Conference Agenda

The present study is part of a larger mixed-methods project conducted in Finland examining pre-service teachers’ mindsets and intercultural competences, with a specific focus on orientations toward teaching for diversity, equity and social justice. Racism and ethnocentric views persist in Finnish educational contexts, and minority students continue to face exclusion and achievement gaps (Alisaari et al., 2019; Loukola et al., 2025). Additionally, many teachers continue to hold low expectations for minority students and feel unprepared to meet their needs (Alisaari et al., 2022; Rissanen et al., 2015). While Finland’s educational systems aspire to equitable practice, everyday structural, institutional and attitudinal constraints continue to reproduce inequitable hierarchies. Addressing this requires structural reforms, as well as teacher education that can engage with the core beliefs that impact their orientations towards teaching for equity and diversity.

While the years pre-service teachers spend in teacher education are formative, they do not always lead to deep understandings of positionality in an increasingly globalized world or to changes in orientations toward diversity and equity (Timm et al., 2023). Willingness to promote equity and social justice has nevertheless been identified as a core component of teachers’ intercultural competence (Chang & Cochran-Smith, 2022).

Beliefs form the foundation of intercultural competence development, as they shape how educators engage with diversity (Rissanen et al., 2023a; Rissanen et al., 2023b). Social-psychological research on mindsets (implicit beliefs of malleability) offers a useful lens, as teacher mindsets have been linked to behavior toward students, expectations, stereotyping, and orientations toward equity and social justice (Rissanen & Kuusisto, 2023). Mindsets can be understood as core beliefs: the fundamental assumptions individuals hold about the malleability of human attributes that shape how they make sense of their social worlds (Molden et al., 2006). Individuals with a growth mindset believe that qualities and characteristics can develop, whereas those with a fixed mindset view them as largely stable (Dweck & Yeager, 2019).

Research demonstrates that fixed mindsets are associated with stronger stereotyping and more problematic intergroup relations, whereas growth mindsets are linked to greater openness to change, constructive intergroup orientations (Carr et al., 2012) and certain social justice positions (Madan et al., 2019). Current research suggests that mindset beliefs may operate as a key mechanism through which educators’ underlying assumptions about the malleability of traits, individuals and groups translate into intercultural and equity-related orientations (Rissanen & Kuusisto, 2023; Rissanen et al., 2023a).

However, the role of mindsets in intercultural competence development during teacher education remains underexplored. As classrooms across Europe and globally become increasingly diverse, teacher education is required to respond to these changes. Focusing on teachers’ core beliefs i.e mindsets can offer valuable insights into the development of intercultural competence and how such competence can be fostered in teacher education, particularly in efforts to foster equitable learning environments for all students.

This paper therefore presents a quantitative longitudinal investigation of mindsets and their role in intercultural competence development. Survey data was collected at the beginning of pre-service teachers’ studies in 2021 and again in 2024, to explore the development of these orientations over time and address the following research questions:

RQ1. What levels of mindsets, enthusiasm for teaching culturally diverse groups, and social justice beliefs do Finnish pre-service teachers report towards the end of their studies?

RQ2. To what extent are pre-service teachers’ mindsets associated with their enthusiasm for teaching culturally diverse groups and social justice beliefs?

RQ3. How do mindsets, enthusiasm for teaching culturally diverse groups, and social justice beliefs develop from the beginning to the end of teacher education, and do baseline mindsets predict changes in these orientations over time?

Service-learning has been mobilised in higher education in response to needs for deeper civic engagement and social responsibility, including concerns about democratic participation, social exclusion, and environmental challenges (Bringle & Hatcher, 1996; Mitchell, 2008). While valued, initiatives often start after key epistemic and ethical decisions are already settled: community needs are predefined, agendas externally framed, and participation oriented toward action rather than inquiry (Mitchell, 2015; Gordon, Elwood & Mitchell, 2016). Despite growing critical attention, service-learning has been critiqued for limited engagement with how voices, silences, and exclusions are epistemically and ethically configured (Fine & Torre, 2019).

