Educational Responses to Ethnic Complexity in Education: Experiences from Denmark

Abstract

The chapter starts up with a short presentation of ethnic complexity in Danish context and how this complexity is conceptualized in public documents. This is followed by a short documentation of the general social marginalization and educational underachievement among ethnic minority students. The second part gives a brief theoretical presentation of the relationship between the understanding of a multicultural society with the understanding of multicultural and intercultural education. This serves as a background for the third part, which is an analysis of educational steering documents (school laws, curriculum descriptions and teacher education). The analysis demonstrates the absence of the concepts of multicultural and intercultural education in educational policies and how responses to ethnic complexity in education are based on deficit theory and the development of compensatory measures. The fourth part shows that this position is challenged by educational research and development projects at universities and university colleges and by bottom-up initiatives among teachers and head teachers in different localities that relate to central aspects of multicultural and intercultural education. The article ends up by proposing new developments in relation to the general recommendations of the International Alliance of Leading Education Institutes (IALEI) 2010.

1 Introduction

Intercultural and multicultural education is not a recognized educational perspective in official Danish educational policies in any professional understanding of the terms despite the increasing ethnic complexity in the citizenry. The reason for that is to be found in a general political rejection of interpreting the future development of Danish society in terms of a multicultural society.

However, within educational research and education, there are a number of initiatives, which address ethnic complexity in education using the concepts of intercultural and multicultural education, or who are doing research or organizing education which interact with different dimensions of multicultural or intercultural education, often with an overlapping use of concepts (Banks 2004; Gundara 2000; Batelaan 2003). The article¹ reviews the main features of the past 10 years in which assimilation policies have been even more strongly implemented.

2 Populations and Representations

2.1 Ethnic Complexity

The Danish Commonwealth (Rigsfællesskab) includes Denmark² (5, 5 mills. citizens) and two north Atlantic areas, Greenland³ (56.543 citizens) and the Faroe Islands⁴ (48.650 citizens) with distinct cultures and languages; both areas are under Danish jurisdiction but with home rule.

In Denmark there is only one recognized regional and linguistic minority, the German ethnic minority in the southern part of Jutland, with about 12–15.000 citizens.⁵ Throughout history immigrants from neighboring countries and Europe (Sweden, Norway, Poland, Holland, Germany, France, etc.) have settled in Denmark (Østergaard 2007), and of long date is the Jewish minority⁶ (sixteenth century) with about 6000 members today, and the Roma⁷ minority (sixteenth century) with about 2–4000 members today.

In the wake of the Second World War’s post-war growth and with increased international relationships Denmark has had a continued labor immigration and reception of refugees from a number of countries across the world.

Today, the number of persons with a foreign citizenship residing in Denmark has amounted to 334.768 persons from 194 different nation states, seen in relation to 5.205.473 Danish citizens (April 2010), or about 6.4 %. However, if we look at the numbers of long term residing foreigners according to place of birth or foreign descent, thereby including some of the persons who have acquired Danish citizenship, we find 548.039 citizens of foreign descent in relation to 4.992.202 born in Denmark, or about 11.0 % of the ethnic Danish population. The Jewish and Romi minorities as well as persons from Greenland and Faroe Islands are excluded from these statistics. As the top-10 listing shows people arrive from all continents.⁸

Although Denmark still has a somewhat smaller number of persons with foreign citizenship than other European countries, Denmark has empirically always been an ethnic complex society but has become so increasingly over the last years 40 years and shares this development with other European countries (Herm 2008). However, the dominating narrative about the national myth cultivates a self-image of cultural homogeneity.

2.2 Conceptualizing Ethnic Complexity

Ethnic complexity in the Danish society is statistically made up in different social categories according to geographical, linguistic, ethnic or religious markers which are used differently in different social fields. In general statistics the main distinctions are not based on citizenship, but on descent and birthplace in order to maintain a statistical distinction between ethnic Danes and immigrants and descendants ⁹ across generations.¹⁰ This construction of statistical categories is a major tool in establishing an empirical foundation for developing integration policies, i.e. the construction of objectivity and objectives. This implies ‘transitional problems’ about when you as a foreigner are finally included in the Danish population.¹¹ Further, summarized statistics subdivide the immigrant population into Western countries and ‘Non-Western countries’¹² or ‘Third Countries’.¹³ In this way ‘cultural’ distinctions and categories prevail over universal distinctions (citizenship) in conceptualizing ethnic complexity in integration policies and in the recognition of ethnic complexity as part of identity politics.

The empirical consequences are twofold. Firstly, the number of foreigners understood as non-Danish persons (a cultural concept) increases the numbers of ‘foreigners’. Secondly, on the cognitive and emotional plan social categories based on ethnic descent silently substitutes universal categories (citizenship) underpinning interpretations of belonging and non-belonging with cultural identity. In this perspective ‘neutral’ statistical categories become an active part of national identity politics. Foreigners who have obtained Danish citizenship seem never to become ‘real’ Danes, and Danes will never ‘discover’ that the national community, understood as the citizenry, has become multicultural. This way of categorizing ethnic complexity constitutes a discourse in which the meaning ascribed to the category of ‘Non-Western-countries’ is filled up with information about how persons from these countries deviate negatively from ethnic national standards. This paves the way for an ‘objectified’ racialized discourse in which social deviation is explained by ‘culture’ and not by important socio-economic categories and lack of equal opportunity in society dominated by a national culture. A social and discursive construction labeled as ‘methodological nationalism’ (Beck 2002). This article can be read as an exposure of how this operates in a Danish context and how some researchers and educators try to confront it.

When I analyze and discuss data, positions and relations in different contexts, I use the distinctions ‘the ethnic majority’ or ‘ethnic Danes’ about the national majority, and ‘ethnic minority/minorities’ about non-Danish ethnic groups. I employ this linguistic practice for two interconnected reasons:

• 1. The term and concept ‘ethnicity’ (and related words) is a professional anthropological term in order to indicate a cultural distinction or a cultural belonging in a universalized manner; we are all identifiable in relation to different ethnicities,¹⁴ both majorities and minorities.

• 2. This gives a discursive possibility to identify and negotiate relations between different ethnic groups (minorities and majorities) on a meta-level and apply general principles from liberal philosophical thought (equality) in relation to the nation state in terms of citizenship and ethnic minority rights in different social fields (Parekh 2000; May 2001).

