Pierwotna siła humanistyki. Polsko-ukraiński wielogłos

The article is a review of the book Humanistyka między narodami. Interdyscyplinarne studia polsko-ukraińskie [The humanities across nations. Interdisciplinary Polish-Ukrainian studies] under the scientific editorship of Jarosław Ławski and Lucjan Suchanek, published by Temida 2 publishing house in Białystok in 2020. It is a multi-authored monograph. The researcher notes that the works included in it concern various aspects of the humanities, scientific dialogue and intercultural exchange of experiences, and their common ground is the idea of a higher good, the search for truth and showing the continuous development of the humanities. A great advantage of the volume lies in the diversity resulting from the undertaken problems and the presence of representatives of not only Polish, but also Ukrainian sciences.

A Collaborative Autoethnography on Raciolinguistic Experiences and the Construction of Linguistic Identities During an Intercultural Exchange

This research is a Collaborative Autoethnography based on personal experiences as Au Pairs in the United States. It aims to analyze the contributions of an intercultural exchange towards the construction of the teacher’s identity. It also seeks to analyze the current foreign language teaching practices in Colombia. We achieved more significant English teaching insights from our reflections, considering a flexible language structure, more comprehensive vocabulary, and English variety. Besides, this life-changing exposed ourselves to a target context that enriched our global notions and enhanced a new linguistic identity. Two years of living abroad made us think about a different teaching ideology founded on developing interest and sensibility for diverse cultures accepting broader linguistic features of the language. The results support the idea that educators shift those traditional strategies to more context-bound and intercultural ones to meet today’s needs and place the language as a means of co-construction of reality.

Looking back, looking forward

The Earth to Tables Legacies Project emerged in 2015, growing out of personal relationships, but also built on a long trajectory of participatory research, multimedia arts production and popular education. We created an intergenerational and intercultural exchange of food activists working for food justice and food sovereignty with the initial goal of producing a feature length documentary. However, the project evolved over five years to culminate in a multimedia educational package with 10 short videos and 11 photo essays, all accompanied by facilitator’s guides. A web series on the pandemic is in production and a forthcoming book is to be published in 2021. The intergenerational production team included Deborah Barndt (co-director and co-editor), Lauren Baker (co-editor) and Alexandra Gelis (co-director). In this ‘report from the field,’ the two co-directors Alexandra and Deborah look back on the process of co-producing the visual materials for the interactive website and look forward to its potential use in university classes, schools, and social and environmental justice organizations. Parts of the essay include our zoom dialogue as we revisit our process over the past five years and try to elucidate our way of working, while reflecting on the challenges of the collaborative production and use of multimedia educational tools. Note that this essay utilizes the same kind of text with hyperlinks that are featured in our website and book. The reader is encouraged to click on the links to learn more about the people and their practices as well as the concept of a non-linear multimedia educational tool and process.

Intercultural exchanges among pre-service teachers in Israel and Sweden as a path of introduction into the epistemology and practice of teaching

This paper presents the outcomes of a short intercultural exchange project involving pre-service English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher training establishments in Sweden and Israel. The project comprised three online meetings recorded in Zoom in which student teachers gave feedback on each other’s project assignments involving lesson planning and the use of spoken English in the classroom. The sessions were moderated by a highly experienced teacher trainer with contributions from other teacher trainers in the institutions involved. With restrictions imposed on physical meetings and student mobility by the Covid-19 pandemic, the exchange helped to shed light on a number of perennial issues in English language teaching methodology and offers a feasible model for future sustainable virtual exchanges in EFL teacher training.

Academic language as an object of teaching foreign languages to philology students

In the modern socio-educational environment, which is developed through intercultural exchange and the implementation of new methods of spreading knowledge, communication in the student environment is based on the exchange of visual images and philological units. For students of the philological direction, communication with foreign language communicants is determined by the possibility of improving the function of conversation, perception of cultural characteristics and obtaining new images. Of relevance is the perception of not only spoken language by students, but also of the academically correct lexical group. The novelty of the study is determined by the fact that academic language is often perceived as a kind of anachronism, as something insufficient to expand linguistic competence. The study proves that the readiness of students to implement the provisions of academic language is possible not only culturally, but is also achievable by pedagogical methods. The study demonstrates that the implementation of the extended learning format is achieved through the techniques of linguistic learning. The practical significance of the study is that the perception of academic language will allow students of the philological direction to implement their skills in various social spheres, which may require historical language research and be predominantly fundamental.

Muslim Integration and the Hijabi Monologues Ireland

In 2012 and 2013, two productions of the Hijabi Monologues, an American theatre project featuring the stories of Muslim women, were staged in Ireland. This essay considers their relationship to state-sponsored and community-led interculturalism during the Celtic Tiger and post-Tiger years. Both productions centred on the act of storytelling and tended to downplay xenophobia, instead enacting the type of feel-good intercultural exchange that has dominated Irish and European integration efforts since the late 1990s. At the same time, the 2013 production, on which the essay focuses, employed coalition-building strategies borrowed from the field of migrant activism, thereby ensuring Muslim involvement throughout the production process. The Hijabi Monologues Ireland furnishes a snapshot of a transitional moment in Irish intercultural programming when the state-funded projects of the Celtic Tiger era were giving way to migrant-led initiatives. By examining the production's artistic process, community participation, and funding streams, the essay assesses its successes and shortcomings in addressing the complex challenges of Muslim integration.

THE NEED TO REVIEW CULTURAL POLICIES IN BULGARIA

Cultural policy guarantees freedom of expression, creates conditions for equal participation in the cultural life of the country, preserves and promotes the culture of different ethnic groups and religions, supports education, intercultural exchange and expands intercultural communication. In this context, the influence of European cultural policies on national ones is of particular importance for the development of art and the preservation of cultural values. The choice of priorities, goals and tasks, a good set of measures, funding mechanisms, accessibility to citizens, their recognition by society are of particular importance and favors the development of culture. In the context of the social isolation caused by COVID-19, cultural policies need to be updated. This report is based on an analysis of statistics relating to the expenditure on culture and the arts at the European and national level, a comparative analysis of European cultural policies and their impact on national ones. The obtained results outline guidelines for the development of cultural policies at the regional level and can be a basis for practical application and further research in this direction.

Power, Politeness and Liquid Persona

This article explores pre-service English teachers’ self-reflections as participants in online intercultural exchange (VE). The aim is twofold: to examine participants’ perceptions of intercultural experiences in response to VE; and, to understand whether and how teacher trainees gain pedagogical insights through self-reflection situated in a cross-cultural online project. The study draws upon two iterations of exploratory research in a VE-project carried out with two cohorts of student groups. The first cycle involved students in Indonesia and Sweden, and the second cycle, a three-way collaboration, involved students in Argentina, Poland and Sweden. This article focuses on the Swedish side and examines empirical data incorporating e-diaries and interviews. A qualitative transcript analysis generated three intersecting themes: language and power, politeness, and participation through digital tools. Two theoretical constructs provide the analytical lens: persona (Hinrichsen & Coombs, 2014) and liquid interculturality (Dervin & Dirba, 2006). The findings challenge fixed notions of identity and interculturality, showing how participants engage in negotiations and fluid constructions of persona in response to perceived expectations of their interlocutors. The findings also indicate affordances of VE as a lingua franca contact zone in developing pre-service English teachers’ self-awareness and pedagogical competences.