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Intercultural Education
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Intercultural education: theory and practice

David Coulby
a a

Bath Spa University,

Available online: 20 Nov 2006

To cite this article: David Coulby (2006): Intercultural education: theory and practice, Intercultural Education, 17:3, 245-257 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14675980600840274

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Intercultural Education, Vol. 17, No. 3, August 2006, pp. 245257

Intercultural education: theory and practice

David Coulby*
Bath Spa University
d.coulby@bathspa.ac.uk DavidCoulbyEducation 000000August 2006 3 17 2006 & Francis Original Article 1467-5986 Francis Ltd Intercultural 10.1080/14675980600840274 CEJI_A_183962.sgm Taylor and (print)/1469-8439 (online)

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The paper examines the theoretical position of intercultural educational studies. It begins by stressing the vital importance of intercultural education and the progress that has been made in recent times. It then turns to the terminological shift that occurred two decades ago, from multicultural to intercultural education, which was accepted unquestioningly at the time. Retrospectively, we might ask what was the discursive strategy of this lexical change. Did it not serve to disguise the realities of much cultural interaction: conquest, slave trade, genocide? What are the theoretical (as distinct from the moral) premises of intercultural education? Is the aspiration realistically for an education able to negotiate between cultures rather than to show that there is more than one culture? As the subject appears not to be tightly focused, so the context is also undertheorized and effectively de-politicized. The international political, economic and cultural contextualization (globalization) of intercultural education is essential to its understanding. Is there an international view of intercultural education, or is it rather a few paradigmatic examples? The paper shows how the development of a social sciences and comparative perspective might assist the theoretical deficit suggested above.

Introduction To adapt Wells, human history is increasingly a race between intercultural education and disaster. In the past decade, the tensions and violence on the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem have spread to western cities such as New York, Madrid and London. Fear and distrust of foreigners have informed electoral decisions in at least the Netherlands and Denmark. Xenophobia was surely one of the voices informing the rejection of the European Union (EU) constitution in France and the Netherlands. Protestant fundamentalism in the USA is insidiously linked to extreme political and religious positions in Israel. Japans twentieth century colonizations of China and Korea are increasingly a matter for current distrust rather than gradual reconciliation. International organizations have proved useless against the destruction of Grozny or
*Bath Spa University, Newton Park, Bath, UK. E-mail: d.coulby@bathspa.ac.uk ISSN 1467-5986 (print)/ISSN 1469-8439 (online)/06/03024513 2006 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14675980600840274

246 D. Coulby the genocide in Darfur. Current affairs are all too easily conceptualized as a war on terror or a clash of civilizations. In this context the need to recognize, tolerate and, at best, understand cultures other than that of the state into which people are born has never been more vital. An understanding of the role played by Islam in preserving much of European classical wisdom, say, or of the role of the UK in the slave trade and colonization of Africa, seem never more vital in ensuring some balance in the understanding of urban and international affairs. In stressing the importance of interculturalism, it is clear that this is not one aspect of educational provision. Interculturalism is not a subject which can be given timetable time alongside all the others, nor is it appropriate to one phase of education only. Interculturalism is a theme, probably the major theme, which needs to inform the teaching and learning of all subjects. It is as important in medicine as in civics, in mathematics as in language teaching. Similarly, it is just as vital at university as it is in the kindergarten. If education is not intercultural, it is probably not education, but rather the inculcation of nationalist or religious fundamentalism. The theorization of intercultural education, then, is not simply a matter of normative exhortation, of spotting good practice in one area and helping to implement it in another. It involves the reconceptualization of what schools and universities have done in the past and what they are capable of doing in the present and the future. The intercultural theorist needs to be able to draw on a range of histories, contexts and practices and put one alongside another in order to facilitate understanding and, potentially, development. It is with this complex task that this paper is largely concerned. Since the paper takes a critical stance towards the current position of intercultural educational theorizing, it is an appropriate corrective to begin by stressing what has in recent times, say the last thirty years, been achieved. Most noticeable perhaps is the spread of interest in intercultural education to many more states. This is particularly the case in Europe, where political developmentsthe fall of the Berlin Wall, the break-up of the Soviet Union, the expansion of the EUhave gone alongside the awakening of theoretical and educational interest. Furthermore, interculturalism now informs the mainstream discourse on education in a way that it certainly did not do in the recent past. In a growing number of states, intercultural considerations inform educational policy-making on a large range of topics. Even more widely, it is evident that the implementation of intercultural awareness has heightened an awareness of racism in some societies and that this has informed policy in areas as diverse as policing and child adoption. Some states remain apparently untouched by intercultural education and, in others, much remains to be done, but a start has undoubtedly been made. The terminological shift from multicultural to intercultural education, which occurred rather swiftly over twenty years ago, was accepted at the time unquestioningly and apparently without hesitation. The shift coincided, either side of 1980, with an attack on multicultural education from two directions. First, the familiar nationalist concern that school practices and knowledge should embody those of the state and only the state in terms of language(s), religion, culture or values, according to the context. Secondly, from a more pluralist position, the concern that

