higher education. Previous studies have focused on how international students themselves describe their (mis-)encounters. In this article, the authors consider lecturers' voices about this phenomenon. Lecturers have an influence on the students' experiences since they spend a lot of time together in and outside class. Design/Approach/Methods: Using a thematic analysis and social network analysis of interview data with lecturers, and a critical perspective toward the dichotomy of "local" versus "international" students, a university in Finland, a popular destination thanks to its positive image in global education, serves as a case study. Findings: The article identifies privileges, limits, and (missed) opportunities of encounters, as shared by the lecturers in focus group discussions. Furthermore, the lecturers created hierarchies in the way they described the encounters between different kinds of students. Some signs of pluralizing both local and international students were also found in some lecturers' discourses. Originality/Value: The article ends with recommendations for institutions regarding the lecturers' problematic role of gatekeepers in student encounters and the limiting categories used in institutions of higher education to refer to students.

Internationalization at home (IaH) policies in higher education institutions (HEIs) are rarely negotiated with and by students. Therefore, students' takes on such policies could be missed opportunities for HEIs. This qualitative study investigates international and local students' negotiations and meaning-making of integration and IaH as stated by institutional policies. The data consist of online forum entries and reports from small group discussions between 40 students in English medium master's programs in Finland (Europe). The key concepts of ideology and imaginary serve as entries into data analysis, which consists of enunciative discourse analysis. The findings indicate a perceived hierarchy of mutual but not equal integration between university staff, local and international students. Furthermore, the categories of 'international as guests' and 'local students as hosts' are challenged by the participants. Local students are considered as 'guests with more privilege' and international students as 'guests with less opportunities'. The responsibility to achieve IaH goals is perceived to be unequally distributed among these actors. Practical implications include reconsidering the categories of 'international' and 'local' students and how IaH policies could share the responsibilities to achieve their goals more equally among students and staff.

Meeting others abroad and/or online is considered important in the broad field of intercultural communication education (amongst others: international education, minority and migrant education, but also teacher education, language education) to test out one's learning about interculturality. For several weeks, a group of university students from China and a group of local and international students studying at a Finnish university met regularly online to talk about global educational issues. Using a specific lens of interculturality, which focuses on the discursive co-construction of identities, we explore their initial interactions, how they deal with the uncertainty and potential awkwardness of their very first encounters, before they start working on their educational tasks. Based on the students' self-disclosure (practices, thoughts, identity construction), and adopting a dialogical discourse analysis, the authors examine their co-construction of interculturality. The results show that the students try to facilitate interculturality while promoting it together more or less successfully. Reasons are discussed. The authors argue that research on the underexplored case of online initial interactions, which represent crucial moments in establishing and negotiating interculturality, could provide important research and pedagogical input for intercultural telecollaboration.

The popularity of the idea of the intercultural in different parts of the world means that there are many differing meanings and ways in which the notion is understood, represented, expressed and used. In contrast to this polysemy, democracy often appears on the surface to be understood through universalist and/or absolutist conceptualisations. Combining the intercultural and democracy thus requires problematization. In this article we use The Council of Europe's Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (2018a, 2018b, 2018c), a document that will have a nonnegligible influence on education in Europe and the rest of the world, as an example showing how the notion of the intercultural is constructed. In order to do so, we use a form of intertextuality to analyze the Framework, focusing on three key instances found in the document: identity, the political, and intercultural competence. Some of the ideologies within the Framework clearly point to Eurocentric discourses and a stigmatization of the Other. Also, the way in which the political is sanitized can engender a language of depoliticization and obedience. As a result, we propose critical interculturality as a way to move beyond culturalist self-centered notions of the intercultural, arguing that the political and the social cannot be separated from the intercultural when discussing democracy.

Like many institutions around the world, Chinese universities have established systems of 'local student buddies' to ensure international students' smooth transition to university life in China. This paper examines this underexplored form of internationalization-at-home by focusing on the experiences of Chinese buddies, who host international students at a 4 week summer school. Focus groups were led with 10 buddies before and after the summer school. Focusing on the key concepts of hospitality and interculturality, and using enunciative pragmatics, the paper examines the kind of interculturality taking place between the buddies and the international students.

