This study focuses on four English teachers’ perception of the concept of culture linked to teaching language. Semi-structured interviews were carried out in order to investigate how they perceive culture in relation to both their personal views and the steering documents for the educational system. To gain a more in–depth understanding of their perception we asked them about their own perception of their teaching methods and how they in turn perceive the students’ development with regards to intercultural understanding. We applied Eva Gagnestam’s four descriptions of culture to be able to explore the different ways in which the teachers worked with the concept of culture in the English classroom.

This thesis investigates the activities of two secondary schools in relation to their duty to promote community cohesion (intercultural understanding and cohesion within communities) and their engagement in global educational partnerships and international activities. In particular this study seeks to ascertain if there is a relationship between community cohesion and global educational partnerships –whether the activities and outcomes from one could inform the other in relation to intercultural understanding. There is little research on the relationship between these two initiatives. The research explores the understanding and experiences of staff involved in these initiatives in the two schools and that of pupils in Key Stages 3, 4 and 5 (11-18 years). Data is generated through semi-structured interviews and document analysis, providing a rich description of participants’ understanding and whole-school activities. What has emerged from the findings is a complex and subtle picture of two schools and their interpretations of their duty to promote community cohesion, engage in international activities, and the relationship between the two. Effective practice is identified such as developing inclusive perspectives through pupil peer-led teaching. However, barriers to effective practice have also been identified and include how cultural diversity is understood and presented through binary perceptions of ‘Other’. Such perspectives, alongside complex paternal power relations evident in educational partnerships with schools in the global South, are identified as problematic in the promotion of intercultural understanding and cohesion. The dominant political discourse, guidance for schools and the role of the schools’ inspection framework (Ofsted) are also influencing factors. Postcolonial Theory is used to interrogate policy and practice and presents alternative perspectives, and these, it is contended, can offer new ways forward in creating a ‘third’ space for intercultural understanding through global educational partnerships and community cohesion.

Globalization and global education implies changes to practices at the classroom level to adapt to new imperatives associated with technology use and awareness, and environmental sustainability. It also implies much more. It implies that teachers apply their classroom pedagogy to take account of students’ new found global understandings of which they, and the school community, is largely unaware. This article addresses and discuses three key consequences of globalization for classrooms worldwide; an increased diversity of experience of the students within the classroom, an increased competitiveness of educational outcomes between national states and subsequently some standardisation of curriculum across nations to enable this, and an increased emphasis on teaching skills and values associated with intercultural understanding. Young children’s map knowledge and their resultant, and associated, interpretations of the world from a comparative study a from Swedish and Australian primary classrooms is used as examples of some of these implications of the impact of ‘global culture’ and ‘global issues’ on current and future classroom practice.

This study explores cultural representations and cultural adaptations made by translators in translated children's picture books. This study has two focuses. In the first part of this study, which is a critical content analysis, I examine the cultural representations depicted in Korean-to-English and English-to-Korean translated picture books, using cultural studies as a theoretical framework. In the second part of this study, I compare original and translated editions of Caldecott and popular Korean picture books to find out how the translators adapt cultural, ideological, and linguistic conflicts in the process of translation, using translation as a dialogic process. For the first part of this study, I found four categories related to the cultural representations: (1) a sense of belonging and societal membership; (2) constructing and challenging gender stereotypes; (3) constructing images of childhood; and (4) dominant visual images of South Korea/the United States. These findings indicate that the insider authors of Korean culture try to show authentic images of South Korea, using contemporary fiction stories. The Korean translated books also deal with various images of American culture authentically from historical fiction to contemporary fiction. However, a small number of books do not show broad cultural representations of both cultures. In the second focus of this study on cultural adaptations, the analysis directly compared original and translated editions of the same texts. The themes of cultural familiarity, adaptations regarding illustrations, completely different translations, omissions, additions, and changes of titles or book jackets were identified. These findings indicate that most American and Korean translators purposely made cultural adaptations in the process of translation in order to help target readers to have better understanding of these international books. Additionally, they did not change essential authentic features, such as the characters' names and geographic names. I also found mistranslations between the original and translated editions of books. These changes could have occured because the translators lacked knowledge of both cultures or of the deep structures of the stories. The implication section provides recommendations to publishers, translators, educators, parents, teacher educators, and researchers and suggestions for further research.