3 Ethnic Complexity and Marginalization

3.1 Age

The ethnic minorities and their descendants contribute positively to the younger segments of the population.¹⁵ The age groups 15–29 years constitute about 27 % of their population, whereas these groups only constitute about 17 % of the ethnic Danish population. Similarly, the post-65 years’ groups constitute only about 7 % of the ethnic minorities, whereas these groups constitute about 17 % of the ethnic Danish population.

3.2 Geographic Distribution and Housing

The ethnic minorities are scattered widely across the country with concentrations in and around bigger cities and industrial sites with about 47, 2 % concentrated in the ten biggest cities. The majority of the ethnic minorities from ‘non-Western’ countries lives in public housing (57, 5 %) which is only the case for 15, 4 % of ethnic minorities from ‘Western’ countries and for 13, 9 % of the Danish population.¹⁶

3.3 Socio-economic Situation

The housing situation corresponds with a substantial lower income for ethnic minorities. Statistics Denmark divides the population into ten income groups (decils) reflecting different amounts of disposable income for a person in a given year (Plovsing and Lange 2009). The relative poverty of the different ethnic groups appears evident. It is remarkable that 25–28 % of the ethnic minorities are to be found in the lowest income group, where only 8 % of the ethnic Danish population is found. Further, the ethnic Danish population has about 37 % of its population placed in the four lowest income groups. For ethnic minorities from ‘non-Western’ countries the number amounts to 73 %. During the last 10 years the country has experienced substantial growth in income differences and social and geographical marginalization. The most exposed groups in this development are ethnic minorities and descendants from ‘non-Western’ countries (Andersen et al. 2010). This is reflected in the general employment rates. The Danish population has a general employment rate at 82 (men) and 77 (women), whereas ethnic minorities have a substantially lower rate (‘Western’ countries: men 69; women 61; ‘non-Western’ countries: men 63; woman 49), while their descendants are employed at slightly higher rates. Accordingly ethnic minorities have higher rates in social transfer incomes, unemployment benefits and social allowances.

3.4 Education

The general educational background of ethnic minorities (age 16–64) remains to a large degree unknown. If you look at how many persons who have stopped education with ground school (7–16 years) you find that this is the case for around 30 % in the group of ethnic Danes, whereas this is the case for two thirds of all male descendants of ethnic minorities from non-Western countries and for more than half of the women in this group.

If you look at persons who are neither in education nor in employment, age 20–24, you find 30 % of ethnic minorities and 17 % of descendants of ethnic minorities from ‘non-Western’ countries in such situations, compared to 10 % of the Danish population. A similar discrepancy is found in the age group 16–19 years, but fortunately much less for descendants, i.e. children born in Denmark.

3.5 Concluding Remarks

The general picture show an increasing ethnic complexity with ethnic minority groups coming from all continents, but also that more than two thirds can be identified within 20 nation states. The geographical variation is big, but with about 50 % of the population in ten larger cities. The different groups are generally marginalized from a socio-economic perspective, considering social fields like housing, employment, social welfare, and education. If it is an aim to reduce such differences and education is one of the pathways to such a change, attention is drawn to the acquisition of basic skills, knowledge and attitudes for the population in general (i.e. primary and secondary education).

4 Primary and Secondary Education

4.1 Ethnic Minority Students

Due to a liberal historic tradition there is no compulsory school in Denmark. However, there is a well-established system of compulsory education. In principle the individual is free to choose between public schools, different private or free schools or to receive education at home as long as national standards are met. Generally children go either to public school, Folkeskolen, and different private and free schools and for lower secondary students it is possible to visit independent boarding schools.

The numbers of ethnic minority students in obligatory education (7–16 years or 9 years of compulsory education) has grown steadily, from 2022 in 1975 to 72.975 in 2009. The geographical distribution follows to a large extent the settlement of the parents mentioned above, but when it comes to distributions in school districts and local schools in different municipalities there are big differences in the ratio between the numbers of students of ethnic Danish descent and the numbers of children of ethnic minorities. There is about 1.591 public schools and 503 private and free schools. Out of 1591 public schools 1.204 or about 80 % have none or less than 10 % ethnic minority students; 239 schools or about 15 % have between 10 and 25 % ethnic minority students; 106 schools or 6,6 % have about 25–50 % and only 42 schools or 2,6 % have more than 50 % students with ethnic minority background (Byg Hornbæk 2009).

4.2 Student Assessments

Denmark has a tradition for participating in international comparative educational research starting in the 1990s with the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) and tests for reading skills. Later in relation to IEA came test studies in mathematics and science, the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS). Since 2000 Denmark has participated in four Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and carried through one national and two local assessments based on the PISA concept and material.

When the results of the first PISA research appeared (PISA 2000) in 2001 it revealed that the ‘bilingual students’¹⁷ underachieved significantly in all domains when compared to their Danish peers. The score span for the bilingual students was between 402 (science) and 451 (mathematics) and for the ethnic Danish students 488 (science) and 508 (reading reflection). The test showed further that the bilingual students born and partly raised outside Denmark performed better than the bilingual students born and raised in Denmark.¹⁸

This raised serious questions to the general process of the integration of immigrants in the Danish society. If these results were to be taken seriously it announced the coming of a society in which the immigrant children were marginalized in education, which could be an important brick in a foundation of an ethnically segmented labor market with immigrant populations overrepresented at the bottom or in unemployment. These concerns initiated further research at both local and national level building on the material of PISA 2000. PISA København 2004 (Egelund and Rangvid 2005) carried through a survey including all public schools and about half of the private schools in Copenhagen. PISA Etnisk 2005 (2007), was a carried out as a national testing program.

The dominant picture between ethnic Danish students and bilinguals persisted across the different surveys with few differences as shown in Table 1 (Egelund and Tranæs 2007). However, in PISA København 2004-survey the 2. Generation performed better than the 1. Generation, though the differences were small. In the three surveys the students in PISA Etnisk are those who score lowest. One of the reasons for this is that in order to include many schools with high representation of bilinguals, the selection of schools was consciously biased and not randomized. These meant that schools from lower socio-economic areas were relatively overrepresented in the sample, which explains the general lower score (see 3.3. and 4.1 above).

