**Intercultural Communication and Language Education**

Martin East Constanza Tolosa Jocelyn Howard Christine Biebricher Adèle Scott

Journeys Towards Intercultural Capability in Language Classrooms

Voices from Students, Teachers and Researchers

# **Intercultural Communication and Language Education**

#### **Series Editors**

Stephanie Ann Houghton, Saga University, Saga, Japan Melina Porto, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, La Plata, Argentina This book series publishes top quality monographs and edited volumes containing empirical research that prioritises the development of intercultural communicative competence in foreign language education as part of intercultural citizenship. It explores the development of critical cultural awareness broadly aimed at triggering and managing personal and social transformation through intercultural dialogue. Citizenship education and interculturally-oriented language education share an interest in fostering learner exploration, critical analysis and evaluation of other cultures within dynamic socio-political environments.

To complement existing research on the development of intercultural communicative competence, this book series explores the techniques, processes and outcomes of intercultural language pedagogy and intercultural citizenship inside and outside the classroom. It also explores the nature, dynamics and impact of intercultural dialogue outside the classroom in real-world settings where various language codes are in use, including World Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca.

Further, this book series recognizes and explicitly attempts to overcome wideranging real-world barriers to intercultural dialogue and intercultural citizenship. This is especially important in the field of English language education considering the status of English as a global language and associated problems connected to linguistic imperialism, ideology and native-speakerism among others. To promote the development of deeper understandings of how such social problems connect to the use of foreign languages in general, contributions are also sought from disciplines outside foreign language education such as citizenship education, social justice, moral education, language policy and social psychology that shed light upon influential external social factors and internal psychological factors that need to be taken into account.

Textbooks containing teaching materials relevant to this series are also welcome at all levels. Textbooks containing teaching materials used in the classroom research projects reported in academic monographs and edited books published in this series are especially welcome.

Please contact Melody Zhang (email<EMAIL_ADDRESS>for submitting book proposals for this series.

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/13631

Martin East · Constanza Tolosa · Jocelyn Howard · Christine Biebricher · Adèle Scott

# Journeys Towards Intercultural Capability in Language Classrooms

Voices from Students, Teachers and Researchers

Martin East School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics University of Auckland Auckland, New Zealand

Jocelyn Howard School of Teacher Education University of Canterbury Christchurch, New Zealand

Adèle Scott Post-Primary Teachers' Association Wellington, New Zealand

Constanza Tolosa School of Curriculum and Pedagogy University of Auckland Auckland, New Zealand

Christine Biebricher School of Curriculum and Pedagogy University of Auckland Auckland, New Zealand

ISSN 2520-1735 ISSN 2520-1743 (electronic) Intercultural Communication and Language Education ISBN 978-981-19-0990-0 ISBN 978-981-19-0991-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0991-7

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2022. This book is an open access publication.

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# **Introduction and Acknowledgements**

The importance of enhancing young learners' intercultural capability as an essential component of preparation for our increasingly diverse and globalised world has underpinned recent curricular developments in many countries. Learning an additional language or L2 (i.e., a language other than one's first language) is often considered as an important vehicle through which intercultural capability may be developed. As L2 learners engage with a new language, they are automatically confronted with difference and "otherness." Intercultural capability represents the ability to recognise, appreciate and deal with these differences in interaction with others.

In line with international trends, the current national curriculum for Englishmedium schools in New Zealand—the *New Zealand Curriculum* or NZC (Ministry of Education, 2007)—is both forward-focused in its aspirations and clear in acknowledging that L2 learning is now a key component of education in and for the twentyfirst century. Intercultural capability is seen as a new and transformative goal, both more broadly across the curriculum and specifically within the curriculum area known as *Learning Languages*. Integral to this is the expectation that narrow conceptualisations of culture should be replaced in L2 programmes with interwoven, exploratory and reflective approaches through which learners can gain deeper understandings of *themselves*, as well as linguistic and cultural *"others,"* as they develop their capability to become effective intercultural communicators.

The purpose of this book is to present the findings of a project funded by New Zealand's Ministry of Education. Our project sought to investigate how five teachers working in four primary/intermediate schools in New Zealand supported young beginner language learners to develop their intercultural capability through learning an L2. Over two years, we worked with the teachers to introduce them to the intercultural principles underpinning the *Learning Languages*learning area, scaffold them as they attempted to enact these principles through two cycles of implementation (one in each year), and finally worked with them to present their stories as vignettes to encourage and support other teachers. Our work with the teachers revealed to us that developing young learners' intercultural capability through L2 learning can be an exciting and meaningful endeavour. It is also highly challenging and raises questions about exactly what is and what is not possible in L2 classrooms.

