Browsing by Subject "avarakatseisuus"

The objective of my research was to determine whether teachers' intercultural competence will develop by attending an open-mindedness enhancing CulturED seminar. Walter ry., an organization that has arranged workshops against discrimination and racism to young people, has found out that nearly half of all teachers say that native Finns cannot recognize the problems of multicultural students. Also, the experiences of teachers and students on whether teachers intervene in racism and discrimination sufficiently enough differ from one another in significant ways. To my phenomenographic case study, I selected CulturED seminar participants (N=11) of which six were teachers and five teacher students. The half-structured theme interviews were created for me to understand the level of personal intercultural competence before the participants participated the seminar. In addition, the participants were interviewed after the seminar. This interview was held to understand the nature of the immediate effects of the seminar on the development of intercultural competence by the participants. The research data was analyzed by using content analysis methods, both themes and trends. In addition, I collected feedback forms from all attendants (N=44). That allowed me to study the experiences of all participants when it comes to the seminar's effectiveness and to the teaching material that all participants received at the seminar. The results revealed that the CulturED seminar had an impact on the intercultural competence of the participants. After the seminar, a significant proportion of the participants showed a change in understanding their own prejudices, the effects of racism and discrimination, as well as their own operating models related to the themes. When it comes to the reliability of the research results, the small size of the sample and the personal interest in the content of the seminar were taken in to account. Based on the analysis of the feedback forms, it was discovered that the teachers experienced the provided teaching material useful for open-minded teaching. It also became apparent that there is a need for the CulturED seminar -like event in order to develop the skills related to diversity encounters.