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Intercultural education: theory and practice 247 multicultural education did not sufficiently directly address issues of racism and that it offered only a tokenistic understanding of non-dominant knowledge, denigrating cultural difference to the study of samosas, saris and steel bands (Mullard, 1980). While the terminological shift did not resolve these two sets of concerns, it seemed to offer a fresh start and one less influenced by the previously dominant and self-contained theory and practice emanating from the USA and the UK. The title of the (now re-named) journal, European Journal of Intercultural Studies, perhaps embodied this attempt at re-centring. Retrospectively, it might be asked what was the discursive strategy of this lexical change from multicultural to intercultural. Was it simply the need to begin anew, to provide a positive presentation of the subject? And without leaning too heavily on the semiotics of one word, what are the connotations of Intercultural? Does it not serve to disguise the historical realities of most cultural interaction? Far from positive intercultural reciprocity or hybridity, these have been much more commonly characterized by conquest, slave trades, imperialism and genocide. Has anyone ever set out the theoretical (as distinct from the moral) premises of intercultural education? This remains a field of study where the normative and the prescriptive are of overwhelming importance. Its taken for granted assumptions (it would be invidious to give references here but consider the papers in Intercultural Education and its predecessor over the last twenty years, including those of the author) link it to other areas of forward-thinking education policy: human rights, gender equality, progressive pedagogy. It is one of the contentions of this paper that the wide acceptance within the discourse of these normative concerns serves to distract from fundamental theoretical weaknesses. Of course, intercultural education, like urban education and multicultural education, each in their day, can be seen as a radical movement which has been suborned by more conservative power structures as it has moved into the centre of policy-making. The importance of context Is the aspiration of intercultural education realistically for an education able to negotiate between cultures rather than to show that there is more than one culture? In Finland, Swedish remains the first compulsory foreign language, representing in policy terms the presence of Swedish speakers in (not only) the Aaland Islands (Lindblad & Popkewitz, 1999). This policy then is intercultural: it allows pupils access to each others culture: it asserts the primacy of both groups to the formation of the nation. But what of the Saami speakers in the north and in the cities? Their languages are by no means part of the compulsory curriculum for either Finnish or Swedish speakers. And what of the languages and cultures of more recent immigrant groups to the cities of Finland? Take the current wave of Russian migrant workers: can Russian be taught to their children in the schools of Helsinki? Will other Finnish children learn Russian? Will they learn important aspects of Russian history and culture? The Russian example, of course, is not entirely innocent. The history of colonialism and warfare between the two countries would lead to some complex