This book presents the journeys of three groups of stakeholders during this twoyear endeavour—students, teachers and researchers/teacher educators. We use the voices of each of these groups to present what happened and consider the implications for language education. The book builds on a range of publications that we wrote at different points on the journeys. Several academic articles have reported on aspects of the first of the two interventions undertaken by the teachers (i.e., in Year 1 of the project), alongside some of the lessons that began to emerge for us as researchers (Biebricher et al., 2019; East, Howard et al., 2018; Howard et al., 2019; Tolosa et al., 2018). At the end of the project, one short locally published and teacher-oriented booklet, co-constructed with the teachers, was designed to give examples to other New Zealand-based teachers about what might be possible in their own classrooms (East, Tolosa et al., 2018a). A final report submitted to our funder summarised the key findings and their implications (East, Tolosa et al., 2018b). This book adds substantially to our previous work in several important ways.

First, the book has provided us with the opportunity to present findings from both years of the project, including both of the interventions the teachers undertook, thereby documenting growth and development as the teachers progressed through the project. Second, the book has enabled us to present the perspectives of each of the stakeholder groups in one place, drawing connections and synergies across different sources of data. Third, the book has allowed us, as researchers and teacher educators, to take a step back from the student and teacher data and thereby to consider in some depth the implications of our findings for language education. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the book has created the opportunity to present a multi-faceted and in-depth account of the journeys of three intersecting stakeholder groups, and to draw out in a coherent way the lessons learned from these intersecting voices—something that simply is not possible in a range of short and focused articles.

The end result is a book that tells a comprehensive story of different journeys towards intercultural capability in language classrooms that took place across two academic years, with a focus on young language learners. While rooted in a particular national context, its findings have implications for those working in a range of contexts across the globe who have a stake in young learners' intercultural capability as it might be developed through learning an L2. The book will be invaluable reading for all those who are interested in the interface between intercultural communication and language education, whether as teachers, policy makers, curriculum developers, teacher educators or researchers.

We would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge our primary funder, New Zealand's Ministry of Education through the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI). Established in 2003, the TLRI seeks to enhance the links between educational research and teaching practices to improve outcomes for learners (http:// www.tlri.org.nz/). Without the funding we secured, which enabled us to support the teacher partners in this endeavour, this study could not have taken place. We are also grateful to Tui Tuia (https://www.learningcircle.co.nz/), funded by the Ministry of Education to support the professional learning and development of teachers of languages in schools, for the generous funding that enabled this book to be published Gold Open Access. We would also like to thank our teacher partners (Lillian, Kelly, Kathryn, Mike and Tamara) who committed to the project enthusiastically, but also no doubt with some trepidation, and who were willing to try out with their classes ideas that were new to them and therefore involving some risk. We also thank one of our colleagues for her willingness to read and comment on an earlier draft of this manuscript—Nicola Daly (The University of Waikato, New Zealand, and researcher-partner in earlier discussions about this project).

We commend the different journeys to you, and we trust that, by reading them, you will gain new insights into what it means to travel on roads towards interculturality in the context of language learning, and the benefits and challenges that emerge along the way.

Auckland, June 2022 Martin East Constanza Tolosa Jocelyn Howard Christine Biebricher Adèle Scott

### **References**

# **Contents**

#### Contents xi

# **Chapter 1 Beginning the Journeys Towards Intercultural Capability**

1

#### **1.1 Introduction**

The intercultural dimension of the language learning experience is one that has taken on increasing significance over the past decades. As Byram (2018) reminded us, "intercultural competence" (IC) as a term of relevance to language pedagogy arose in the 1980s as a development to "communicative competence." The construct of communicative competence was, by that time, beginning to become embedded as informing the principal aim of language teaching and learning programmes. That is, for many years students have been learning languages in a variety of ways and in a range of different contexts, but with a primary goal of learning how to *communicate* in the target language (TL). However, as TL users in real-world contexts initiate communication with TL speakers, they are necessarily confronted with situations that move communication beyond the pure use of language and require them to negotiate with, as Byram (e.g., 2021) put it, beliefs, meanings, values and behaviours that may be very different from their own. This has implications for effective communication. Indeed, all TL interactions are encounters with "otherness" that require navigation beyond just choosing the appropriate words for the context; hence the emergence of IC as a construct of interest in language education.

The study we present in this book is rooted in the diverse multilingual and multicultural context of New Zealand. Ours was a two-year project, funded by New Zealand's Ministry of Education, that sought to investigate the ways in which five teachers working at the intermediate school level1 could be supported to embrace an intercultural dimension in the context of students learning an additional language (L2). We began from the premise that the increasing diversity of backgrounds of learners and their families in New Zealand creates an imperative to utilise L2 programmes as vehicles to increase L2 learners' capacity to understand and relate effectively to diversity, not only the diversity represented in the TL, but also the diversity that makes up

1 See Table 1.2 for an overview of the New Zealand school sector.

© The Author(s) 2022

M. East et al., *Journeys Towards Intercultural Capability in Language Classrooms*, Intercultural Communication and Language Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0991-7\_1

the classroom environment. Through data collected in a range of ways—classroom observations, reflective interviews with the teachers, focus groups with students, meetings, email correspondence and our own reflections—this book presents the journeys and voices of three groups of stakeholders in the intercultural educational endeavour—students, teachers and researchers/teacher educators.