Intercultural communication education (ICE) is occurring in different departments and faculties of higher education globally. Yet, there is a lack of research on how this complex field is perceived by both teachers and students. The same goes for the perceptions of the ideal teacher of the subject. This article proposes to fill these gaps by problematizing current discussions about ICE. First, the article presents an overview of the field and shows how polysemic, ideologically and politically oriented ICE is. Based on focus groups with Chinese students of Business English at a Chinese university, this case study examines how they discuss, construct and perceive, on the one hand, the idea of intercultural communication as a subject, and on the other, those who teach it. ICE is multifaceted in Chinese higher education and we do not claim to generalize for the field as a whole in this paper. Based on a dialogical approach to students' discourses, the results show that they do not seem to have a uniform and coherent way of representing "intercultural communication." As far as teachers of the subject are concerned, native/non-native and Chinese/non-Chinese dichotomies seem to dominate. Implications are discussed for the future of ICE in higher education.

This article focuses on a case study of English language teachers, who are asked to teach intercultural communication to mixed classes of local and international students in Chinese Higher Education, although they do not specialize in this complex field. They were interviewed to find out about their experiences and perceptions of this 'improvised' Intercultural Teacherhood. The study shows that their engagement with intercultural communication differs while the presence of international students has a major impact on all the teachers' identity and sense of legitimacy. The paper ends on recommendations for (research on) preparing teachers to teach IC.

Breaking with discriminatory views and segregated education for children with disabilities, regions often referred to as Confucian Heritage Regions (CHRs) have been moving towards inclusive education. Although some of these regions have been at the centre of attention in global education recently, there is a lack of research and information about how they 'do' inclusive education. Considering that reinforcing legislative foundations is of foremost importance for its fulfillment, this study examines legislation on the education of children with disabilities in four neighbouring CHRs: the Chinese Mainland , Japan, South Korea and China's Taiwan. The core principles that frame such legislation were analyzed and cross-compared. The findings show that despite the common Confucian heritage that is attributed to them systematically in studies of inclusive education -- which is often said to influence the way disability is perceived and dealt with -- the four Regions treat inclusion differently in terms of legislation. While some CHRs are clearly influenced by e.g. the USA, others are trying to design a specific perspective on inclusive education. The authors argue that the complex example of these CHRs can serve as an important template for studies on both inclusive and comparative education. The article also calls for the careful treatment of inclusive education beyond an essentialist and somewhat simplistic perspective that could reduce certain regions to a monolith.

Research on international students' experiences abroad has tended to rely on models of adjustment, integration and/or acculturation to describe their (mis-)encounters with different kinds of people (e.g., co-nationals, locals and other international students). This paper proposes to use the more fluid concepts of "imaginaries" and "hospitality," leaving behind stages and phases of adaption and acculturation, and focusing on the influence of the Structure on their experiences. Based on a discursive pragmatic analysis of interview data with 20 international students at a top Chinese university, the authors review how the students describe the kind of hospitality experienced at this institution and the influence that it has on their (mis-)encounters. Culturalist, differentialist and essentialist imaginaries (static and fixed views of Chineseness) are often used to justify the lack of encounters and the "segregation" and somewhat "positive discrimination" that they experienced. However, the paper shows that, amongst others, the institutional hospitality management for international students leads to closed contexts of encounters and feelings of exclusion. Although the study serves as a case study and cannot be generalized to the many and varied experiences of international students in other universities in China, some recommendations are made to solve, at least in part, misconceptions about what interculturality and hospitality entail in the internationalization of higher education.