Participatory mapping, where community members contribute experiences, relationships, and ideas about place to a map (Gordon, Elwood & Mitchell, 2016; Cochrane & Corbett, 2018), has been adopted in service-learning, community geography, and participatory research to address these limitations. Yet it is often used instrumentally as a technical or evaluative tool, assuming participation automatically yields visibility, empowerment, or voice (Mann & Casebeer, 2016). Critical community geography instead frames mapping as a relational, political practice through which knowledge, space, and power are negotiated. Even so, the epistemic and ethical labour that configures voice, silence, and authority remains undertheorised. We approach participatory mapping as a social justice practice that surfaces and negotiates power asymmetries in who gets to speak, be heard, and be represented

This study argues that participatory mapping, when used as the initial moment of service-learning, can function not as a representational tool but as an epistemic and ethical infrastructure through which what can be said, known, withheld, and acted upon is actively negotiated. Drawing on critical participatory mapping scholarship and affective, posthuman approaches to citizenship and education ( Zembylas, 2022), the study starts from the premise that voices do not simply pre-exist participation, and that silence, absence, and refusal are not methodological failures but meaningful outcomes of engagement. While critical service-learning has productively foregrounded power, positionality, and voice (Mitchell, 2015; Fine & Torre, 2019), it has paid less attention to the early epistemic infrastructures through which participation itself becomes structured, before relationships, agendas, and actions are co-formed.

Situated within an UNITA Alliance-funded transnational collaboration, the project brings together six partner universities in Romania, Italy, Portugal, and Spain to examine how service-learning can foster inclusive communities and democratic education under conditions of social and environmental injustice. Framed by ethics of care, critical pedagogy and restorative approaches, the collaboration treats community-engaged learning as an epistemologically inclusive practice that can enable the emergence of historically silenced narratives and contested memories. This study reports on participatory mapping as one initial practice through which listening is negotiated across diverse European sites (Stake, 2006; Flyvbjerg, 2011).

The central research question guiding the study is: How does participatory mapping, when it structures the initial conditions of service-learning, function as an epistemic and ethical practice through which voices and silences are configured, agenda-setting is negotiated, and responsibility and action are prefigured?

Empirically, we examine how early mapping practices shape what becomes representable and how silences or refusals are interpreted. Analytically, we examine how epistemic authority is enacted across participants and how these initial configurations prefigure later engagement and responsibility (Fricker, 2007; Butin, 2010; Zembylas, 2022).

Conceptually, the project focuses on how participation and knowledge are configured, rather than on mapped content or measurable outcomes (Saija et al., 2017). This enables comparative analysis across European contexts while resisting instrumental, outcome-driven accounts of service-learning (Mitchell, 2015; Fine & Torre, 2019). By foregrounding how participatory mapping configures voice, silence, and epistemic authority before action begins, the project repositions service-learning from a pedagogy of action to a practice of collective sense-making, ethical judgement, and epistemic restraint.

Play and playwork are central ideas in early childhood education and feature prominently in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programs internationally. While play can be understood as a universal human experience, much of Western scholarship on playwork continues to draw on theories, pedagogical traditions, and professional practices that have largely developed within European contexts (King & Newstead, 2020; Playwork Principles Scrutiny Group, 2005). These epistemological approaches have contributed to positioning Western constructions of play as authoritative benchmarks for how play is understood and supported (Newstead & King, 2022; Rennie, 1991). As ITE cohorts become increasingly culturally diverse, this raises important questions about how playwork is taught, whose knowledge of play is recognised, and how pre-service teachers from non-Western backgrounds experience playwork education.