Table 1 Score span between Danish students and bilingual students in three PISA-surveys. Highest and lowest score across domains

In a research report by about the immigrants and the Danish education system the results from the PISA Etnisk survey are summed up in the following way: ‘In PISA Etnisk 2005 the Danish students acquire results in the school subjects Danish, mathematics and science close to the average of the other OECD countries. However, the bilingual students have results in the three school subjects which places them close to or within the lowest 6th achieving segment of the students in these countries.’…. ‘The conclusion of this chapter is then that you already in ground school meet very big problems when it is about ethnic students’ placement and the use of the Danish educational system. This concerns all the three essential domains: reading, mathematics and science. In reading the problems are so outspoken that this necessarily must create barriers later in the young persons’ educational career” (Jensen and Tranæs 2008). These results are confirmed in the latest PISA-survey, PISA 2009 (Egelund 2010). The reading skills for ethnic Danish students show a score of 501 PISA-points and for bilingual students 434 score-points (i.e. a difference of 67 PISA score-points). Over a 10 year period different agents in the educational field have tried to develop responses in order to change the results from PISA 2000.¹⁹ When it comes to explaining these persistent differences in educational outcomes references to ‘culture’ dominates. However, neither ‘culture’ and nor the organization of education and teaching have been addressed in the research design. Just a few quotes PISA Etnisk 2005 (Egelund and Tranæs 2007):

The spoken language in the family, but possibly also the ‘family culture in a wider sense’ seem in this way to play a quite definitive role for the content and extent of communication in the family and in this way for the child’s acquisition of reading skills, which are in focus here (italics CH).

When ethnicity, defined as the spoken language in the home, is brought into the analysis a far better explanation about the reading skills among youngsters is obtained. This is not caused by the language itself but with a coherent cluster in behavior and communication related to the language, that is the family’s culture (italics CH).

What we see here is ‘methodological nationalism’ at work (Beck 2002). What characterizes the educational responses developed to meet ethnic complexity in public education?

5 Multicultural Societies and Intercultural Education

5.1 ‘Culture’: A Complex Concept

A central aspect of the concepts of intercultural and multicultural education is how different interpretations of the concept ‘culture’ influence and relate to developments in (a) educational theory and (b) political philosophy and the interpretation of a multicultural society. The concept of culture in multicultural and intercultural education has changed with the ‘cultural turn’ in post-modernity, with increased migration, settlement of new ethnic minorities and the development of hybridity, creolization etc. Theoretically ‘culture’ is no longer understood in classical anthropological versions as definable entities, but as a concept which reflects transient and dynamic developments in which the individual is both a participant and a product in the ongoing (re)production of meaning and symbols in different social fields (Hall 1997; Caglar 1997). Further, ‘cultural identity’ is no longer related to single social categories (being black or being a woman), but understood in terms of intersectionality and many identities or the simultaneous identification with a number of social positions (being black and a woman and a mother and director…etc.), related to and dependent on how different social fields are structured (Sen 2007).

This general social constructionist definition of culture engages with cultural representations in relation to power (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977/2005). In order to reproduce cultural identity(ies) through education the selection of cultural artifacts, cultural representations and forms of communication (language in a wider sense) is necessary, and as embedded elements in the organization of the educational system ‘culture’ becomes part of how control and discipline is exercised in relation to development of competence. This process of selection and reproduction of cultural representations expresses (contemporarily fixed) prioritized forms of cultural productions and establishes the habitus of a given social field at a given time.

If it is axiomatic to the construction of positive learning processes that they rely on the recognition of the children’s preconditions, and if the school system reproduces a national monoculture in a privileged position, then children from ethnic minorities will have reduced possibilities to acquire the relevant social and cultural capital to succeed in the field of education. Ethnic minority children will be in a permanent asymmetric position in education when compared to ethnic majority children, often emphasized by a socio-economic disfavored position.

5.2 Multicultural and Mono-cultural State Policies

Such a situation calls for negotiation of the privileged position of the national culture in the construction of the educational system, so that it comes to reflect the actual ethnic complexity of society. A way to review such a situation is offered by the political philosopher Parekh (2000). As a political philosopher Parekh remains within a liberal state theory but steps outside the national paradigm and looks at a nation as empirically consisting of more than one culture, most often a dominant national majority and different ethnic minorities. This establishes a sort of a meta-position in relation to the examination of the relationships between cultures in a political community (state) from a liberal democratic position, and how to renegotiate the relationships between ethnic majorities and ethnic minorities, based on fundamental liberal values: freedom and equality.

By subjecting the position of all cultures in the nation state (ethnic minorities and ethnic majorities) and the relations between them to democratic negotiation, there can be established a political platform for rethinking the nation state in multicultural perspectives. In this way multiculturalism is not an ideology but a political philosophical position for negotiating the development of democracy and democratic institutions in ethnic diverse or multicultural societies. If it is true that all societies are ethnic complex and if it is a political intention to develop democracy, then the question about multiculturalism is not a question of if ‘we’ want multiculturalism. The question is how to negotiate ethnic complexity in a democratic state.

Parekh (2000) maintains that all societies are empirically ethnic complex and will be so increasingly. The main question is how nation states – or the dominant political parties within the nation states – respond normatively to this complexity. Parekh points to two main positions, a mono-cultural and a multicultural position. Each position expresses different visions of how the society should (normative) develop (responses) taking the ethnic complexity into consideration. The idea is that once there is obtained a relative political consensus within a liberal nation state about one of the main positions, the political discourse is captured in a logic aiming at realising the vision.

The mono-cultural position will tend to argue that social cohesion develops from reducing ethnic complexity, understood in a terminology where integration equates assimilation in a number of fields. Ethnic minorities will be seen as deviating from the ‘naturalised’ cultural norms of the majority understood in terms of national standards.

Social and educational problems related to ethnic minority groups are interpreted as coming from lack of competence in the language and culture of the majority. In order to solve these problems and at the same time maintain a perspective that aligns with a mono-cultural vision, it becomes logical to develop policies and social interventions which compensate for linguistic and cultural deficits. This way of framing social and educational problems in a discourse of mono-cultural development will eventually turn ‘them’ and ‘their cultures’ into being the social problem per se. Social and cultural competences embedded in the ethnic minority cultures are not seen as resources but tend to be looked upon as barriers to ‘integration’.

The multicultural position recognizes ethnic complexity as an empirical fact. The question to be raised is then how the democratic state can be organised to represent and serve a culturally diverse citizenry equally, establish equal access and equal treatment in institutions and develop equal opportunity in the public sphere. This implies recognition of cultural, linguistic and religious pluralism and opportunity for the ethnic minorities to develop full competencies in the languages of public communication. Ethnic minorities will have to reformulate their cultural ways within the norms of the liberal state. Social cohesion is supposed to develop from recognition of difference and fair negotiation.

