Internationalisation in Crafting Workshops

Experiences in an Action Research Project, 2018-2019

Abstract

The ‘Crafting Workshops’ initiative merges internationalisation and craft education into an action research and development project. The activities in the workshops were grounded in the concepts of internationalisation at home and cultural well-being, and the action was intended to take advantage of peer learning in teacher education through actual craft making in multinational groups. Finnish student teachers acted as instructors in workshops where participants were international exchange students from several countries; the working language was English. Action research combines science and practicality, and we aimed at influencing on the research object and its activities in a developing way. This action research was carried out in the true environment by using various methods of analysis. In this approach, active fieldwork and observation, student teacher reflections, and peer review through feedback discussions and participant surveys were used to map, monitor and direct proceedings during the pilot phases in 2017-18. The exchange students' positive reports emphasise cooperation with the local instructors and joy and well-being from learning about Finnish handicrafts and culture in the workshops. For the teacher students leading the workshops, home internationalisation worked well; working in small groups encouraged craft teaching and language-speaking practice, although more attention to promoting interaction during the activities is required. In this project, the student teachers participated and contributed cooperatively to the development of a new course structure. The workshop experiences confirmed that cultural interaction worked reciprocally between the student teachers and the student participants, and the model seems to be suitable for other subject areas in teacher education and could be incorporated into the curriculum.