This exploratory article represents an attempt to examine and problematize the links between the COVID-19 crisis and interculturality for education. Aiming at teacher educators, we review problems with the notion of interculturality in light of the crisis. We argue that these problems were not created by the crisis, but that the crisis unveiled them. In the first part of the article we suggest that these issues should be approached by looking into interculturality (and companion terms such as "democracy" and "equality") as an ideology that deserves deconstructing, unthinking, reconstructing and rethinking. We also describe the problems triggered by this ideology: the need to shift from "dead imagination" (culture, difference, etc.) to unearthing the "groundwater" of the economy and globalization in the way interculturality functions. We then propose a set of three principles that could be used by teacher educators to train future teachers to deal with interculturality afresh: "Beyond comparison", "The mirror: turning inward", and "Questioning the unquestionables".

Situated within research and practice on intercultural communication education, this paper suggests an urgent inclusion of dialogism and ethics in the ways it is dealt with around the world. Supranational institutions such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the Council of Europe, treat intercultural communication as a monological phenomenon with an emphasis on Self rather than on the hyphen between Self-Other. This paper calls for exploring 'peripheral' perspectives to enrich scholarship about the intercultural. The work of Russian philosopher and literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin [2012. "Sobranie sochinenij." (T.3). Teoriia romana (1930-1961 gg.). Edited by Sergey Georgievich Bocharov and Vadim Valer'janovich Kozhinov. Moskva: Jazyki slavianskikh kul'tur] is combined with Confucian ethics [e.g. Huang, Y. 2018. "Confucian Ethics: Altruistic? Egoistic? Both? Neither?" "Frontiers of Philosophy in China" 13 (2): 217-231] to propose a new analytical framework for interculturality. As an illustration, we then examine the descriptors of competences proposed by the Council of Europe [2018b. "Reference Framework for Democratic Culture: Volume Two: Descriptors of Competences for Democratic Culture." Strasbourg: Council of Europe] to show how some of the key descriptors seem to take into account these two aspects, while at the same time negate them.

Against the backdrop of the Belt and Road Initiative, the study reports on the ideological construction of multilingualism in higher education in mainland China. Through a new methodological approach combining intertextual discourse analysis and thematic analysis, this paper concentrates on the interplay of ideologies towards multilingualism between the macro-(national/provincial) and meso-(institutional) levels. We examine 22 political texts issued by agents of different levels, and sixteen paratexts containing language issues discussed by educational administrators and language education experts. The analysis of the texts reveals that there is a gap between the two levels in terms of the variety and connotation of terms related to foreign languages. The analysis of the paratexts identifies three categories of recurring values of languages and four categories of benefits from foreign language (education), among which the pragmatic value of foreign languages for national development is the most significant. Moreover, institutional agents mentioned the instrumental value of languages for personal development and their global cultural value. The multiple perspectives on multilingual education in the Chinese context demonstrate the complexities of the ideological construction of multilingualism in this early phase of diversifying multilingual higher education, which generate important implications for policy makers in China and other countries.

Calls for complementing, modifying and 'decolonising' the conceptualisation and implementation of Diversity Education (e.g. "multicultural, intercultural, and/or social justice education") are currently being heard in the 'West'. This paper explores some of the characteristics and benefits of "Chinese Minzu Education" as a potential addition to the field. Our starting point is that Chinese education is often misrepresented and that knowledge about diversity in China (which includes, amongst others, minority groups and Han people), and especially about how people are educated for and through it, is scarce and negatively evaluated in the 'West'. Taking a university specialising in Minzu studies as a case study (which should not be generalized to other Minzu institutions), we problematise formal and informal aspects of Minzu education that could be inspiring to, e.g. interculturalists and multiculturalists in 'Western' education. Fieldwork notes, student interviews about Minzu education and models of Minzu Diversity Learning co-constructed by Minzu students, illustrate the characteristics of Minzu education in higher education. The paper ends on a call for exploring other 'unknown' perspectives on diversity in education emerging from the so-called peripheries of the 'West'.