Seen as discursive oppositions it should be stressed that these two main positions are not to be understood as mutually exclusive. As concepts they can be seen as two opposite positions on a scale.²⁰

5.3 Multicultural States and Intercultural and/or Multicultural Education

Intercultural and multicultural education addresses these challenges. Portera (2008, 2011) argues for using the concept ‘multicultural’ when categorizing different societies according to their ethnic complexity, and the concept ‘intercultural’ in relation to education in order emphasize the dynamic aspects of cultural developments as the word ‘inter’ – signifies what happens between cultural representations (social relations) and interpolates agency (inter-action; i.e. ‘we’ live in multicultural societies, but ‘we’ develop intercultural education). The discussion about the use of concepts is an ongoing process. In this context I will look at the concepts from an additive perspective and use the concepts as mutually overlapping (i.e. how both concepts contribute to the construction of education in ethnic complex situations which recognize ethnic complexity and the preconditions of all children).

Banks (2004) states that a major common goal for multicultural education – across differences – is ‘to reform schools and other educational institutions so that students from diverse racial, ethnic, and social-class groups will experience educational equality” (…) “Multicultural education theorists are increasingly interested in how the interaction of race, class and gender influences education’. A similar fundamental relation is made between intercultural education and equity by Batelaan and Coomans (1999), Gundara (2000), and Batelaan (2003).²¹

Banks (2004) develops five dimensions that constitute or are central to multicultural education. Within each of these five dimensions he describes a development based on how different research traditions relate to educational research in ethnic complex settings:

• 1. Content integration, which deals with the extent to which teachers use examples and content from a variety of cultures and groups to illustrate key concepts, principles, generalizations and theories in their subject area or discipline.

• 2. Knowledge construction process, which relates to the extent to which teachers help students understand, investigate, and determine how the implicit cultural assumptions, frames of reference, perspectives, and biases within a discipline influence the ways in which knowledge is constructed within it.

• 3. An equity pedagogy, based on how teachers modify their teaching in ways that facilitate the academic achievement of students from diverse racial, cultural and social-class groups, applying a wide variety of teaching styles corresponding to learning styles in different groups.

• 4. Prejudice reduction focuses on the characteristics of students’ racial attitudes and how they can be modified by teaching methods and materials.

• 5. An empowering school culture and social structure. Grouping and labeling practices, disproportionality in achievement, and the interaction of staff and the students across ethnic and racial lines are among the components of the school culture that must be examined in order to create a school culture that empowers students from diverse ethnic, racial, cultural groups.

If we look at the five dimensions in relation to how they address the construction of the learning processes in ethnic complex situations, the dominant perspective is the interactive perspective between teacher and student in relation to the students’ diverse preconditions. The critical examination of knowledge construction is not only about a critical view on content sanctioned by the authorities, but also on the construction of the social categories that mediate knowledge and social relations. This relates strongly to prejudice reduction and the work with historically established cultural hierarchies and the reproduction of mutual (mis)conceptions of ‘the other’. The content integration is not only about bringing cultural variety into the narratives that mediate the different disciplines and subjects, but to recontextualize the content of disciplines and subjects in order to relate to the students’ cultural preconditions (Bernstein 2001; Klafki 1983). Equity pedagogy relates to these elements as an effective alternative to paradigms of ‘cultural depravation’, and ‘at risk children’ which come close to ‘blaming the victim’ by focusing on the conditions of early socialization and the need to change the students themselves, without examining the actual learning process they are part of. Equity pedagogy assures not only a perspective on equal representation in content, but also an adaptation of pedagogy and learning styles to the preconditions of the students. An empowering school culture and social structure relate especially to a system perspective looking at the school as an organizational unit, which gives a physical and social frame (ethos, leadership and co-operation) to the four other dimensions in a way that allows for institutionalization of intended changes (Miramontes et al. 1997; García et al. 2006).

It is easy to see how multiculturalism as a position within political philosophy can relate to multicultural educational theory based on a common recognition of ethnic complexity: recognition of ethnic complexity in political agency is reflected in a similar recognition of ethnic complexity in the construction of education, based on universalized political categories and on universalized educational theory. The important issues in this context can be summed up as:

• 1. There is a common recognition of the nation states as multicultural liberal political communities. The implication of this is full integration of all persons in the citizenry through citizenship and the recognition of cultural differences, opposing assimilation and differential treatment, within the framework of a liberal democracy.

• 2. In relation to education this implies that the construction of curriculum, education of teachers, and the organization of education recognize and reflect the multicultural society and its ethnic complexity, on different levels: classroom, school, locality. This represents a continued negotiation of the position of different cultures in education. Multicultural and intercultural education is a concern for all students on equal terms (i.e. recognition of the linguistic and cultural preconditions of both the ethnic minorities and the ethnic majority as a social condition). In this way multicultural and intercultural education share the foundations of general educational theory and research.

In the following I bring examples from a discourse analysis which establish relations between general political positions in the dominating political parties and parts of the educational policy and how the responses to ethnic complexity interact with common perspectives of intercultural and multicultural education. The general policy development in Denmark dealing with ethnic complexity has over the years by numerous researchers been interpreted as assimilation. As this attitude bridges a number of political parties in the traditional left-right divide, it has also been identified as a “Danish regime of assimilation” (Hedetoft 2004; Horst and Gitz-Johansen 2010).

6 Educational Policy Responses to Ethnic Complexity

6.1 General Political Development

It is well known that the processes of globalization entail a revitalization of local and national cultures, also known as glocalization. In a Danish context it added to an already ongoing political debate about Denmark as a multicultural society with the ethnic minorities in very exposed positions. When the social democratic Minister of the Interior²² in an interview expressed herself in the following way she embraced a major part of the electorate from the Danish Peoples Party to socialist groupings:

It is well-known that there is no free access (to the country, CH) today. But anyway, we have difficulties to lead a discussion that is not heated and emotional. The danger is that we get a quite different society. Some say: But in the US they can live with Chinatown and Little Italy. But that is not at all the way I want to go. On the contrary I want to fight against this development.

Interviewer: But can you understand the Danes who turn against the idea of living in a multicultural society?

At any rate, I will not live in a multicultural society – that is, where the cultures are equal. And I think that it is a serious problem if Danes feel homeless in their own part of the city.