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248 D. Coulby curricular decision-making. Russias history of serfdom and emancipation, of Revolution and the Great Patriotic War, of Soviet gulags and disintegration, would need a notable amount of classroom time if it were to be handled seriously. Its literary, musical and artistic culture might threaten to dwarf other achievements of the Baltic region. Can intercultural education in Finland teach pupils and students to negotiate between all these cultures? The proposition is unrealistic in the extreme. Of course this is not an exclusively Finnish dilemma: similar levels of complexity can be found in Belfast or Bilbao, in Sarajevo or Daugavpils. An assumption of an unrealistic normative inclusiveness, then, is one of the fundamental theoretical weaknesses of intercultural education. There is a too ready assumption that the ideal educational policy or curriculum is known and that stubborn policy-makers are the ones who refuse to implement it. The problematic of the analysis of educational policy formulation in highly diverse areas requires more than exhortation about what should be done. To point to a second weakness might also be to offer a way forward. Is our understanding of intercultural education limited by being perceived within states or cities (that is within systems)? The unit of analysis of intercultural education rarely strays across the borders of states. Is there an international or even regional (Baltic, Mediterranean, Balkan, European, Pacific) view of intercultural education (Cowen, 1997), or is it rather that a few paradigmatic examples (the Netherlands plus the USA and UK still) are pulled in by way of tokenistic comparators whatever state or sub-state is being considered? There appears to be surprisingly little comparative intercultural education (though see Gundara, 2000). There have indeed been suggestions that intercultural education is in some ways replacing comparative education. Certainly, the one seems to have risen as the other declined in terms of, at least, university departments, modes and topics of student enquiry, research funding, international conference attendance and academic publication. Might the apparently moribund area of comparative education yet have something to offer intercultural education? One contribution from comparative education might be a sensitivity to the detail of context. There is, all too often, no sense of even a particular starting point for much intercultural educational discourse. This might comprise initially an audit. Some sense of the wider context, if even only within-state, is surely essential to any understanding of intercultural education. You wish to submit a paper to Intercultural Education on Albanian language teaching in supplementary schools in Athens. An excellent topic. But before your readers can get to grips with it, they need to understand the complexity of the context you are researching. There are Albanians in Greece. These might be Greek-born from Athens or Epirus; economic migrants from Albania, Kosovo or Macedonia; political migrants from these three states. In all cases they may speak Greek or Albanian or both (or even, very rarely, neither). They may be Islamic or Greek Orthodox. There are a range of complex and contested historical reasons for their presence in Greece, dating back at least to the resistance to Ottoman conquest. The audit is not simple, then, nor are the boundaries of the selected region. It is not possible to talk about Athens as separate from its

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Intercultural education: theory and practice 249 Balkan location or its Ottoman legacy and subsequent liberation. These are not luxury items in the readers understanding of your research: they are sine qua non. Without this context, the research becomes of limited usefulness, since the reader is unable to assess the extent to which the findings might be applicable in other settings. More than that, the contexts of intercultural education are intrinsic to the topic itself. Where a paper does not give the reader access to one of the worlds intercultural contexts, it avoids the opportunity to widen the understanding and knowledge of the subject. It may be that comparative education can help with both the terms and the units of analysis here. Within the comparative discourse, there is a long, if far from triumphant, record of attempting to understand and classify group differences within states and beyond (Hans, 1958). In a systematic consideration of context, it is essential to reassert the importance of history in the understanding of contemporary phenomena. Education for conformity and resistance, for nation building and nation destruction has been an important component of cultural activity in the Balkan Peninsula since at least the period of the Enlightenment (Mazower, 2001; Xochellis & Toloudi, 2001). Intercultural education would then acknowledge the historical and contemporary conflicts for religious, linguistic and political hegemony. The teaching of Albanian in schools in Athens is not separate from these conflicts: it is indeed one critical, partisan component within them (Flouris, 1998; Koliopoulos & Veremis, 2002; Michas, 2002;; Couloumbis et al., 2003 Paleologou, 2004; Waterfield, 2004; Zambeta, 2005). It is not only the immediate context but the wider framework that is too often under-theorized and effectively de-politicized. Demographic movement is at the centre of much (though by no means all) intercultural education. Demographic movement results from national, and increasingly international, economic, political and cultural forces. These forces may be expressed, for the sake of brevity, as globalization. Other forms of inter-group differentiation and inequality (not necessarily connected with demographic movement) such as exploitation, imperialism, ethnic cleansing and neo-colonialism also operate within a wider social context which may be characterized as globalization (Burbules & Torres, 2000; Stromquist & Monkman, 2000; Coulby & Zambeta, 2005). If the educational experiences of Kosovo refugee children in South London, say, are to be understood, these contextual aspects cannot be ignored. To put it another way: to the extent to which the context of globalization is overlooked, intercultural education will have de-politicized its subject matter and, despite its progressive normative position, it will illserve both its subjects and wider social understanding. To depoliticize intercultural education is to cut it off from many of the possibilities of political action and redress. Intercultural education needs to develop a discourse which can move from the global forces that have brought NATO troops into Pristina to the intricacies of a teenage boy learning English in the prejudicially framed school and society of London (Bash & Zezlina-Phillips, 2006). Again, it may be that comparative education has some background in the development of precisely this kind of discourse or is at least aware of the discursive difficulties presented by social phenomena at this level of complexity (Carnoy, 1974).