This paper examines the experiences of Finnish professors of education, who hold visiting positions in South African universities. As an international education utopia, Finland has developed strong Edu-business and education export around the world -- these visiting positions in South Africa being a direct outcome of these strategies. Using a critical form of discourse analysis, the authors scrutinize three visiting professors' utterances about their experiences of South African higher education. During their interviews the political and economic "dispositifs" of internationalisation, of which their positions are symbolic, function through evoking idealised and exceptionalist representations about Finland. The participants also hint at the need for tolerance and respect towards the South African other, which reveal themselves through the reproduction of colonial discourses and images. The paper thus calls for further investigation into such forms of neo-colonialism in an African country that calls for rethinking Africanisation, decolonising of knowledge and internationalisation of higher education. It also problematises the under-researched and ambiguous position of Western scholars in these complex processes.

This paper was written in response to a growing need to address the perceptions and experiences of immigrant teachers. Based on a critical intercultural theoretical perspective, which moves beyond typical "culture shock" and "adaptation" models of understanding and explaining immigrants' experiences, this paper makes use of the concepts of teacher beliefs, ideologies and imaginaries (Holliday, 2010) in considering how Finland-based Chinese immigrant teachers perceive the position of being teachers of Chinese in Finland and Australia. An analysis of data from group discussions during a teacher training workshop indicates that these teachers constructed a "utopia" (Australia) and "dystopia" (Finland) of Chinese language teaching, and reveals that multiple factors have influenced these immigrant teachers' perceptions and experiences. Findings provide information for teacher educators and stakeholders to better understand and support immigrant teachers from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

This article examines a scholar's discourses related to edu-business in the context of Sino-Finnish edu-business. Based on a critical approach to interculturality, and the decade-long critiques of culturalism, a case study serves as an illustration of the use of the concept of culture by a scholar from Finland to retail Finnish education in China. The results show a reliance on an old and highly criticized conception of culture and a tendency to exoticize and aggrandize Finland, the Finns and Finnish education. Yet a hint at similarities between "Asians" and Finns represents an interesting move from typical differentialist discourses. The article ends with a call for taking interdisciplinarity and ethics into account in edu-business activities in academia.

In 2018 the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) stressed that 'citizens need not only the skills to be competitive and ready for a new world of work, but more importantly they also need to develop the capacity to analyse and understand global and intercultural issues' (OECD 2018, 2). The OECD global competence framework will soon be the main global educational instrument to assess 15-year-old students around the world as part of the OECD's 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) (OECD 2018). The document titled "Preparing Our Youth for an Inclusive and Sustainable World: The OECD Global Competence Framework"(OECD 2018) is supplemented by a separate document for teachers and educators titled "Teaching For Global Competence in a Rapidly Changing World" (Asia Society/OECD 2018). Although the word used 'officially' by the OECD is global, the documents often refer to the notion of the 'intercultural' to discuss educational aspects. This short article offers a critical commentary of "Teaching For Global Competence in a Rapidly Changing World" (Asia Society/OECD 2018) whereby, the authors problematise the main content and implications for teachers and educators. In the final section, the authors also problematise some solutions for teachers and educators.

This paper reviews discourses on multicultural education and the concept of intercultural competencies in the European and Nordic country of Finland. We focus on their present uses and perceptions by decision-makers, researchers, and also student teachers. Some prognosis for the future is made based on a short case study from art teacher education in this context. The case study represents an approach that replaces an understanding of intercultural competencies only grounded in knowledge with an approach grounded in criticality. In this way, the article represents an attempt to evaluate how intercultural competencies can and should be reconceptualised in global scholarship today.

Study abroad is often referred to, first and foremost, as an intercultural experience during which "cultures" are encountered and for which mobile students should be prepared. This article, which is based on research carried out on various aspects of student mobility in Europe, and more precisely in Finland, aims to go beyond the "myths" related to study abroad and examine how mobile students can develop competences that can aid them when dealing with various aspects of the experience. This article also calls for a change in the manner in which people consider intercultural communication, by adopting an approach which concentrates solely on the analysis of identity (co-)construction--a key element in the development of noticing strategies used by interlocutors to "dramatize themselves." Based on a model of intercultural competences called proteophilic competences, this article demonstrates how the model can be applied and used by students to go from the "commodification of intercultural understanding" to the appreciation of one's own diversity and that of others. The article is divided into three sections. The first section attempts to contextualize student mobility in Europe, and more specifically Finland by presenting analogies between the students' experiences and experiences in our contemporary world. The second section is devoted to the definition and justification of proteophilic competences that can help students go beyond misconceptions about their time in Finland. The final section looks at the outcome of a course on intercultural communication with exchange students in Finland, which was developed using this method. The overall objective of the article is to show the potential impact of the model on the manner in which exchange students see and talk about themselves and otherness. (Contains 9 notes.)