The purpose of this introductory chapter is to set the scene for the journeys we will present later in this book. The chapter begins by outlining what we see as the significance of the study we undertook. We go on to provide a brief historical overview of how, and to what extent, a cultural/intercultural dimension has been included in the communicative L2 classroom over the years. We raise some of the challenges that have been encountered in more contemporary understandings of the "intercultural" in the context of the construct of communicative competence. We then briefly describe the site of the present study—New Zealand. We conclude by providing an overview of how the journeys of the different stakeholders in our study will unfold in the remainder of the book.

#### **1.2 The Significance of Our Study**

To date, very little research has been conducted into the intercultural dimension in L2 learning among young language learners (i.e., those who are beginning to learn a new language at the school level), particularly in what might be termed acquisitionpoor contexts where these young learners are exposed to very minimal teaching time for the L2 and might not even encounter TL speakers with whom they can interact authentically. The paucity of research at this level means that we know little as yet about young language learners' capacity for intercultural development. Byram (1997) argued, however, that research was needed to "provide a more systematic base for formulating the cultural learning aims of language teaching in the early years" (p. 46). More recently, Perry and Southwell (2011) highlighted the need for more research into how the intercultural dimension can be developed among school-aged students. Our study sought to add to current knowledge and understanding of how young language learners might develop intercultural skills in time-limited language learning contexts.

Our study is also significant in its focus on three groups of stakeholders—students, teachers and researchers/teacher educators. We present and reflect on what happened as *students* in different language classes experienced a range of ways of engaging with otherness and difference as they were learning an L2. We look at what happened when the *teachers* with whom we worked as researchers enacted "teaching as inquiry" cycles2 to explore the intercultural dimension with their students. We also take a step back from the project and the data and consider what we, as *researchers and teacher educators*, learned as we reflected on the extent to which the intercultural dimension can be developed in young students who are at the beginning stages of learning a

2 See later in this chapter for a definition of this action research approach.

new language and as we reflected on how teachers could be supported to reframe their language teaching in intercultural terms.

Looking back on what we experienced during the two years of our project, we drew a conclusion that needs to be stated at the outset of presenting the journeys of the different stakeholders: for many reasons, the development of the intercultural dimension through L2 learning (particularly with younger students) is fraught with challenges. Dervin et al. (2020), for example, asserted that the notion of IC "has been with us for decades" (p. 4) and that "[t]oday it feels like everything has been said and written about IC" (p. 5). If that is the case, its enactment and development in the context of L2 learning should be a straightforward process. Nevertheless, Dervin and colleagues went on to present a collection of studies that illustrated not only "the diverse and uneven pathways which educators have taken" towards understanding IC, whereby they have confronted "personal and pedagogical risk, growth, and, in a number of cases, struggle and frustration" (p. 9), but also problematised the very construct of IC in the face of real-world experiences. Furthermore, as Brunsmeier (2017) suggested in the European context, the development of L2 learners' IC is hugely challenging because the construct is yet to be adequately defined, both more broadly and, in particular, with regard to young learners. The knowledge and understanding emerging from our study therefore includes careful consideration of the complexities involved in developing young language learners' intercultural skills in time-limited contexts. Hence, we frame what we present as "journeys towards." We cannot claim to have arrived.

#### **1.3 The Language–Culture Relationship**

A relationship between language and culture has long been acknowledged in the field of language teaching and learning. As Brown (1994) put it, "[a] language is a part of a culture and a culture is a part of a language; the two are intricately interwoven so that one cannot separate the two without losing the significance of either language or culture" (p. 165). Brown (2014) subsequently expanded on this notion when he argued that language and culture are components of "a 'package' that the L2 learner must grapple with in the journey to successful [L2] acquisition" (p. 197). At the time of first writing this chapter, we googled the phrase "language and culture" and came up with over 100 million results. Many of these results either indicated an inextricable link between the two concepts or posed questions about what the inter-relationship is or should be. It is one thing to recognise the potential interface; it is quite another to pinpoint exactly what that interface means and how it might be realised. Indeed, the interface finds different expressions depending on the pedagogical paradigm in question. In what follows, we consider that interface with reference to the construct of communicative competence and its outworking through pedagogical approaches that may broadly be labelled as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). We follow this with an exploration of intercultural communicative competence (ICC), and Intercultural Communicative Language Teaching (ICLT).