At the national election in 2001/2002 a liberal-conservative government came into power. The coalition was in a minority position in the Folketing (the Danish Parliament) but through written agreements with the extreme right wing and nationalist party, the Danish Peoples Party,²³ the coalition has been assured a permanent majority for its general policy. During three electoral periods the Danish Peoples Party is now established at the centre of Danish politics with an important trade off to the benefit of nationalist positions in a number of social fields, including education.

6.2 General Educational Policy

The policy development in the field of education followed the general political development, but in an ambivalent way.²⁴ On the national scene the coalition took strong stands against multicultural education. Below, a few examples from this development will illustrate the hostile atmosphere towards multicultural developments. The Minister of Integration, Refugees and Immigrants²⁵ expressed himself in this way referring to a passage in the Act on the Folkeskole:

You have to be familiar with your own culture, and you must have knowledge about other cultures. This implies a clear discrimination. Danish culture is more important than other cultures. As I as Minister of Education put the biblical narrative at the centre of the teaching in Christianity then it was a clear discrimination. You have to be familiar with the biblical narrative and to have knowledge about other religions. That is discrimination and so it has to be. Equally in the lessons in Danish language and literature. Here you read Danish literature. Therefore I say all that talk about cultural equality and freedom of religion is rubbish. Denmark is once and for all a Danish society. It is the Danes that decide.

The quote reveals an overt accept of discrimination based on a privileged position of the ethnic Danish population (i.e. particular values dominate universal values). This implies an imagined political community in which nationhood, Danish ethnic identity and citizenship overlap fully.

The Minister of Education was in Parliament asked if there were any institutions related to the Ministry of Education which had the purpose of furthering a multicultural school. The Minister of Education answered: ‘(…) No council and no institution with relation to the Ministry of Education has the purpose of furthering a multicultural public school.’²⁶

This expressed rejection of multiculturalism takes place together with the development of cultural national canons and a canon for democracy, but without recognition of the multicultural character of the society. Lack of social and cultural competencies translates into a general democratic deficit²⁷ to be remedied by a democratic (re)education (Haas 2011).

In 2002 a law²⁸ passed which gave the legal foundation for abolishing state funding for mother-tongue education to children of Third Country Nationals, but not to other ethnic minority groups. This overt institutional discrimination has been criticized by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in 2006 and again in 2010.²⁹ Law 594 passed in 2005 and suspended ethnic minority parents’ right to choose a public school of their liking (like Danish parents) if their children failed a test that proved ‘a not un-essential need for support in Danish language’.³⁰

The Danish Ministry of Education engaged with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)³¹ project on life-long learning (Definition and Selection of Competencies [DeSeCo]). In the Danish context this project led to the development of The National Competence Accounts (Det Nationale Kompetenceregnskab) including the development of ten key competencies, of which ‘Intercultural competence’ is one and defined as: “(…) ability to understand cultural complexity and to participate in a dialogue with other cultures without prejudice”. When this competence was researched and evaluated it was found that Denmark holds a bottom score: 66 % the population has a low degree of intercultural competence, 29 % of the population has a middle score and only 5 % of the population has a high intercultural competence.³² This has not led to initiatives to promote intercultural competence in education.

When the Danish People’s Party discovered that the curriculum guidelines for a school subject in high school included the phrase:”(…) preparing students for a modern multicultural society (…) it tricked off a highly heated debate in Folketinget and the newspapers about Denmark’s possible status as a ‘multicultural society’, which was rejected by an overwhelming part of the Folketing. The Conservative Party and the Danish Peoples Party raised the question that the word ‘multicultural’ should be erased from educational texts.³³

6.3 Multicultural Education and Educational Steering Documents

In order to examine relationships between political positions and the development of educational policies as responses to education in ethnic complex contexts (the implementation of a political will) I have researched the parliamentary documents in the Ministry of Education in order to position the two words ‘intercultural’ and ‘multicultural’ as words and concepts in different steering documents. In this way I have tried to locate the words as concepts, expressing theoretical positions or relations to educational research in policy developments.

In a Danish context there are three words related to education in ethnic complex context: (1) intercultural (interkulturel), (2) multicultural (multikulturel) and (3) ‘flerkulturel’ which is a Danish version of multicultural, where the Danish word ‘fler’ translates into ‘multi’. The documents are divided into different types, which can also be seen as a ranking in relation to importance:

Parliamentary documents, reflecting political negotiations: (a) Law proposals (lovforslag); (b) Proposals to parliamentary decisions (Beslutningsforslag); (c) Inquiries (forespørgsler); (d) reports (redegørelser); (e) Proposals for parliamentary enactments (forslag til vedtagelser); (f) Summaries (referater); (g) voting (afstemninger); (h) questions (spørgsmål); § 20 – questions³⁴ (§ 20 spørgsmål); (i) documents from select committeees (udvalgsbilag); (j) Propositions for the European Commission (Kommissionsforslag); (k) EU Council of Ministers (Ministerådsmøder); (l) documents (aktstykker). Administrative texts. Administrative texts are texts that are mainly formulated by civil servants in the Ministry of Education following on different political decisions (laws and proposals) in order to assure implementation. The texts I look at are limited to curricular guidelines, Common Goals (Fælles Mål 2009–2010) and different educational projects. Below I present the results from the analysis of the Act on Folkeskolen,³⁵ the Law Announcement about the Education of Teachers, and selected curricular guidelines.

6.4 Act on Folkeskolen

In the Act on Folkeskolen (Law on public school) the words ‘multicultural’, ‘intercultural’ and ‘flerkulturel’ are not found. The word ‘ethnic’ appear once in one of the last chapters of the law, Chapter 11, about evaluation and the development of educational quality. The Council for Evaluation and the Development of Education Quality (referring to the Minister of Education) has – among other tasks – also the following: (§57): ‘The Council must further evaluate the school’s ability to contribute to fight students’ negative social heritage and to increase integration of students with another ethnic background than Danish’.

This discursive positioning of a single reference to ‘other’ ethnicities in an inferior paragraph which aligns ‘other ethnic background’ with negative social heritage can hardly be said to be incidental and announces both a general exclusion of ethnic complexity and a general deficit perspective on ‘other ethnic backgrounds’ within the framework of the law on public school.