This article reflects on the meanings of comparing and contrasting in international and comparative education, using two education utopias as case studies. It is inspired by our visits to schools in rural China and Finland and by our interest in issues of social justice, equality/equity. The article also discusses the meanings of the fashionable but polysemic concept of social justice. How could the latter be used to compare two very different countries such as China and Finland, especially in relation to the work of the teacher? Calling for a perspective that takes into account the enmeshment of broader contexts (e.g. the residence permit-"hukou" system in China and the current education export initiatives in Finland) and of micro-contexts such as the work of a specific teacher in a classroom, the article also proposes an approach to comparing which takes into account difference and similarity between contexts, thus avoiding potentially unjustified and biased comparisons. A preliminary presentation of our observations in the schools in China and Finland illustrates this perspective. In the conclusion, we explain why there needs to be a shift in the way we compare education systems and give some recommendations as to how this could occur. We also suggest moving from the ideology of 'learning from other countries' to 'learning with each other' when one deals with social justice in education, as every single country faces issues of injustice. The article will appeal to novice and confirmed researchers who are struggling with comparing education systems across countries.

In recent years the words 'Finnish education' have been accompanied by utterances of 'an education miracle,' 'the best education system,' 'a success' and a number of other adjectives and superlatives to 'describe' education in Finland. While Finland's PISA ranking has declined media interest and discourses on 'Finnish education' have not relented. Seemingly, Finland's educational system is as popular as it has ever been. Finland's education system is viewed with 'international admiration' yet behind these discourses are a number of discursive contradictions. Using the discursive concept of ventriloquism (Tannen, 2010; Cooren, 2014) we show how 'Finnish education' has become ventriloquised--when 'Finnish education' is uttered a number of automatically generated responses are uttered by speakers. In this sense, discourses on 'the success of the Finnish education system' act as prevailing meta-discourses. We argue that, behind these constructs, can too easily lie ventriloquised discourses reinforcing and (re)producing Finnish ethnocentrisms, intercultural ignorance and a lack of regard for the other. Through analysing the discourses of specific educators and academics on 'Finnish education' we show that behind the 'hype' and meta-discourses on the Finnish education system lie possible sentiments of (hidden) ethnocentrisms, (hidden) xenophobia, and (hidden) racism.

This article examines the role of experiential learning in developing intercultural competences in the context of teacher education in Finland. Local and foreign students studying to become teachers were asked to write five short narratives each about meaningful intercultural encounters they experienced prior to enrolling in an intercultural course. Based on these narratives, the author analyses the potential overlap between the way the students reflect on and interpret these encounters and an understanding of interculturality which concentrates on the construction of "self-other" and social justice. The discourse analysis of the students' narratives shows that in most cases, important intercultural learning seems to have already taken place before these students embarked on the course. The article ends with a discussion of the importance of starting from this observation in teacher education and of providing the student teachers with theoretical tools and methods which can support them in expanding their understanding of interculturality in their job as teachers.

Since the recent global paradigm shift in the governance of higher education toward business and marketing, internationally competitive education is increasingly considered as an asset for governments. Consequently, governments started to invest in education branding and marketing their educational systems. In Finland, national interest in education branding rose especially since the country's success in the programme for international student assessment studies created a positive reputation of its basic education. In this article, the authors investigate how this reputation is transformed into a general Finnish education brand, based upon Finland's official Country Brand Report (2010). The governmental discourse on Finnish education reveals a fusion of education and national branding, which is why the authors suggest to discuss the Finnish education brand as Finnish education®. The article provides an analysis of the elements constituting the brand and opens up a critical discussion on the ethics of branding education through cultural and national characteristics.

