Interculturality and Internationalisation in a Swedish Teacher Education Programme

The concepts of interculturality and internationalisation have gained prominence in Swedish teacher education in general. This is a direct response to intensified migration, mobility and demographic shifts in contemporary, typically Western, societies. However there remains confusion and lack of clarity about what these mean both as a policy, and in practice, given that interculturality is a polysemic concept, used in different ways in different contexts. This article explores these concepts through a case study involving document analysis (curricula, study plan, syllabi, required reading lists) in an early childhood education programme within a Swedish university. The findings are further discussed with the support of analytical concepts from the field of critical interculturality in education. The research found that even though the concepts are widely discussed in general educational discourse, they are poorly represented and problematised in the course documents.