Engagement with global children's literature is an effective way to introduce multiple perspectives into the classroom dialogue. Yet teachers are often unfamiliar with ways of helping students understand diverse cultural practices and beliefs. The result is that global children's literature continues to be an underused resource. This action research study looked at 25 highly diverse educator study groups as they used global literature with pre-K - 12 students. The goal was to support the development of intercultural understanding. The study groups received $1,000 grants from Worlds of Words (wowlit.org) to fund their yearlong inquiry. The groups met face-to-face throughout the year to reflect on the interactions taking place in their classrooms. All groups met online on a members-only site. Data collected included proposals, reports, teacher vignettes, and interviews. The data was used to document range of study group structures and interactions with global literature. The study groups and online forum were supported by a grant from the Longview Foundation. Through constant comparative analysis, new transformative understandings were identified. Key elements in the development of intercultural understanding included open inquiry, recognition of complexity and multiple perspectives, thinking about culture at a conceptual level, and engaging in open dialogue. Teachers reported an increased understanding of their competence as professionals, their student's competence as problem-posers and thinkers, and the parents' competence as important contributors to intercultural understanding. The study concludes with implications for practitioners wanting to engage in classroom inquiries using global literature to support developing intercultural understanding. A second set of implications suggests ways in which the study group process can be made more effective. New questions are proposed for future research related to the use of global literature in various contexts, including classrooms, online professional development, and libraries.

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Vi lever i ett allt mer globaliserat samhälle i vilket engelska språket används inom många olika sammanhang över stora delar av världen. Det är därför viktigt att både ha goda kunskaper i engelska språket och att utveckla en god interkulturell förståelse för att kunna samverka över, såväl som inom nationsgränserna. Även Lgr11 påpekar vikten av ett internationellt perspektiv i undervisningen. Enligt läroplanen ska eleverna ges förutsättningar att utveckla sin förmåga att reflektera över livsvillkor, samhällsfrågor och kulturella företeelser i olika sammanhang och delar av världen där engelska används. Det är dock problematiskt att definiera vad ”sammanhang och delar av världen där engelska används” innebär, detta är något som läromedelsförfattare och lärare måste tolka själva i utformningen av läromedlen och undervisningen. Syftet med denna studie är att analysera sex olika engelskläroböcker för årskurs 4-6 från två olika läroboksserier för att undersöka vilka engelskspråkiga länder som synliggörs och inkluderas i ”delar av världen där engelska används”, samt att undersöka om en mångsidig och nyanserad bild ges av de inkluderade länderna. Metoden för studien är huvudsakligen innehållsanalys men även diskursanalys. Studien är förankrad i de teoretiska begreppen engelska som världsspråk, det vidgade textbegreppet, monokulturell utbildning, hegemoni, interkulturell kompetens/förståelse, vithet samt intersektionalitet. Eftersom läromedel tenderar att ges en styrande roll i engelskundervisningen och inte längre kvalitetsgranskas av staten är det viktigt för lärare att kritiskt kunna granska och välja läroböcker. Utifrån analysen kan det konstateras att det endast är vissa engelskspråkiga länder: Storbritannien, USA och Australien, som ges betydande utrymme och synliggörs som engelskspråkiga i de analyserade läroböckerna. Engelskspråkiga länder som syns men ges betydligt mindre utrymme är Kanada, Nya Zealand och Irland medan Sydafrika inte ens nämns i någon av läroböckerna. Det ges inte heller en mångsidig och nyanserad bild av alla länderna i och med att en del länder endast nämns i vissa sammanhang. / We live in an increasingly globalized society in which the English language is used in many different contexts over large parts of the world. It is therefore important to have both a good knowledge of the English language and to develop a good intercultural understanding to collaborate across as well as within national borders. Even the current curriculum of 2011 (Lgr11) points out the importance of an international perspective in education. According to the curriculum, students should be given opportunities to develop their ability to reflect on the living conditions, social and cultural phenomena in different contexts and parts of the world where English is used. However, it is problematic to define what "contexts and areas of the world where English is used" means, this is something that authors of textbooks and teachers have to interpret themselves in the formation of teaching materials and teaching. The purpose of this study is to analyze six different English textbooks for grades 4-6 in Sweden from two textbook series to examine which English-speaking countries are made visible and are included in "parts of the world where English is used", as well as investigate whether a comprehensive and nuanced picture is given of the included countries. The method of study is essentially content analysis, but also discourse analysis. The study is grounded in the theoretical concepts of English as a world language, the expanded concept of text, monocultural education, hegemony, intercultural competence/understanding, whiteness and intersectionality. Since teaching materials tend to be given a governing role in English teaching and no longer quality audited by the state, it is important for teachers to critically examine and select textbooks. From the analysis it can be stated that only some English-speaking countries: UK, USA and Australia are given considerable space and visibility as English-speaking in the analyzed textbooks. English-speaking countries that are visible but are given much less space is Canada, New Zealand and Ireland, while South Africa is not even mentioned in any of the textbooks. Neither a comprehensive nor balanced picture of all the countries are given in the textbooks seeing that some countries are mentioned only in certain contexts.

