Philosophy of Edcucation Cultural Diversity and Education

Theoretical studies on intercultural education – as well as practitioners of education – sustain at present the need to develop a body of doctrine which would allow for the consolidation of a pedagogy and a practice of intercultural education. Some European theoreticians criticise multicultural education on the grounds that it reinforces cultural identity differences and, as a consequence, creates segregation – compartmentalisation – within society. This perspective is well spread and it is now the dominant one among European scholars and practitioners in the field of education. Nevertheless, it is not possible to formulate a differentiated and coherent concept of an intercultural pedagogy of education without a true, deep and contextualized understanding of the theoretical and practical foundations of the multicultural theory of education, which emerged and developed in the USA in the first half of the last century. This Paper outlines the theoretical and practical conceptions of both multicultural and intercultural education, at the same time that it tries to demonstrate the need for the development of a syncretised pedagogical theory, which would include the positive contributions of both approaches. The final goal would be the provision of epistemological bases for further development of educational actions addressed to deal with cultural diversity in developed societies.

This study aims to articulate how the importance of the university and technology parks administrations has affected on the development of the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in changing environment of the Turkish universities. The forty-five participants were selected from different startups at the university technology parks. By using phenomenological analysis, eight research questions were answered in the semi-structured interviews. The collected data were analyzed in Atlas.ti order to mke depth study. As a result, the data show that the university and technology parks administrations have inevitably affected IPR system in many ways. During the transformations process of the universities towards entrepreneurial universities, academic people and students have been influenced to a greater degree. Academic profession, which is an umbrella term for working conditions for academics, has changed a lot. Most (91%) participants agree that the style of the administration has played important roles to increase performance indicators since they are used to assess and measure individuals, departments and universities against each other; therefore, IRP have gained importance among the academic people  and students. However, the large number (84%) of the participants does not know deeply the details in IPR. More importantly, the large number (91%) mentions that these activities related IPR collaboration and cooperation among academics. Additionally, a large number of the (94%) participants agree that the effects would be different on the elite universities comparing to the socially disadvantaged universities. They (76%)point out that the future of higher education has been changing in terms of faculty organizations, particularly with new IRP policies. Most (85%) of the participants clarify that the university administration would develop a better network in order to increase the patent activities. Most (78%) participants articulate that IRP would change the culture of academic world. Most (81%) claim that competitiveness is important not only for the universities bot also for the academic people so that the university administration would change their performance criteria to prepare properly for the competitive global market. These (61%) participants strongly point out that employability is remrkably importnat for the universities. By improving intellectual property rights and entrepreneurial activities, universities can increase their funding. Hence, they take into account technology parks as the places to develop strategies for different activities to increase income. Furthermore, most (92%) participants mention that the financial autonomy would make the universities aggressive in the market due to the fact that the government is increasingly reducing the support for the higher education. Hence, the university management would try to increase their income by means of the IRP would increase conflicts and inequalities, the rest (71%) agree that the role and style of university management, like in Wisconsin Madison could manage the universities without conflicts and inequalitics. As a result, as most (91%) participants clarify that the university administration play important and crucial role in controlling and managing the conflicts and inequlities through IPR to protect all the stakeholders, particularly those who do not have strong background, like the PhD students. Higher Education, Technology Parks, University Administration and Management, Intellectual Property Rights, Autonomy

In Switzerland, as elsewhere, issues dealing with cultural diversity raise major challenges in education. At present, little is known about how students make sense of these highly sensitive societal issues and relate them to their everyday experience. Drawing on a sociocultural and dialogical approach to learning, this study aimed at understanding how
the students made sense of themes related to cultural diversity. More generally, it sought to examine whether secondarisation (i.e. a transformation of everyday experience into a more generic and scientific form) took place. In this study, ten focus groups were carried out: five in primary school (11- to 12-year-old students) and five in lower secondary
school (13- to 14-year-old students) in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. The specificity of the research design consisted of setting up a situation that had both similarities and differences with lessons on cultural diversity that had previously been taught in the classroom. We assumed that this would create dialogical tensions and thereby shed light on the obstacles that may arise when themes related to cultural
diversity are taught in school. Analysis of the discursive dynamics of the focus-group discussions showed that education for cultural diversity cannot be considered independently of the student’s other spheres of experiences. Personal, social and moral dimensions are part of the students’ effort to make sense of the themes under discussion.
Talking about cultural diversity, even though with pleasure and involvement, cannot be equated with learning and transforming these themes into scientific concepts. Moreover, dialogical tensions can create unexpected effects and even bring about the very phenomena that education for cultural diversity is supposed to fight.