This article offers readers the opportunity to eavesdrop on a conversation between teacher educators from Finland and the United States at the conclusion of a field research project conducted in border schools in Arizona. The conversation ranges across topics central to schooling in both countries and exposes educational practices that are not part of the official educational narratives coming out of each country. This conversation raises questions about patriotism and nationalism, notes how schools deal with sexual preferences of students, and talks about the purposes of education. Perhaps most interestingly, the piece sheds new light on education in Finland.

Over the past decade Finnish education has been praised worldwide for its students' "amazing" results in the OECD PISA studies. Thousands of pedagogical tourists--including policy-makers, researchers and educators--have visited the country to find out about the reasons behind the success and to borrow, often uncritically and un-reflexively, Finnish practices that can help them to become "good performers" too. This has resulted in what we call "folk" comparative discourses on Finland. China is no exception to the rule. In this article we examine a range of books about Finnish education published in the Middle Kingdom (China) for a general rather than narrowly specialist readership. We are interested in how these volumes construct certain images and myths about it and what these tell us about how the authors view Chinese education but also current societal discussions about it. Our approach is based on critical and reflexive interculturality.

This study offers a critique of the questions used in anti-racism discourse and education. It discusses the dangers of asking whether a person or group is racist and the possible consequences such questions could have on people's discourses and attitudes. Reactions or responses to the questions can vary from anger, defence of self against other, denial of racism and/or a strong far-right nationalistic feeling. The questions examined in this study were used in a workshop about racism in Finnish upper secondary schools. Our main interest lies in examining how questions produce or affect discourses, particularly the kinds of discourses that arise as the students reflect and respond to these questions in small groups. By analysing these discourses, we are able to get an insight into how students construct an understanding of racism vis-à-vis the issues of nationality, family, self and others. Our findings are suggestive of the fact that students' understanding of racism is often limited to individual acts of racism rather than an understanding of racism as a system of oppression. The article calls for the need to reassess the questions used in anti-racism discourse or education that do not necessarily lead to progressive discourse on the issue of racism. We also call for teachers using these questions to closely follow up how students interpret and discuss the topic of racism.

The argument that teachers should become ethical intercultural teachers is increasingly recognized as legitimate. This article presents a case study in kindergarten teacher education in Finland, a country that has been at the center of global discussions about quality education. The authors question the agenda for studying and teaching in an intercultural kindergarten teacher education program. The adopted theoretical framework problematizes the discursive relationships between desire, politics of interculturality, and interculturality itself in teacher education. Interviews were conducted with seven student-teachers and three teacher-educators. The data were analyzed using critical content analysis. The research findings reveal unstable and often problematic discourses of interculturality in teacher education, and suggest some guidelines for strengthening it further in this context but also in higher education in general.

With the current rise of China as a political, cultural, and economic superpower, Chinese as a foreign and second language has gained popularity worldwide. Finland is also responding to this global wave, as is reflected by the increasing number of Chinese courses in formal and informal settings in the Nordic country. Yet not all actors involved in the promotion of Chinese seem to experience instruction in the language in the same way. This study investigates how Chinese teachers of the Chinese language, who represent the majority of the "workforce" for instruction in this language in Finland, perceive Chinese language education and their role in it. We argue that there is a need for a paradigm shift in evaluating the teachers' experiences. Specifically, we support a move away from perspectives that see culture as static and identity as singular. Using the "analysis of multivoicedness," which was developed from dialogism (Aveling, Gillespie, & Cornish, 2014), the authors of this article identify a number of positions assumed/taken up by the teachers and others in their discourses. Finally, we propose a critical intercultural approach to Chinese teacher education or professional development based on transdisciplinarity, which relies on problem-solving that recognizes an important triad: e"ducational contexts--teachers' experiences--society" (McGregor & Volckmann, 2011).

