Interculturality Online

The contested and polysemic concept of ideology has been used only marginally in research on intercultural communication education. This edited volume focuses on the ideological dimensions of online interculturality in higher education, encompassing areas such as telecollaboration, virtual classrooms and online teacher professional development.

The chapter authors explore the intercultural engagements, perceptions and experiences of students, teachers and researchers in different parts of the world, including Australia, China, Finland, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain and the USA. In doing so, they aim to contribute to the current critical and reflexive turn in research and teaching that is examining global socio-economic, political and linguistic inequalities and imbalances of power. Using concrete examples from their own practices, the chapter authors critically and reflexively problematise 'doing' interculturality in higher education by identifying, engaging with, reflecting on and revising ideologies of online interculturality. By intersecting interculturality, technology and ideology, this book also makes a critical contribution to the literature on the internationalisation of higher education and its digitalisation.

Written in a globally friendly and engaging style, the book will appeal to academics and students of intercultural communication education in online environments.

Fred Dervin is a Professor of Multicultural Education at the University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland. He specialises in intercultural communication education, the sociology of multiculturalism, and student and academic mobility. He has widely published in different languages (over 200 articles and 80 books). His latest books with Routledge include Communicating around Interculturality in Research and Education (2023) and The Routledge Handbook of Critical Interculturality (2024). Over a career of 25 years, he has made substantial contributions to scholarship on interculturality in both communication and education around the world.

Jun Peng is a Ph.D. researcher in the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland. Her research focuses on interculturality in education, online intercultural interactions and foreign language education. She has conducted some research on virtual exchange projects between universities in Africa, Asia and Europe. She has taught Chinese and English at universities in China and Finland.

Virginie Trémion is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Pedagogy (IFP) at Catholic University, Lille, France. Her fields of interest include virtual exchange, intercultural education and teacher education.