Intersubjektivitet och prestigelöshet, intentionalitet och oförutsägbarhet : En fenomenologisk studie av lärarstudenters upplevelse av lärarutbildares undervisning genom interkulturalitet

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study is to investigate education students’ experience of interculturality in their own intercultural teacher education at Södertörn University College. The intercultural policy of this education states that interculturality is something that the students shall learn about, for and through. The focus in this study is on the last aspect, through. How do students experience that teacher educator’s practice inter­culturality? The ontological and epistemological ground on which this study is based is the life-world-phenomenological way of thinking. The object of knowledge in a study guided by this perspective is people’s experiences, how the world reveals itself for them. The life-world-phenomenology has guided both the methodological decisions and actions and has been a tool in the analysis of the material. The study has been conducted as a survey with 97 students in three different teacher programs at Södertörn University College and as three focus group interviews (4-5 people in each group) with students within the same programs. The survey used open questions and the interviews were conducted using a semi-structured interview technique. The theoretical perspectives used in the analysis of the results are: the phenomenological perspective, the theory of relational pedagogy and Hanna Arendt’s idea of action as one of the fundamental categories of the human condition. The results display a red thread through the students’ statements. A thread that starts with a definition of interculturality as interaction and enriched learning through the meeting of others’ experiences continues through the sometimes monocultural reality of a university education where it also meets and is affected by the approach of the teacher. An approach that has consequences on the educational process and that can either enable the intercultural interaction and enriched learning or just the opposite. The intercultural educational process can “take off” or just crash. Qualities that seem to get the intercultural spiral going are intersubjectivity, unpredictability, intentionality and lack of prestige. They evoke contact, curiosity, security and the willingness to be with others. Teacher educators who are interested in and able to introduce these qualities into teaching are by students’ experienced as teachers who teach through interculturality.