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250 D. Coulby Theorizing politics and culture The unfolding of US military monopolarity and the evolution of global conflict for the control of hydrocarbons have immediate and overwhelming impacts on patterns of interculturalism. Perceptions of Islam and Islamic people have been shaped and shaken by the war on terror. (This is not exclusively a tabloid issue: consider the apparently academicbut actually racist and imperialisticclash of civilizations notion.) Neither the conflict nor the perceptions are limited to the Middle East. The conflict in the West Bank and Jerusalem and the USUK military occupation of Iraq are issues of bitter, daily reference throughout the Islamic and the Arab worlds. Wherever Islamic children and young people are educated, in Brussels, Karachi or Thrace, these issues are part of their consciousness and thus part of the global context of intercultural education. In the main, these elements of identity and global group solidarity will take precedence far in advance of any benevolent, normative notions of interculturalism. While an argument can be made that the school should be a neutral zone, free of conflict (which may of course imply, in France and Turkey, free of religious symbols and manifestation), this cannot mean that either teachers or researchers can reduce their understanding of the contested global forces actually operant on identity formation. These contemporary conflicts are central to the evolution of intercultural education: unpicking the self-interest and blatant militarism in Washington, Moscow and Jakarta that underpin the war on terror, and the relation of these to the different patterns of colonialism, decolonization and neocolonialism is central to the enterprise of intercultural education (Harvey, 2003). Like all discourses, intercultural education has its own literature and frames of reference. The reviewers of papers submitted to Intercultural Education quite rightly must address whether each submission is grounded in the known literature. Again, like other discourses, however, there is a risk that this known literature can be perceived in too narrow a focus. Are researchers in intercultural education sufficiently cognizant of current developments in economics, political studies or history? In Chinese Central Asia is the vast province of Xin Jiang (Tyler, 2004). That this area is part of the Peoples Republic is almost a historical accident: its domination by China across the millennia had been intermittent, but its occupation coincided with the consolidation of the Westphalian state system in this region in the middle of the nineteenth century. It contains a wide diversity of people, many of them Islamic and many speaking Turkic languages. The politics of this region concern Beijings insecure grasp of the indigenous population and spasmodic (and largely unreported) resistance to its control. Here, as in Tibet, a policy has been to encourage mass immigration by Han Chinese so that in many places, especially urban areas, they outnumber the Islamic population (Fewsmith, 2001; Nathan & Gilley, 2003; Roberts, 2003; Terrill, 2003). The economics of Xin Jiang inevitably involve mineral wealth and the possibility of oil and gas reserves. This has an impact on the politics of the whole of Central Asia and makes it a region of potentially international conflict as Russia and America compete to build influence and military bases in the former Soviet states, US and UK troops occupy Afghanistan, and the network of

