Reflexiv internationalisering: Utvecklingsfrågor som ett bildningsområde för en folkhögskola i takt med tiden

Abstract

Reflective Internationalisation: Development Issues as an Educational Area for Folk High Schools in Step with the Times. This article explores discourses on internationalisation in Tidskrift för svenska folkhögskolan (Journal of Swedish Folk High Schools) between 1970 and 1989, an era when engagement for global development had become established within the Swedish popular educational system of folk high schools (FHS). The purpose is to examine what meanings are given to “internationalisation” and “the international” over time, whom and how it would affect, as well as how the FHS would engage with the issues. The study uncovers a retrospective understanding of “the international” through former nationalistic discourses as well as new postcolonial and anti-imperialist criticism. It also shows how the responsibility for development issues individualises over time. In parallel, the FHS start to work with advocacy addressing Swedish society and make the transition from seeing themselves as educators of the Global South, to expecting to become educated by the Global South. The study depict how developmental issues as an educational area continues shape the institutional identity of the FHS over time. It problematises the role of the FHS in both mobilising solidarity engagement and at the same time establishing development issues as an important area of education for the middle classes of the Global North in a society under advanced liberalism.

Keywords

• internationalisation
• folk high schools
• global development
• education