6.5 Teacher Education

In the law defining the education of teachers, Law Announcement about the Education for Teachers in the Folkeskole (Bachelor level)³⁶ the word ‘flerkulturel’ is found once in the part of the law which describes courses in school subjects that have no obligatory number of lessons. In course 2: Education in health and sexuality in the section which describes the central areas of knowledge and skills, there are listed 13 themes (a – m). Theme ‘h’ is labeled: ‘Values and living conditions in Denmark viewed in a historical, ‘flerkulturel’(multicultural) and international perspective’. The word ‘multicultural’ is not found. The word ‘intercultural’ is found a few times.

In Part III, the main subject: ‘Pedagogic Subjects’ (Pædagogiske fag) is subdivided in four themes: 3.1. Home – school cooperation; 3.2. Students with another ethnic background than Danish; 3.3. Classroom management; 3.4. Problems related to special needs education. In relation to point “3.2. Students with another ethnic background than Danish” the following text is added:

It is the purpose to develop the student’s competencies to teach in a cultural diverse public school. The content consists of theories about culture, theory and research about children’s identity development and learning when coming from different social and cultural backgrounds. The student shall work with theories about multicultural backgrounds, about social integration and culture, cultural encounters and intercultural pedagogy.

The text is placed in a context of subjects which are all extracurricular and appears as a special competence, a subfield in pedagogy.

In Part V. Psychology, the word ‘intercultural’ appears once in the section describing the central areas of knowledge and skills. There are listed nine themes (a–i). Theme ‘f’ is labeled: ‘Socialization and intercultural psychology’ without any further indications of content.

These are the two fields within the mandatory subjects where the teacher students can acquire knowledge about intercultural education. Within the non-obligatory subjects intercultural understanding and intercultural competence appear in an almost similar way in the subjects English, French, and German. The positioning of the word ‘intercultural’ relates to the development of pedagogy of language acquisition emphasizing communicative competencies, as mentioned earlier.

This gives ‘intercultural’, ‘multicultural’, and ‘flerkulturel’ a rather weak position in teacher education on a formal level. Seen in relation to the autonomy of the different institutions it opens however for the possibility to take individual and separate initiatives in the field, and also to develop in-service training for teachers in these domains. This has been done by some of the central university colleges.

6.6 Curricular Guidelines

The central administrative texts of prescriptive and regulative importance in relation to the public school are the curricular guidelines, Common Goals (Fælles Mål) 2009–2010. There are developed curricular guidelines to all schools subjects and teaching activities or extracurricular activities. The texts refer to the school law and are well elaborated texts, which define each school subject, its purpose, the goals to be achieved at different grade levels, and content descriptions in general terms and proposals with examples. The authors are civil servants in the Ministry of Education in collaboration with researchers and teachers with high competencies in the specific school subjects.

It is in these texts you would expect to find reflections about teaching and learning in ethnic complex settings and how different cultures are part of society and contributes to its development. In my present research I have looked at the curricular guidelines for the following school subjects and extracurricular activities: Danish, English, Christianity, History, Social Science, Geography, Biology, Immigrant languages, the Students General and Many-sided Development (‘Bildung’; alsidige udvikling). The research on the words ‘intercultural’, ‘multicultural’ and ‘flerkulturel’ either as descriptive words or as concepts related to educational theory or research reveals an almost complete absence.

The word ‘intercultural’ appears twice in the school subject English, and five times in the school subject Geography.

In the school subject English the word ‘intercultural’ appears in relation to intercultural competence, “to learn to see the world with other eyes” and there are references to two Danish researchers in intercultural education and intercultural understanding³⁷ (Common Goals No. 2. English). In the school subject Geography the word the ‘intercultural’ appears five times in relation to learn about “cultures and countries and their intercultural and human relations” (Common Goals No. 14. Geography). And that is about it.

In Common Goals No. 47. About the children’s general and many-sided development there is a reference to the main report from the National Competence Accounts (OECD) and the ten key competencies. It is placed in the last part of the text about sources and proposals for teaching. The text lists the competencies. Here it could have been expected that ‘intercultural competence’ would have been forwarded, as the Danish population in general holds a very low score in this domain, see above, and make it an obvious object for a ‘general and many-sided development’. Though all the other competencies are listed, intercultural competence is omitted.

6.7 Major Governmental Responses to Ethnic Complexity in Education

In this way the government and the Ministry of Education have framed the educational discourse about ethnic complexity in education negatively in two ways. Firstly, the discursive exclusion of multiculturalism from both the general political discourse and the educational discourse as a condition for policy development leaves no space for relating to intercultural and multicultural education as research based educational concepts. Secondly, as intercultural and multicultural educational research are based on general educational theory and research positions (respecting cultural and linguistic backgrounds for all students equally), then general education theory and research cannot be applied in the policy development in relation to ethnic complexity without becoming inclusive to this complexity in the organization of education (see part two).

This implies that educational political discourse and policy developments are confined to educational research which examines the status and differences in achievement between the ethnic majority and the ethnic minorities (see part I). Differences which are likely to be explained with relation to ethnicity (cultural deficit and depravation) leaving the basic organization of education in relation to the complexity of the students preconditions out of the research focus. This implies that development of governmental responses to ethnic complexity in education looks for ‘new ways’ to meet this challenge by investing in the development of ‘best practice’ (rarely linked to research results), followed up by ‘knowledge sharing’.

This is reflected in a number of governmental initiatives. These initiatives represent a coordinated effort to compensate for cultural deficiencies and – if possible – to replace ethnic minorities linguistic and cultural preconditions with those of ethnic majority children from an early age, without changing the national curriculum in relation to ethnic minorities. Important governmental initiatives are here:

• 1. Vision and Strategy towards better Integration, the Government 2003 (Vision og strategi for bedre integration, Regeringen 2003).

• 2. A good start for all children, Ministry of Social Affairs, 2003 (En god start for alle børn, Socialministeriet 2003).

• 3. Advanced and mandatory Danish language stimulation for all bilingual children from the age of 3 who are estimated in need (changes in law passed in 2002 and 2004).³⁸

• 4. Project: ‘It works in our school’ (Projekt: ‘Dette virker på vores skole’), with focus on knowledge sharing and dissemination of good experience from schools with many bilingual students (2007).

• 5. Development of language screening material “Show what you can” (2007) (“Vis hvad du kan”, 2007).

• 6. Bilingual-Task-Force (2008). Unit of consultancy established by the Ministry of Education to support schools with relatively high numbers of bilingual students.

• 7. ‘Bring language into all school subjects’ (2008; ‘Bring sproget med i alle fag’, 2008). A publication about working with Danish as a second language in all school subjects.