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Intercultural education: theory and practice 251 proposed fuel pipelines begins to emerge. The point here is obviously linked to the earlier one about context, but the emphasis here is on the wider political, economic and historical literature and theory that are needed to understand developments in such a complex and conflicted region. To understand education in Xin Jiang (Dong, 1997; Tawakkul, 1999), it would be necessary to draw on a complex range of literature and theory in order that this context should be understood in the widest terms. Similarly, concerning the extent of reference of intercultural education, how far outside academic publications are researchers able to extend to oral history or to literature, art and culture? Kadares novels offer an insight into conflicts in Albania (Kadare, 2003a, b) beyond the reach of academic writing. Pamuks novels provide an insight into the profound complexity of identity formation in contemporary Turkey within the conflict between Kemalism and political Islam (Pamuk, 1995, 2004). Artistic and cultural exhibitions are often interventions in intercultural education made by states, major museums and corporate sponsors. They provide an opportunity to frame the discourse on how different cultures, and indeed states, are perceived. The exhibition Turks at the Royal Academy in London in 2004 provides a contentious example (Roxburgh, 2005). With the support of the Turkish government and the Topkapi (to say nothing of the Garanti Bank, Aygaz and Corus), this exhibition presented Turkish culture as stretching way beyond Anatolia and Istanbul (Findley, 2005). It offered a version of Turkey, including the Ottoman Empire, as a richly cultured part of European history. The fall of Constantinople and the conquest of the Balkans were airbrushed out of this picture, which provided the appropriate frontispiece for UK support for Turkish membership of the EU in the subsequent, vital negotiations. The study of intercultural education, of the Kurds in Eastern Anatolia, say, needs to be wide in its references both to academic work and to culture itself. If this width can be achieved, it could seriously enrich what academics are able to offer to their students and teachers to their pupils. Culture is politically defined and politics are culturally defined. The analysis of examples such as those in this paragraph may provide insights into the processes and consequences of these definitions. It may provide the discursive strategy within which these definitions can be challenged, widened and reformulated. The interplay between culture and politics and the vulnerability of both to the forces of globalization form the basis of the exacerbating conflicts of the twenty-first century. Even in the cases of conflicts over heightening water and hydrocarbon shortages, cultural and nationalistic rhetorics are being used to disguise the nature of the clashes. In providing insights into these processes and rhetorics, or in concealing them beneath a nationalist or fundamentalist agenda, schools and universities are major participants in these conflicts. The presentation of contemporary events in Africa tends to provide a muscular but often unacknowledged background to the understanding of intercultural education. The perception of corruption and inefficiency in sub-Saharan Africa on the one hand or of the re-emergence of political vitality in South Africa on the other provide alternative discursive strategies for both racism and interculturalism. The choice of emphasis between these alternatives influences attitudes and policies towards black people in and beyond Africa. Narratives of conflicts in Liberia and Sudan are all too

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252 D. Coulby readily racially inscribed. In the UK, current outrage against the mistreatment of (especially the white segment of) the population of Zimbabwe contrast with apparent unconcern about the widespread killing of civilians by American forces in the central, Sunni area of Iraq. Intercultural education cannot remain sidelined in the opposition between alternative discourses of colonialism. What is taught in schools and universities in Europe and Africa about the slave trade and imperialism can reproduce or begin to break down overlapping patterns of cultural, economic and political exploitation. The international political, economic and cultural contextualization (globalization) of intercultural education is then intrinsic to its own discourse. Again, the concern of this paper is to widen the terms of the discourse of intercultural education to include contemporary patterns of neo-colonialism and Orientalism. In the aftermath of terrorist attacks in Madrid and London, it is essential to try to balance the facile presentation of all Islamic states as being identical with the Taliban. Understanding fully another culture is probably impossible for most people. Those fortunate and diligent enough to be brought up in more than one language or those who take the time and trouble to acquire additional languages probably have the best chance. Despite the brilliant efforts of translators, language stands as a major obstacle between the Anglophone and a full appreciation of the Greek poetry of Cavafy. Language, culture and education itself inevitably limit the understanding that Europeans can grasp of Japan or Japanese of Europe. Translations of literature, history, legal and policy documents put the researcher at one remove from the subject. Illustrations and videos of buildings, artworks and artefacts provide a similar level of alienation. It is the boldness of the aspiration to understand more than one culture and how they mutually inter-relate, however, that might characterize intercultural education at all levels. Certainly, this will involve a recognition of the difficulty, even impossibility, of the enterprise, but it will also assert the necessity of the attempt, if gateways are to be made through the barriers of language and distance. It is worth noting the low priority which intercultural education gives to consideration of higher education. The discourse of intercultural education is overwhelmingly concerned with schooling. When universities are considered at all, it is largely within the framework of positive discrimination policies (and is based mainly on US literature). The role of universities in the reproduction of social, cultural and economic hierarchy is scarcely visible to the current conceptualization of intercultural education nor is the importance of the extent to which this hierarchy is increasingly internationalized (van Rooijen et al., 2003). The role of university science and medicine in reproducing local and international stratification and the differential distribution of academic success in these subjects between groups may well be commonplace. But at least as important is the world view reproduced in these degree programmes (not to mention others such as the MBA) in which humanity and nature are seen as exploitable by scientific knowledge and in which western knowledge is perceived as intrinsically superior to that produced in any other culture. Similarly, the spread of English as a foreign language in universities and, in an increasing number of European states, as a language of instruction (Swedish Ministry of Education and