Adored worldwide for its 'outstanding' education system, Finland has relied on its excellent results in studies of the Programme for International Student Assessment to advertise and sell its education abroad. One of the keys to this success is often attributed to Finnish teachers, who are said to be 'the best and most respected in the world'. This article questions this official narrative by examining the way teachers are perceived by Finnish society through analysing the front-page headlines of the Finnish tabloid Ilta-Sanomat in 2000-2013. To the authors' knowledge, the way teachers are constructed in the Finnish press has not been studied extensively, while international studies, especially from English-speaking countries, highlight negative constructions of teachers in the press and cultural products. The data consist of 81 front pages, which were analysed using three methods: content analysis, discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis. The study of the photographs used on the front covers complements the analyses. The results show that the way Finnish teachers are constructed on the tabloid front pages has changed significantly between 2000 and 2013, and they could signal changes in the way education and the status of teachers are considered in the Nordic country. They also show a shift in the way the power of teachers has been depicted.

In this article I use the current (r)evolution of interculturality to examine the logics, discourses and situated practices of internationalization in Finnish Higher Education. Based on a case study in Finland, different policies are analysed to see if and how the construction of internationalization takes place in these documents and what perspective(s) seem to be preferred. As the results show that intercultural discourses and logics, called BOTHOPY in this paper, seem to emerge, I look at peripheral documents related to the internationalization of Higher Education in the specific context under review, namely the intersection between Finnish education export, country branding and the internationalization of universities. These documents prove to follow an essentialist and somewhat ethnocentric approach to the 'intercultural' and contradict somewhat the silencing of this problematic treatment of self and other as found in the policies. The University under review seems thus to be torn apart between different perspectives on internationalization, which is representative of the global neo-liberal zeitgeist.

This article examines teachers' perspectives on interculturality and diversity within the context of upper secondary vocational education and training (VET) in Finland. Increasing diversity in VET education challenges teachers' sense of interculturality and their readiness to interact with and treat the "other" fairly. Compared to other European countries, Finland has much less experience with the inclusion of immigrants in VET. Qualitative data (interviews and open comments of VET teachers involved in social and health care training) were analysed through a template based on a critical and reflexive understanding of intercultural encounters. The results suggest the presence of cultural essentialism and cultural/national hegemony in teachers' talk about their work with "diverse students". There is also, however, awareness of positionalities and ideologies affecting communication as well as concern among VET teachers about equality and justice--two central issues which can lead to real and proper empowerment of all students in any educational context.

The "intercultural" is now omnipresent in most departments of teacher education in Europe and elsewhere. It can be implemented under the guise of, amongst others, multicultural, transcultural, global and/or development education. In this paper, I problematise post-intercultural teacher education. The context of this study is that of Finnish education. Famed worldwide for its "miraculous" educational system, Finland is rarely talked about for dealing with diversities in education. In this article, I explore the impact of a course on "multicultural education" given to a cohort of "local" and international student teachers studying to become Newly Qualified Teachers. I taught the course myself and decided that since only 8?h would be devoted to the issue of interculturality, the course would have to help the students to learn to develop quickly critical competences towards the many and varied approaches to diversities that are "available on the market". The methodology rests on the use of a documentary on "extreme" intercultural dialogue that the students discussed at the end of the course. Set in Israel, the documentary follows a class in a multicultural school in Tel Aviv during the second Gaza War in 2008-2009. I hypothesise that the documentary, which is often conflictual, would help me to evaluate the students' learning and how they discuss and problematise such a case of "intercultural dialogue" in education and relate it to their future practice.

The concept of intercultural competences is contested, although it is omnipresent in varied fields of research and practice. Its assessment is also questioned: how can it be done? By whom? When? Should assessment be summative or formative-or both? In order to be able to assess anything, learning and teaching objectives must be clear, coherent, and consistent. Yet intercultural competences are often polysemic and rely heavily on problematic concepts such as (national) culture and identity. Here we revisit the concept and reflect on its use for formative assessment within international teacher education. Having developed a Portfolio of Intercultural Competences (PIC) to be used by student teachers in an English-medium teacher education programme in Finland, we explain how the portfolio came to life (theory, methods) and how it can help develop students' intercultural competences. We report on three components of the portfolio: the students' reflexive and critical essays on five stories of meaningful and/or memorable intercultural encounters written during a course on multicultural education, and focus group discussions amongst the students. We analyze the data with discursive pragmatics, a linguistic method which looks deeper into participants' discourses.