The overall aim of the present study is to investigate how teachers deal with linguistic and cultural otherness in the French foreign language classroom at upper secondary school level in Sweden. The foreign language classroom is seen as a cultural meeting place where images of otherness are natural elements. In this respect, otherness should be regarded as one cultural aspect among others implying human as well as language phenomena. Analyzing the way in which the teachers in the study mediate this otherness to their students is expected to contribute to the pedagogical debate on intercultural understanding in language teaching and learning.   The study is based on empirical data consisting of video recorded observations in three different classrooms. One class (class A) is treated as primary data where two activities are especially focused, namely working with texts and working with grammar. The verbal interaction from these activities has been transcribed and analyzed qualitatively.   The first step of analysis concerns the learning aims which are transmitted to the students in the teacher’s introduction to the two activities. The second step deals with the teacher’s procedures to involve the students in the construction of knowledge which focuses on linguistic and cultural otherness.   Finally, a comparative perspective is adopted. On the one hand, the two different activities are compared with each other, while on the other hand, the findings from class A are compared with class B and C. From a dialogical point of view, the way in which the classroom setting and the teachers’ acting can favour intercultural understanding is discussed.   The results of the analyses highlight the fact that teachers seem to pay more attention to linguistic otherness than to cultural otherness. Furthermore, the study shows that the foreign language classroom has a dialogical potential when it comes to human relations and discourse. More attention could be paid to these aspects of teaching in order to pave the way for better intercultural understanding. The teachers in the present study seem to favour dialogical relationships in the classroom and neglect discursive issues in the situation. Our conclusion is that the way in which teachers deal with otherness is tradition-bound. Texts, for instance, even those with an obvious intercultural content, are treated as pre-texts for studying linguistic phenomena. Cultural phenomena, when dealt with, are limited to a product paradigm and are transmitted without reflection and with no apparent awareness of any intercultural understanding.

The overall aim of the present study is to investigate how teachers deal with linguistic and cultural otherness in the French foreign language classroom at upper secondary school level in Sweden. The foreign language classroom is seen as a cultural meeting place where images of otherness are natural elements. In this respect, otherness should be regarded as one cultural aspect among others implying human as well as language phenomena. Analyzing the way in which the teachers in the study mediate this otherness to their students is expected to contribute to the pedagogical debate on intercultural understanding in language teaching and learning.   The study is based on empirical data consisting of video recorded observations in three different classrooms. One class (class A) is treated as primary data where two activities are especially focused, namely working with texts and working with grammar. The verbal interaction from these activities has been transcribed and analyzed qualitatively. The first step of analysis concerns the learning aims which are transmitted to the students in the teacher’s introduction to the two activities. The second step deals with the teacher’s procedures to involve the students in the construction of knowledge which focuses on linguistic and cultural otherness. Finally, a comparative perspective is adopted. On the one hand, the two different activities are compared with each other, while on the other hand, the findings from class A are compared with class B and C. From a dialogical point of view, the way in which the classroom setting and the teachers’ acting can favour intercultural understanding is discussed. The results of the analyses highlight the fact that teachers seem to pay more attention to linguistic otherness than to cultural otherness. Furthermore, the study shows that the foreign language classroom has a dialogical potential when it comes to human relations and discourse. More attention could be paid to these aspects of teaching in order to pave the way for better intercultural understanding. The teachers in the present study seem to favour dialogical relationships in the classroom and neglect discursive issues in the situation. Our conclusion is that the way in which teachers deal with otherness is tradition-bound. Texts, for instance, even those with an obvious intercultural content, are treated as pre-texts for studying linguistic phenomena. Cultural phenomena, when dealt with, are limited to a product paradigm and are transmitted without reflection and with no apparent awareness of any intercultural understanding.