Conference Agenda

Education plays a crucial role in shaping the lives of children and youth, providing them with a meaningful, integrative and productive foundation that positively impacts their social engagement, health and overall well-being. However, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted this essential aspect of development as schools closed and transitioned to digitally-based homeschooling. While this situation affected all students, it posed additional challenges for many children and youth from refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds (CYRAS) (Fazel et al., 2012).

Throughout the pandemic, people from forced migration backgrounds were specially labeled as ‘hard to reach’ by health authorities, and they were more severely affected by the virus compared to other groups (Diaz, 2021; Orderud et al., 2021). Despite these challenges, there is a lack of studies or evidence examining whether special educational interventions were implemented for CYRAS or how the pandemic impacted their education in the Nordic countries (Baker et al. 2018). Therefore, it is crucial to investigate whether official strategies were in place and how the Nordic countries addressed the educational needs of CYRAS during and after the pandemic.

Our study aims to describe and compare official strategies, including policy documents, guidelines, and prescriptions at national and regional levels for disseminating information and implementing measures targeting children, youth, and families during and after the pandemic, across the participating countries.

The project Erasmus+ KAIII “Co-created Education through Social Inclusion” (COSI.ed) is carried out from 2021 to 2024 in five European countries: Norway, Denmark, Poland, Spain and Portugal. COSI.ed aims to develop a comprehensive model and a political strategy for social inclusion of pupils at risk of social exclusion and dropout throughout Europe (https://cosied.eu/). The model builds on the understanding that educational staff and the students co-create as part of a community of practice.

A central component of the COSI.ed project is the Collaborative Competence Groups (CCG), which follow the project and provide input throughout the whole project. Each country has established a national CCG consisting of 2-3 pupils, 1 higher education student, 1 policy maker, 1 teacher, 1 researcher and 1 CCG facilitator. The aim of these groups is to work synergistically with all group members in contribution to running, developing, implementing, and evaluating the project. The group members are representatives of relevant stakeholders in the project. The CCG members are working together building on individual experience and competence, to raise the experiential knowledge in the project. The CCG meets three times a year during a four-year period. The national CCGs contribute in identifying needs and planning of the upscaling of the COSI. ed model. They provide feedback on the model, make suggestions for the revision of the model and make recommendations for the final model. Moreover, the group contributes to discussions and policy recommendations. The national CCG contributes to the COSI.ed model being developed in line with the national context.

COSI.ed also includes an overarching international CCG including representatives from the national CCGs. These meetings with pupils, teachers, policy makers, researchers, higher education students, and researchers from Denmark, Poland , Spain , Portugal and Norway have participated in these online meetings. The goal of these meetings is to have an international exchange of experiences within the project. Moreover, these international meetings contribute to discussion and recommendations to the international aspects of the project.

COSI.ed has a collaborative and co-creational design with stakeholders’ participation in the development and implementation of a model for inclusion and policy development. COSI.ed is the first project to use CCGs on such a large scale. CCGs have been used as a research tool in other studies mainly within mental health- and school research (Klevan, 2017 and Krane, 2016). This approach is inspired by a participatory research tradition (Borg, Karlsson, Kim, & McCormack, 2012). Co-creation involves all stakeholders in collaborative processes, embedded in the participants’ everyday life and collaboration with people in this context (Borg, Karlsson, Kim, & McCormack, 2012). Thus, the research tradition is placed within a social constructivist paradigm. In line with this paradigm knowledge is developed and negotiated in discourses between people in the social world, social relations, and practices (Krane, Klevan & Sommer, 2021). In this tradition knowledge is regarded as something that is created and developed in contexts rather than being “one truth” that we could grasp or discover. Active youth involvement is central in this research approach (Krane et al, 2021). At an organisational level, changes in power dynamics between care providers and children have been reported when youth are involved in such processes. At a community level, youth involvement has been found to promote intergenerational dialogues between children / youth and adults (Shamrowa & Cummings, 2017). The power relations between the participants in collaborative research is also central in a collaborative approach. A pitfall in such approaches is that there is no redistribution of power, and the so-called youth involvement becomes tokenism (Hart,1992). Both opportunities and these challenges will be discussed.

This study explores the adoption of an intercultural approach to the practice of English language teaching within the context of the public policy of Saudi Vision 2030 (SV30).

Recognising the growing role of English as a global language and its place and influence on the growth and advancement of Saudi Arabia’s economy through education (Al-Seghayer, 2011), the Saudi government has recently launched a strategic development plan called Saudi Vision 2030 (SV30). Within this public policy, the Human Capability Development Program of SV30 focuses explicitly on developing the ‘values of global citizenship’ while highlighting the need for globally competitive citizens (HCDP, 2020).

The idea of global citizenship introduced in the Program (HCDP, 2020) aligns with the Global Citizenship Education (GCED) concept of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development presented at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015. Related to GCED are concepts encompassing education for peace, democracy, human rights, and a commitment to social justice, emphasising critical thinking and responsible participation (Osler & Vincent, 2002, p. 2).

The role of English teachers thus becomes crucial in developing their students’ sense of global citizenship, given the dominant position of the language they teach. Furthermore, recognising that language teaching inherently involves cultural integration, there have been international recommendations advocating for the infusion of the intercultural dimension into second/foreign language classrooms (Brown, 2007). Since grasping specific cultural aspects and traits is essential to language proficiency (Kramsch, 1993), if teachers fail to adopt an intercultural approach, they effectively hinder their students’ future opportunities. In the current globalised context, to foster a more comprehensive intercultural approach, scholars propose shifting from a narrow ‘national’ paradigm, where only the target culture is considered and contrasted against the home culture, to a broader perspective. It follows that an intercultural approach to language teaching aligns with the overarching goal of cultivating globally competent students.

This study utilises Baker’s three levels of Intercultural Awareness [ICA] (Baker, 2015, p. 163) to examine the extent to which an intercultural approach is adopted in classroom practice. It investigates how teachers develop their perceptions of ICA and whether this affects their teaching. The following research questions were addressed:
• What are their beliefs and conceptualisations of ICA?
• What are the sources from which they derive their ICA?
• How do they incorporate ICA into their English Language Teaching practice?

To establish whether the practices and perspectives of EFL teachers in Saudi Arabia have moved beyond this paradigm, this study adopts Baker’s three levels of ICA (2015b). According to Baker (2015, p. 163), the concept of ICA can be delineated by considering the 12 elements grouped into three levels illustrated in Figure 1. These elements follow a progression, starting with a fundamental comprehension of cultural contexts in communication (Level 1: Basic Cultural Awareness), which then advances to a more complex understanding of language and culture (Level 2: Advanced Cultural Awareness), concluding with a nuanced, hybrid, and evolving understanding of cultures and languages in intercultural communication, essential for ELT in global contexts (Level 3: Intercultural Awareness).

Significantly, ICA holds direct relevance for English users in global contexts, particularly in expanding circles such as Saudi Arabia. At Level 3, national cultures are just one of many orientations and resources that individuals interacting may draw upon and construct in communication (Baker 2012, p. 63).