In this article I examine international pre-service teachers' perceptions of experienced teachers' intercultural (in)competence during their practicum in Finland. The article problematizes intercultural preparation and suggests a perspective based on the idea of 'amateur interculturalists'. The analysis shows that the pre-service teachers are able to identify and question experienced teachers' disturbing discourses, attitudes and behaviours towards the 'intercultural'.

Although there is an increased interest in overseas training for educational leaders in China, little is known about the value of such programs. This qualitative case study explores Chinese school principals' perceptions of leadership practices and professional development after undertaking a Finnish training program. The article also explores difficulties related to different educational contexts when an attempt is made at applying the Finnish education experience to China. Famed for its excellent education, Finland is currently actively involved in exporting its education by providing such training programs to the whole world. Data was collected by semi-structured interviews with six Shanghai principals. The results showed a certain level of satisfaction but also needs for improvement. It thus appears that such an overseas training program can play a positive but limited role in expanding Chinese principals' leadership practices and professional development.

Interreligious dialogue is a central objective in European and UNESCO policy and research documents, in which educational institutions are seen as central places for dialogue. In this article, we discuss this type of dialogue under the conditions of asymmetry and categorisation in two Finnish schools. Finnish education has often been lauded for its successful implementation of equity and equality by the thousands of "pedagogical tourists" who visit the country's schools to witness the so-called miracle of Finnish education due to Finland's excellent results in the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study. Through theoretically informed reading of ethnographic data, we examine how Self and Other are constructed in everyday encounters in school and how religions, religious groups and individuals become regarded as Others. We also ask whether the aims of interreligious dialogue in schools represent a viable way to learn about each other and to increase mutual understanding. The theoretical and methodological approaches derive from post-colonial, post-structural and related feminist theories as well as from recent research on intercultural education and communication.

This article examines a rather neglected context of intercultural education: intercultural communication education (ICE). ICE can be found in different fields such as business, applied linguistics, intercultural communication and health education, amongst others. The authors start by reviewing the latest and ongoing changes ("turbulences") in the way that "intercultural" is conceptualized in this field and form a template for analysing a focus group with lecturers focusing on intercultural communication in the Nordic country of Finland. Our analysis shows that these practitioners, who are also researchers specialized in intercultural communication, share discourses about the importance of the "intercultural" in education, but that they are unable to clearly position themselves within the existing polysemic definitions and approaches. The current turbulences seem to have very little coherent impact on the way they talk about the "intercultural".

"Happy Chinese" or kuaile hanyu is an educational melodrama produced by the Chinese TV channel CCTV in 2009. Aiming to improve foreign learners' Chinese language skills, the plot revolves around Susan, an American, staying with her former Chinese classmate's family. "Happy Chinese" proposes both language and cultural learning. In this paper, the authors are examining the first seven episodes marking Susan's arrival in China for the Spring Festival. Basing the study on a postmodern and critical approach to the "intercultural," as well as on a critical view towards Orientalism and Occidentalism, the authors are interested in how the programme constructs the arrival of the American and the way she is perceived and represented by the "locals." The authors are also looking into what the Chinese family teaches Susan about being Chinese and, at the same time, the tensions that a certain tendency to "keep up appearances" and appear "real Chinese" before her trigger in the family, across generation and gender. The research tools used to analyze the data are derived from discursive pragmatics.

Research on intercultural couplehood often relies on cultures and "solid identities" to explain the couples' experiences. By looking at the media construction of an intercultural couple on Chinese television, we are interested in how they are presented and co-constructed through different perspectives, especially if and how (cultural) differences are used by the participants to enact the couple's identification. We take a dynamic "liquid" approach to linguistic discourse analysis, through dialogism and utterance theory, to identify the voices and the related discursive strategies that contribute to create and "imagine" the couple. (Contains 2 tables and 4 notes.)