These initiatives are of course all important elements in order to support students with ethnic minority background in their school life, but a multicultural reality cannot be ‘suspended’ through compensatory measures and cannot replace an organization of education which is inclusive to the preconditions of the ethnic minority students who live in an multicultural society. An analysis of these projects (Horst and Gitz-Johansen 2010) shows that the space for changes which address ethnic complexity in a positive way is limited to:

• 1. Extracurricular activities, characterized by development projects with focus on: (a) homework support; (b) family reach-out in order to instruct the families in how to support their children in school.

• 2. Curricular related activities supporting general teaching practices, characterized by: (a) special centers supporting the individual students’ learning processes where deficiencies have been spotted; (b) support in Danish as a second language in different forms from early age; (c) support in different school subjects on different levels; (d) special needs education.

6.8 Multicultural and Intercultural Educational Research

As the Danish educational system is so expressively mono-cultural, intercultural and multicultural education and educational research become discursive counter positions, which underpin the inclusive and recognizing position in education and research in relation to ethnic complexity. In a Danish context this research primarily developed from different already existing research fields where researchers developed relations to different dimensions and research traditions within multicultural and intercultural research. The dominant characteristic of this research is a critical engagement with the privileged position of Danish language and culture in the educational system, seen in relation to an ethnic complex citizenry. The research projects are predominantly of a qualitative research design related to steering documents (discourse analysis) and/or related to empirical research in specific social fields (e.g. fieldwork in schools) with a focus on the organization of education and school life, analyzing the dynamics of cultural encounters on different levels. Below I list a part of recent research³⁹ in order to indicate how different fields contribute:

Right/correcting to Danish.⁴⁰ Education, language and cultural heritage (Ret til dansk. Uddannelse, sprog og kulturarv; Haas et al. 2011).

The research examines how mono-cultural and monolingual identity is reproduced in the national curriculum in the public school in a process of assimilating ethnic and linguistic complexity and disrespecting minority rights.

The research relate to ‘Køgeprojektet’,⁴¹ based on data collected from the same social groups of students in different periods over 25 years. The Focus is the poly-lingual development of young Turkish-Danish Grade School students.

‘Bildung’ and Dissonances. (Dannelse og dissonanser; Bissenbakker Frederiksen 2009). The research examines how the curriculum for Danish as a school subject constructs gender and ethnicity in subject positions.

To become a kindergarden child. (At blive et børnehavebarn; Karrebæk 2008). The research examines closely an ethnic minority boy’s language, interaction and participation in the kindergarden community.

Fighters and Outsiders. (Malai Madsen 2008).The research reveals linguistic practices, social identities, and social relationships among urban youth in a martial arts club.

Identity politics in the Classroom. (Identitetspolitik i klasserummet; Buchardt 2008). The research examines how ‘religion’ and ‘culture’ are present as knowledge and classification in a multicultural classroom through the teaching of school subjects.

The Multicultural School – integration and sorting (Den multikulturelle skole – integration og sortering; Gitz-Johansen 2006).

The research examines how the national school system in discourses about Danishness and ‘otherness’/’foreignhood’ constructs a double movement of integration and sorting in relation to ethnic minority children.

The impossible children –and the decent human being. (De umulige børn – og det ordentlige menneske; Gilliam 2006). The research examines the identity construction among ethnic minority children in a Danish public school and the subject positions the social and cultural organization of the school offers to children with an ethnic minority background.

Pedagogy and Ethnicity. (Pædagogik og etnicitet; Tireli 2006).The research examines cultural encounters, integration and equity in education in different context: How are the relations between ethnic minorities and the ethnic majority conceptualized and what are the implications of these constructions in different social fields?

Eve’s Hidden Children. (Eva’s skjulte børn; Kristjánsdóttir 2005). The research examines discourses about bilingual children in Danish national curriculum. The research uncovers how the bilingual children systematically are kept outside the national curriculum and how the integration of these children in public schools is subject to initiatives directed towards their families and extracurricular activities.

As this kind of research to a large extend, as described, is excluded from educational policy development its importance is in particular reflected at the level of universities and university colleges in the development of research projects, developments projects in relation to local developments, conferences and networks and education (publication and dissemination of research, development of educational materials).

6.9 Networks

There are an increasing number of researchers and research groups which relate to ethnic complexity in education. No matter what aspect of education you relate to, ethnic complexity becomes increasingly present, but far from all relate to networks where ethnic complexity is a defining element. There are two important networks in relation to research and education in ethnic complex context which focus on pedagogy, culture and language. The networks recruit researchers from different disciplines from four universities (University of Copenhagen, University of Århus, Roskilde University and University of Southern Denmark) and two University colleges (University College Copenhagen, University College Metropol). Some researchers participate in both networks. The networks organize national and international conferences and publish research.

6.10 Education

There is no education program, which has been reviewed in the optic of a developing a multicultural society and an ethnic complex citizenry. This is well confirmed by the Minister of Education, when he interprets the Act on the Folkeskole politically and when he talks about the role of institutions (administrative perspective or implementation; see note 27).

A part from university studies, which have ethnic complexity as a central part of their identity (sociology, anthropology, sociolinguistics, different institutes for foreign language studies, cultural studies, minority studies, religious studies, etc.), intercultural communication and intercultural competence have become important disciplines in business schools, including related research. An increasing number of educations and disciplines develop minor elements which relate to ethnic complexity in the organization of their education. Most often they try to integrate knowledge about ethnic minority groups in their courses. This is often initiated by the increasing presence of ethnic minorities in the student body or in the social field they are supposed to work in after having finished an education. Such elements can be added on to the curriculum as a special course, and often they are optional. At university level a master’s degree in Danish as a second language focusing on adult education has been established years ago, and a new Bachelor in Intercultural Education has started at University of Southern Denmark this year.

In education of teachers and pedagogues the picture is diverse. In adult education intercultural education is mandatory for teachers who teach immigrants and refugees. The weak position of intercultural and multicultural education in the mandatory part of the education of teachers has been mentioned in relation to the presentation of a content analysis of selected and central curriculum guidelines.

However, it must be stressed that a number of university colleges who have the responsibility for teacher education, continued teacher education and in-service training, in a number of years have offered: (1) diploma degrees in (a) Danish as a second language, (b) multicultural education; (2) long term in-service programs (two full terms) in Danish as a second language and multicultural education. The teachers and the researchers at university colleges are important contributors and producers of research based educational material for teachers (e.g. Laursen 2004). It this way university colleges play a highly important role in relating research, education and the development of educational practice.

