Intercultural education concerns the destruction of boundaries between people and their replacement by what Jurgen Habermas has called communicative action. It is a difficult task that raises various forms of existential fear: consciousness of individual mortality, communal insecurity, collective anxiety and distrust. In order to confront this globalisation of fear, to engage with ourselves as well as with others, the construction of what we might term the intercultural imagination is required. Intercultural education must embrace hope and the imagination, but in association with reason, understanding and knowledge. It is grounded in a capacity for critical pragmatism, an appreciation for an educational project based on a global concern for equity and justice and for the establishment of the basis of unfettered, rational communication between peoples. The construction of the intercultural imagination is a process which demands more than the attainment of the usual pedagogical competences; it requires an engagement both with hope and with fear.

This paper connects the two fields of cooperative learning and intercultural education, focusing on the argument that cooperative learning strategies need to be equipped with intercultural understandings. There is a consideration of assumptions that effective cooperative pedagogical strategies require an engagement with challenging issues related to learners and to the structure of curricular content. The two key points raised here are that: (a) issues of competitiveness amongst learners and students must be dealt with directly rather than treating them from the sidelines or by ignoring them; and (b) for learning to take place in a truly cooperative manner, there must be an emphasis on an intercultural focus within the curriculum where the content of knowledge within the curriculum needs to be non-centric. This paper examines the view that cooperative learning strategies are effective when the curricular knowledge taught in the school is drawn from all groups, whether such groups have dominant, subordinate or minority status.

Problematic aspects of intercultural communication are considered in the context of: an increasingly internationalized market for higher education; the globalization of knowledge; the compatibility of distinct national higher education cultures; and the capacity for successful cross-cultural cooperation. This is exemplified by reference to a doctoral programme delivered by a UK-based university, largely through distance learning, to students resident in a non-anglophone country. Here, the challenges have concerned: cultural and linguistic barriers; the use of distancebased supervision; and taken-for-granted knowledge related to learning and academic levels. Anecdotal evidence suggests diverse student experiences during the supervision process, in both face-to-face and distance learning contexts, reflecting the extent of familiarity with idiomatic and technical English, and the importance of non-verbal communication. Given unequal power relations between students and university teachers, improved intercultural communicative competence may be achieved through a mutual construction of a discursive arena reflecting the dynamics of an increasingly globalized structure of academic intercourse. This may involve a critique of assumptions associated with 'national' academic cultures together with a pragmatic quest for a common lexicon. This in turn may contribute to the process of cross-national collaboration and cooperation in higher education.

In assuming ethnic/national identity as problematic, we examine its dynamic aspects in the context of refugee children and their educational experiences. While the starting point of our analysis is a deconstruction of ethnic/national identity in conventional terms of language, religion, education etc., the emerging focus is the notion of boundary. On the one hand, we look at the relevance of fluid boundaries for identity formation, while on the other hand, the experience of crossing boundaries will also be examined, particularly in the case of forced migration and displacement. Boundaries are conceptualised in the context of a continuum in which the experiences of refugee children range across school, home, locality and country. To illustrate the central arguments two case studies will be highlighted: a child refugee from Kosovo, the older of two brothers arriving in the UK about four years ago, who now attends a north London primary school; and several young minors, mainly from Kosovo, who attend a youth club in south London. Preliminary observations of the child, together with subsequent small group discussions and semi-structured interviews, serve to identify how the child relates to the various spaces in the school. The analysis of his drawings forms the main part of the argument. In the case of the youth club users, observations and conversations show how these young people construct their individual and social identities by accessing global resources in response to local interests.

2 Religion, schooling and the state: negotiating and constructing the secular space Religión, escolarización y Estado: negociando y construyendo el espacio secular Abstract As a prelude to the paper it should be stated that its genesis originates in conference presentations delivered on two separate occasions to two separate audiences. The first was to a mixed group of teacher educators, Roman Catholic priests and nuns, as well as others from diverse religious traditions, at a one-day conference on religion and pluralism held in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. The expressed focus for this conference was 'inter-faith' but with the addition of a secular dimension. The second presentation was to an international group largely comprised of comparative education scholars in Glasgow, Scotland. Although the two presentations were broadly similar in content the Dublin paper had a distinct orientation. Given that the publicly-funded Irish school system was characterised by a strong involvement of religion (Department of Education and Skills, 2017) -in particular, that of the Roman Catholic Church, the dominant tradition in that country -the Dublin presentation pursued an approach which sought to widen the educational agenda. Specifically, it focused upon the continuing discussion concerning the role of secularity in school systems where confessional approaches to religion were sanctioned by the central state. On the other hand, the Glasgow presentation was more 'academic' in tone, seeking to re-position secularity and religion in a non-oppositional relationship which was, in turn, argued to be functional for 21st education systems. ResumenLa génesis de este artículo se origina en dos presentaciones en diferentes conferencias para dos audiencias diferentes. La primera fue para un grupo mixto de educadores de maestros, sacerdotes y monjas católicos romanos, así como otros de diversas tradiciones religiosas, en una conferencia de un día sobre religión y pluralismo celebrada en Dublín, República de Irlanda. El enfoque expresado para esta conferencia fue «interreligioso» pero con la adición de una dimensión secular. La segunda presentación fue para un grupo internacional compuesto principalmente por académicos de educación comparada en Glasgow, Escocia. Aunque las dos presentaciones eran muy similares en contenido, el documento de Dublín tenía una orientación distinta. Dado que el sistema escolar irlandés financiado con fondos públicos se caracteriza por una fuerte participación de la religión (Departamento de Educación y Habilidades, 2017), en particular, la de la Iglesia Católica Romana, la tradición dominante en ese país, la presentación de Dublín siguió un enfoque que buscaba ampliar la agenda educativa. Específicamente, se centró en la discusión continua sobre el papel de la secularidad en los sistemas escolares donde el estado central sancionaba los enfoques confesionales de la religión. Por otro lado, la presentación de Glasgow fue más «académica» en tono, buscando reubicar la secularidad y la religión en una relación no...