Bringing the critical into doctoral supervision: What can we learn from debates about epistemic justice and the languaging of research?

In this article, we discuss how, as supervisors in largely Anglophone university contexts in England, we are trying to develop supervisory practices informed by the discussions of epistemic (in)justice and the languaging of research. Having rehearsed these discussions, and considered the opportunities provided by research integrity policy formulations in our context, we conceptualise doctoral supervision critically, interculturally, and ecologically. We then report our efforts to shape the supervisory agenda so that, in the local spaces available to us, the shaping influences of the epistemic and linguistic in the wider research environment are problematised. In particular, we focus on two strands of our thinking, namely: a) the implications of epistemic hierarchies and the value of an intercultural ethic for the transknowledging at the heart of doctoral research; and b) the role of language(s) in research and the value of a translingual researcher mindset. In both strands, our thinking has moved from a more instrumental to a more critical stance regarding research, researcher thinking, and supervision. This development highlights some of the complexities involved in developing critical intercultural praxis for doctoral supervision. We conclude with recommendations—aimed at all those involved in doctoral supervision—to facilitate a critical intercultural supervisory culture.

Online intercultural dialogue amongst student teachers from seven countries: a study of IPC global discussions

This article shares qualitative analysis of online discussion threads between student teachers in seven countries. The student teachers engaged together online to share intercultural perspectives and experiences on a range of topics of relevance to education systems, policy, teacher education, and childhood. In 2017, participating countries were: Australia, Bulgaria, Germany, Japan, Spain, Sweden, and the USA. Through the process of discussing and documenting diverse cultural and educational practices ‐ for example the age children start school, the involvement of parents in education, uniforms, daily routines, inclusion, and technology ‐ student teachers reflected on values, beliefs, traditions and aspirations. Findings relate to intercultural communication and intercultural praxis. Thematic analysis of 675 posts identified a range of open and closed discourses, and three intercultural positions. The conclusion of the study is that online engagement provides a sustainable and accessible strategy to enrich interculturality in teacher education.

Interculturalism and Responsive Reflexivity in a Settler Colonial Context

This article explores interculturalism in Australia, a nation marked by the impact of coloniality and deep colonising. Fostering interculturalism—as a form of empathic understanding and being in good relations with difference—across Indigenous and non-Indigenous lived experiences has proven difficult in Australia. This paper offers a scoping of existing discourse on interculturalism, asking firstly, ‘what is interculturalism’, that is, what is beyond the rhetoric and policy speak? The second commitment is to examine the pressures that stymy the articulation of interculturalism as a broad-based project, and lastly the article strives to highlight possibilities for interculturalism through consideration of empathic understandings of sustainable futures and land security in Australia. Legislative land rights and land activism arranged around solidarity movements for sustainable futures are taken up as the two sites of analysis. In the first instance, a case is made for legislative land rights as a form of coloniality that maintains the centrality of state power, and in the second, land activism, as expressed in the campaigns of Seed, Australia’s first Indigenous youth-led climate network and the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, are identified as sites for plurality and as staging grounds for intercultural praxis.