The cooperation between university researchers and teachers and researchers on university colleges leads to a wider continued development of research, development research and action research, dissemination of research results and new knowledge at conferences, in education and in the production of anthologies (Karrebæk 2006; Day and Steensen 2010; Horst 2003/2006).

The educational authorities in some of the municipalities arrange local short term in-service training courses, eventually with participation from universities and university colleges.

6.11 Development Projects

Denmark has a highly decentralized educational system which over time has allowed individual teachers, schools and local school authorities to interpret central policy texts relatively close to positions in intercultural and multicultural education. Outstanding examples are here:

• Municipality of Hvidovre: Enghøjskolen. Bi-cultural school start (1984–1987).

• Municipality of Copenhagen: Education in language groups (1996–1999).

• The Integration Project, Ministry of Education (1994–1998).⁴²

The school authorities in Copenhagen and in some of the major cities (e.g. Aarhus, Aalborg) have had periods, which gave priority to minor developments of intercultural education. However, such projects remain very vulnerable to changes in staff, priorities in school leadership and municipal educational policies. When such initiatives touch central aspects of curriculum the state intervenes locally on occasion.⁴³

6.12 Possible Future Developments

A new trend may be about to establish itself. The general rejection of a multicultural perspective equates integration with assimilation. For a number of years the word ‘assimilation’ has been abandoned in Danish ethno-politics as it has strong connotations of oppression, and was replaced with the word ‘integration’. Today the word ‘assimilation’ appears rather frequently in ethno-politics forwarded by the Liberal Party and the Danish People’s Party.⁴⁴ The question of ethnic complexity in education is about to become part of the new individualizing trend in globalized liberalism, which emphasizes increased individual choice and individual learning processes, and ‘responsibilizing’ the individual.⁴⁵ The dominant label is inclusion which has become the positive buzzword. On one hand it tries to break down the stigmatizing labels and diagnosis related to special needs education, one the other hand it is about to become a cost reducing instrument for a welfare state under pressure by limiting special needs education. For persons belonging to ethnic minorities this is expressed in the development of individual integration contracts with the Danish state and in contracts about active citizenship for newcomers.⁴⁶ On the municipal level it can be traced in the way in which educational departments are restructured, including downsizing of their staff in the domains of education in ethnic complex contexts.

A ‘new language’ is about to appear. The definition of ethnic minority students as bilingual students is about to be replaced with statistical categories from Statistics Denmark (immigrants, descendants; Western and non-Western). Language and culture as important signifiers of children’s precondition in education disappear. Individual inclusion of the single student in the classroom and classroom management often combined with family reach-out (read; cultural, social and democratic re-education) is about to come into the main focus. Students who underachieve are connected to a ‘mentor’ and ‘student role models’ are developed. Successful ethnic minority students visit schools and classes in order to talk about their individual career and how they faced different ‘problems’. In this perspective former multicultural initiatives (mother tongue education, second language instruction in different forms, activating ethnic minority backgrounds in education etc.) are reconceptualized in relation to their effectiveness in an assimilation process.

6.13 Conclusions and Recommendations

The development of education in ethnic complex societies is a major challenge to and concern for national educational systems given the general underachievement of ethnic minority students in the national schools system. This article (and the report behind it) demonstrates how intercultural and multicultural education as professionalized concepts are absent in Danish educational policies. By examining this situation through a combination of theoretical perspectives Parekh (2000) and Banks (2004) it becomes possible to uncover the close relationship between a political mono-cultural vision for the future development of a society which is empirically multicultural, and the corresponding mono-cultural policy responses to ethnic complexity in the field of education. Responses which seem unable to bridge the general underachievement in any effective way at one hand, and which on the other hand at times has become so radical that it invokes critiques from CERD for not recognizing the presence of ethnic minorities in the educational system.

This situation reflects the social and discursive practices of ‘methodological nationalism’ and how the relations between a mono-cultural educational system and research surveys (e.g. PISA surveys) substantiate each other. The research design doesn’t examine how the educational system recognizes the preconditions of all children in the organization of education, and it becomes impossible to relate research results to what characterizes the dynamics of educational practices (relations between school subjects, teacher, and student). The research is designed on post-colonial categories (‘non-Western’ and ‘Western’) and which excludes cultural concepts from the organization of education and yet the results are interpreted in causal relations to fluid notions on ‘cultural backgrounds’. It is as if the cultural organization of education and teaching doesn’t matter.

Multicultural, intercultural and bilingual educational research offer developments based on a general recognition of all children’s ethnic and linguistic preconditions as a social condition in the development of educational change. It implies changes in the educational system as such and in the organization of education, which reflects the actual ethnic complexity in society, or its multicultural character (Parekh 2000; Banks 2004; Sleeter and Grant 2003).

6.14 Recommendations

The ‘natural’ sub- or immersion of ethnic minority students to majority cultures and languages sustained by innumerable efforts of language support in the majority’s language and with homework support organized in different centers in schools, often combined with different sorts of social interventions (family reach-out, free-time activities etc.) have been successful road to integration for far too few students. This has been an ongoing process for more than 30 years. A process which slowly nurtures ghettoization, inter-ethnic hostility and nationalism.

Social demographics show that the European Community represents a declining population, growing rapidly older (hastily increasing dependency rates). More than 80 % of the increase in demographic growth⁴⁷ is due to immigration from countries outside of the community.

In order to meet this challenge in the educational system all possible ways have to be thoroughly examined and knowledge from different fields must be activated, including multicultural and intercultural educational research and education. There are no simple solutions to complex problems. But there is no point in insisting on using yesterday’s lack of success (assimilation policies) to solve the problems of the future. It should be possible combine forces and:

• (a) To review and remake educational research, surveys, assessments and evaluations in a perspective which recognizes ethnic complexity as a social condition for the development of future education;

• (b) To have educational research include an examination of actual school practices which raises questions to how the preconditions of all children are recognized in the organization of education in a number of selected sites (districts, schools, classes), including a research on the development of local educational policies (historical contexts);

• (c) To establish research based development projects in different localities which are based on the best knowledge from multicultural, intercultural and bilingual research, including different compensatory measures, and which is assessed and evaluated both with quantitative and qualitative methods;

• (d) To review teacher education in a multicultural and intercultural perspective.

The preconditions for starting up such a development are present at universities, colleges and in number of localities, due to existing efforts in research, teaching and development projects.