Studies focusing on Students' perspectives
1. Study on "Internationalisation as multilingual and intercultural communication competence in Higher Education"
(University of Jyväskylä, JYU & Université de Bourgogne, uB)
Researchers: Lotta Kokkonen (JYU), Mitra Raappana (JYU), Alex Frame (uB), Romée Jager (MA from uB)
The fields of intercultural communication (IC) and intercultural education are in flux, and the paradigmatic shift is away from essentialist approaches on culture and interculturality towards seeing IC and interculturality as flexible, fluid, contradictory, political and ideological constructs. This study presents a virtual exchange project, a joint introductory course on IC between a Finnish university and a French university. The qualitative study was undertaken within a collaborative online course proposed by the universities of Jyväskylä and Bourgogne during spring 2022 and spring 2023. The collaboration was set up in the framework of FORTHEM alliance of which both JYU and uB are founding members, and stemmed from personal contacts between the teachers. The course was first taught in 2021, in the context of the Covid-19 lockdown, and it was decided to repeat the course in 2022, and again in 2023. The study thus relates to the second and third editions of the course. Prior to beginning the course, the teachers had attended online training together in how to plan Virtual Exchange projects, offered by the Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange Project. The study brings forward the students’ experiences and views on multilingual and intercultural learning within virtual setting.
The data was collected during the spring 2022, and spring 2023 and it consists of students' texts.
Publications:
- Kokkonen, L., Jager, R., Frame, A., & Raappana, M. (2022). Overcoming Essentialism? Students’ Reflections on Learning Intercultural Communication Online. Education Sciences, 12(9), Article 579. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12090579
- Kokkonen, L., Jager, R., Frame, A., & Raappana, M. (in preparation). Cultivating criticality: Notions of “critical” applied to teaching and learning about intercultural communication in a Higher Education setting. In Fred Dervin (Ed.) Handbook of Critical Interculturality in Communication and Education (Routledge).
- Kokkonen, L. & Natri, T. (in preparation). Multilingual practices in Higher Education for enhancing (cirical) interculurality. In Fred Dervin (Ed.) Handbook of Critical Interculturality in Communication and Education (Routledge).
- Kokkonen, L., Jager, R. (in preparation). Enhancing critical intercultural communication online: Students’ experiences of multilingual and intercultural communication within online teams.
In Jun Peng, Fred Dervin & Virginie Tremion (Eds.).Interculturality in Educational Virtual Exchanges: Critical and Reflexive Perspectives in Research and Education. To be published by Routledge in 2024.
Funding:
5000 e / The French National Research Agency (ANR) Ce travail a bénéficié d’une aide de l’Etat gérée par l’Agence Nationale de la Recherche au titre du programme d’Investissements d’avenir portant la référence « ANR-19-GURE-0005 »
More information:
Senior Lecturer, PhD Lotta Kokkonen
The Centre for Multilingual Academic Communication (Movi)
University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
lotta.o.kokkonen@jyu.fi
+358 40 805 3148
2. Study on "Students' goals for the development of multilingual and intercultural communication competence and the role of different languages"
(University of Jyväskylä, JYU, Movi)
Researchers: Hanna Brauer
This study focuses on students’ own descriptions of their goals for the development of multilingual and intercultural communication competence. Students set these goals as part of the process of making an internationalization plan, a list of competences students find relevant and that they want to make part of their personalized study plans.
The aim of the study is to gain a better understanding of students’ own goals for internationalization and to investigate how individual languages are discursively represented in students’ ideal internationalized selves. The data will be collected during the spring and autumn 2022 and it consists of short written descriptions of thirty students’ own goals.
More information:
University teacher, MA Hanna Brauer
The Centre for Multilingual Academic Communication (Movi)
University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
hanna.c.l.brauer@jyu.fi
+358503402510
3. Study on " Developing multilingual and intercultural competence in Higher Education. Student collaboration and multilingual practices."
Researchers: Lotta Kokkonen, JYU/Movi (PI); Teija Natri, JYU, Movi; Kanako Nishizumi, Chiba University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
A modern wave of globalization has come to higher education. There are growing numbers of international students, possibilities to study overseas and foreign staff. In addition to this, higher education institutions are said to be preparing students for future work life, that seems to be ever more diverse, constantly changing, evolving, and taking ubiquitous forms. There is a realization that increased internationalization in higher education institutions “demand[s] that university students develop intercultural competence (ICC) in order to interact successfully with diverse peers and professionals and maximize their collegiate experience.” (Griffin et al., 2016,1). Further, there is the movement from singular languages towards languages and languaging in the plural represents a more fluid perspective about language (Auger et al. 2022). Institutions should be aware and prepare their students to operate in a globalized world (Schuerholz-Lehr, 2007). In this study we are interested in our students’ experiences of working in multilingual and intercultural groups and what kinds of multilingual practices they are able to apply and use in their collaboration.
The data collected will be collected during the Summer 2023 and consist of recorded group discussions, and written materials produced by students, and possibly a survey/ interviews answered by the students.
More information:
Senior Lecturer, PhD Lotta Kokkonen
The Centre for Multilingual Academic Communication (Movi)
University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
lotta.o.kokkonen@jyu.fi
+358 40 805 3148