This paper explores an ongoing reflexive teaching practice aimed at decolonising playwork within an ITE program at an Australian university. Building on an autobiographical book chapter that draws on 'Asia as Method' (Chen, 2010) to question Western-centric constructions of play, the study draws on data collected from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) pre-service teachers enrolled in a dedicated playwork unit. Across a term, changes are introduced to the unit to intentionally recognise diverse childhood play experiences and cultural understandings of play. Decolonising play is approached as an iterative and reflective process embedded in teaching practice, curriculum design, and engagement with CALD pre-service teachers.

Through the revised unit design and teaching approach, pre-service teachers are introduced not only to established theories of play and playwork, but also to critical perspectives that emphasise plural and culturally situated understandings of play. In addition to theoretical learning, students participate in practice-based activities, including the design and facilitation of pop-up adventure play spaces in community settings. These activities are intended to create opportunities for students to reflect on their own childhood play memories, cultural backgrounds, and assumptions about playwork, and to consider how these intersect with what is valued in formal teacher education.

The paper is guided by the following research question:

• How do decolonising approaches to playwork within Initial Teacher Education shape the understandings of play and playwork among culturally and linguistically diverse pre-service teachers?

By situating this work within the international field of early childhood education, the paper contributes to ongoing conversations about playwork, epistemic inclusion, and the role of teacher education in responding to increasingly diverse student cohorts. While grounded in an Australian context, the issues raised are relevant to European and other international ITE settings where playwork remains deeply shaped by historically Western pedagogical traditions.

Social justice and intercultural education have become central concerns in international English Language teacher education research. However, dominant approaches often remain grounded in Eurocentric epistemologies that privilege standardized accounts of practice and overlook the lived, relational, and culturally situated dimensions of educators’ work. As a result, teacher educators’ forms of knowledge, particularly those emerging from the Global South, are frequently marginalized within conventional research designs. Against this backdrop, this study seeks to answer: How decolonial and arts-based methodologies foster more situated, relational, and humanizing understandings of how teacher educators conceptualize and enact social justice within initial English language teacher education programs?

This paper presents preliminary findings from an ongoing doctoral research project conducted in initial English language teacher education in Chile, a field shaped by persistent inequalities related to language, access, and cultural representation. The study is theoreticall grounded on decolonial perspectives that challenge the coloniality of knowledge and call for pluriversal, intercultural, and relational forms of inquiry. Responding to current debates about the societal role and accountability of education research, the project conceptualizes knowledge production as collaborative, creative, and ethically grounded, recognizing participants as co-theorists rather than objects of study. Drawing on Latin American traditions of testimonios and arts-based inquiry, the research foregrounds educators’ lived experiences as legitimate epistemic resources.

Methodologically, the study follows a qualitative multi-case research design with two teacher educators. Each case integrates three complementary approaches: in-depth testimonios, classroom observations, and collaborative collage-making workshops. Rather than using these methods to triangulate toward a single truth, they work as multimodal entry points into discursive, embodied, and affective dimensions of experience, enabling forms of knowing that are often excluded from conventional interview, or survey-based studies.

Preliminary findings indicate that these participatory and creative methodologies make visible how social justice is enacted through situated, everyday pedagogical decisions rather than abstract policy commitments alone. Participants describe their work as relational and intercultural, shaped by tensions between institutional constraints, personal histories, and commitments to students and communities. The collage workshops, in particular, surface contradictions and tacit understandings that remain difficult to articulate verbally, while also fostering more horizontal and reflexive research relationships. In this way, the research process itself becomes a site of learning and collective theorizing.

The study contributes methodologically by advancing testimonios and arts-based practices as rigorous approaches for conducting socially accountable and humanizing research in teacher education. Conceptually, it broadens international debates on social justice by centering perspectives from Latin America and the Global South, offering insights that resonate beyond Chile and speak to diverse educational contexts, including European settings. By foregrounding collaborative and creative forms of knowledge production, the paper invites dialogue on how education research can better respond to contemporary social inequalities and interconnected global challenges.