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Intercultural education: theory and practice 253 Science, 1997) has implications not only for the reproduction of global stratification but also for the survival of academic, and ultimately cultural, plurality in the new world order. University teaching in a language other than that of the state would certainly obviate the cultural barriers asserted above to be almost unbreachable. On the other hand, it raises issues of cultural authenticity and survival where English replaces the state language(s) sometimes in the home as well as the workplace. Theorising relativism and absolutism Cultural relativism might have provided some theoretical underpinning for intercultural education. In practice, this has scarcely happened, nor have writers within this discourse hurried to embrace the (now surely passing) phase of postmodernist analysis. In terms of understanding the economic and epistemological roots of prejudice, it is possible that these approaches, as manifested, say, in post-colonial discourse theory, might have had much to offer intercultural education. It now seems that there may be advantages in revisiting postmodernist theory in a more measured way than has previously been attempted (Coulby & Jones, 1995). Within intercultural education, there seems to be a divide between those who hold to some moral, epistemological and even political certainties and those for whom everything is relative. On the one hand, Enlightenment rationality (or perhaps Renaissance humanism) provides a set of axioms for understanding issues as important as knowledge and legalities (rights): Hume, Kant and Jefferson or, if you prefer, Montaigne, Castiglione and Shakespeare. On the other hand, there is the relativistic insistence on no one true way for either knowledge or policy and the postmodern impatience with the category of rights. This polarity or, at least, discursive conflict, might provide another way of addressing the perceived theory deficit within intercultural education. The inclusion of biblical biology (intelligent design) at the expense of Darwin in school curricula in both the USA and the UK has made it more difficult for intercultural commentators to insist that the value claims of all versions of science are relative. The perpetuation and reproduction of falsehood has encouraged a less relativistic approach to truth. Similarly, recent experience of imprisonment without trial in both these states and of the torture and murder of prisoners by at least one might convince postmodernists that equality before the law is a right worth protecting. Unfortunately, this does not resolve all areas of political relativism: the assumption of the superiority of bicameral democracy, for instance, and its appropriateness in all cultural contexts, remains open to question. The dichotomy between relativism and a more committed approach may, however, not be utterly irreconcilable. The discourse of intercultural education needs to be reinforced by a persistent awareness that the struggle between these relativities and absolutes informs all aspects of theory and policy. The need for collaborative research and writing is self-evident here, perhaps even for collaborative writing that goes beyond the consensual. There has been little meeting of minds in intercultural education for the last twenty-five years between those who see culture and politics in totally relative terms and those who have an absolute version of knowledge and/or

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254 D. Coulby rights (which unfortunately, all too often, carries with it normative and cultural absolutes). It is highly unlikely that this difference can be readily resolved. It does, however, need to be explicitly addressed. All this, of course, is not merely theoretical. The concept of an accurate contextual audit described above, for instance, could readily be transferred to school or university curricula. Indeed, this paper could be entirely rewritten from the other way up, from the point of view of the learner. What should comprise the content of the school and university curricula for history, geography, civics, languages? What should be taught to children and young people about Finland, the Balkans, China, Anatolia? The point is that the terms (theoretical, lexical, discursive) in which a contextual audit of these topics might be conducted, contextualized and subsequently evaluated have been insufficiently explored in intercultural education, let alone agreed or contested.
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Theory: social sciences and comparativism This paper is pointing to theoretical weaknesses within intercultural education and using the wider social science framework as well as comparative education to show the need for more complex conceptualization, more history, more politics (indeed more culture!) and fewer norms. This is not, of course, the first time that such a critique has been offered or appeal been made to the wider social sciences framework (Gundara, 2000). In terms of approach, to summarize, social sciences and comparative education have at least two elements to offer the discourse of intercultural education: an insistence that the complexity of the social context be explored and clarified as a precursor to meaningful research; and an awareness that education is an international activity and that neither its pupils nor its subject matter can be constrained by familiar boundaries. The mainstream discourse of the social sciences provides the wider academic area within which it is possible for intercultural education to reinforce itself both thematically and theoretically. Of course this discourse is itself ever-changing and subject to fashion and fad (Marxism, critical theory, postmodernism, hybridity etc.). But it has also focused on issues that might be central to intercultural education: identity and identity politics; government and governance; transitional economies and societies; nationalism and nation construction; globalization. Intercultural education needs to link itself more firmly to these mainstream debates if it is to make an academic contribution that goes beyond the parochial. In terms of research areas, this approach might encourage the intercultural discourse into some less familiar topics:

colonialism and neo-colonialism warfare, victory and defeat hydrocarbon depletion and climate change cultural and linguistic imperialism nation-building and nationalism

Intercultural education: theory and practice 255

asymmetric bilingualism technological change and cultural homogenization inclusion and exclusion transitions and revolutions religion and secularism modernity and postmodernity globalization and the knowledge economy.

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In terms of approach and topics then, this would be one way whereby the discourse of intercultural education could begin to escape its parochialism. One of the advantages of the term multicultural is (was?) that it had a clear opposite, monoculturalism. Interculturalism appears to have no opposite, no enemy. The comparative process of putting one culture, curricular system, educational policy alongside anotherwithout any relative judgement or assumptions of superiority serves to give insights into the illuminations and limitations of each. An evaluation of previous strategies of judgement and of assumptions of superiority, as in post-colonial discourse theory, can only enhance this process. Interculturalism, then, is by nature wide-ranging, comparativist and international. The act of juxtaposition allows for contrasts to be noted, omissions and inclusions to be remarked. This is not, by any means, a matter of attempting formally to compare education, or some aspect of it, in Peru with that in Bulgaria. Rather, it is a matter of being aware of a range of policies and contexts and of the international environment within which they all stand. Not that intercultural education will itself be unconflicted: the issue of political relativism highlighted above provides an example of an area where total agreement is unlikely in the immediate future. Once many artefacts (curricular systems, educational policies) are in play, however, the possibilities for inter-illumination (interculturalism) become manifold. This is unlikely to be encyclopaedic but it may be relativistic, contextualized, politically valorized and de-centred. This interplay will not of itself modify monocultural beliefs and practices. It provides, rather, a vital component in the discourse whereby monoculturalism may be meaningfully contested. The race between intercultural education and disaster is not yet lost. Acknowledgements More than most papers, this one is indebted to protracted and repeated discussions with colleagues. Thanks to Leslie Bash, Robert Cowen, Jagdish Gundara and Evie Zambeta. An earlier version was presented as Intercultural education: the theory deficit at the IAIE Conference on Diversity in Education in an International Context at Verona in 2005. Notes on contributor David Coulby is Professor of Education and Head of International Activities at Bath Spa University. Formerly, he was Dean of Education and Human Sciences in

256 D. Coulby the same institution. He has written/edited 13 books. The most recent is: (with Evie Zambeta) World yearbook of education 2005. globalisation and nationalism in education (London and New York, Routledge Falmer). References
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