**Table 1.1** The four components of communicative competence (Canale, 1983)

#### **1.4 Communicative Competence**

The construct of communicative competence finds its genesis in the arguments of Hymes (e.g., 1972), described by Sherzer et al. (2010) as a leading figure in linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics whose pioneering work included "the study of relations between and among language, culture, and society" (p. 301). Walker et al.'s (2018) introductory chapter provides a useful overview of the development of the construct, using Hymes' work as a starting point, and outlining advances that have occurred over time.

One significant model of communicative competence which continues to influence thinking in the field of language education was presented by Canale and Swain (1980). Canale (1983) concisely presented its four components (Table 1.1).

Embedded within the concept of sociolinguistic competence was the understanding that the *social context* needed to play a role in determining the *language* that was suitable to initiate and maintain an interaction. The social context may be referred to as "the culture-specific context embedding the norms, values, beliefs, and behaviour patterns of a culture," such that "[a]ppropiate use of the language requires attention to such constructs" (Alptekin, 2002, p. 58). The model thereby began to raise consciousness that an interface needed to exist between language and culture in L2 education.

#### **1.5 Communicative Language Teaching**

CLT emerged in the latter half of the last century as a response to calls for greater emphasis on genuine communication in L2 classrooms. Aligned with theoretical constructs of communicative competence as articulated, for example, by Canale and Swain (1980) and Canale (1983), the ability to communicate effectively with others in the TL increasingly became fundamental to the aims and goals of many L2 programmes across the globe (Richards, 2001; Richards & Rodgers, 2014). L2 programmes began to emphasise the comprehension and production of meaningful language in authentic contexts (Hedge, 2000).

In parallel with CLT was the emergence of what Kramsch (1986, 1987) referred to as the proficiency movement in the United States which similarly encouraged, as a primary goal, the ability to communicate in authentic settings (Higgs, 1984). For Kramsch (1986), this meant that "the final justification for developing students' proficiency in a foreign language" was "to make them interactionally competent on the international scene" (p. 367).

The 1970s and 1980s represented the beginnings of what Richards (2006) referred to as the "classic" CLT phase. In light of different understandings about what makes L2 teaching and learning effective (see, e.g., Mitchell et al., 2019), several polarisations to CLT became apparent during this phase. These polarisations were fundamentally informed by theoretical arguments about where, and how, attention to grammar should be situated. That is, Canale and Swain (1980) had identified grammatical competence as an important component of communicative competence. At the level of the classroom, teachers' understanding of how to attend to this component essentially led CLT in two contrasting directions—a teacher-led behaviourist-influenced approach that placed strong emphasis on teaching and practising the rules (so-called weak CLT), and, by contrast, a learner-centred constructivist-informed approach that gave learners room to discover the rules for themselves (so-called strong CLT).

#### *1.5.1 Weak CLT*

The established approach that had dominated L2 pedagogy since the eighteenth century had come to be known as grammar-translation. As the name suggests, this pedagogical approach placed strong emphasis on studying, practising and mastering the rules of the TL, often through the direct translation of sentences and texts. The medium of instruction was the students' first language (L1), and L1 explanations became the gateways into L2 acquisition. Thus, knowing a language under the grammar-translation method meant knowing its grammar and vocabulary, with the benchmark of competence being a "native-like" (i.e., L1) level.

A strong component of the grammar-translation approach, particularly as students advanced in their studies, was exposure to authentic texts in the TL. In turn, original (authentic) texts became the windows through which another culture might be viewed, and the primary means to develop "cultural knowledge." Thus, a language– culture interface was attempted within the grammar-translation paradigm, but the cultural dimension could be interpreted as "high culture" or "culture as artefact" (Crozet et al., 1999; Sehlaoui, 2001). Culture was perceived to focus both on and in a canon of literature (Peiser & Jones, 2013), and cultural knowledge was built on "the conviction that language and culture are two separate domains of language learning, with language competence being given priority over cultural" (Pi˛atkowska, 2015, p. 398).

As the communicative agenda began to take hold, the "traditional anglocentric assumptions" underpinning grammar-translation that "the main purpose of learning foreign languages was to broaden the mind" began to give way to a recognition that students were "learning languages because they needed to *use* them in an evershrinking world" (Benson & Voller, 1997, p. 11). The essential criticism of grammartranslation was that it failed to help learners to develop the ability to communicate. However, for the most part, teachers who were emerging from approaches such as grammar-translation still tended to place grammar teaching at the forefront of their classroom practices, even when there was tacit recognition that effective communication in the TL was now the goal. Thus, grammatical competence continued to take a central place in weak CLT.

#### *1.5.2 Presentation-Practice-Production*

One expression of the weak CLT paradigm came to be known as the "classic lesson structure" of Presentation-Practice-Production or PPP (Klapper, 2003). In this teacher-led approach, teachers would begin their lessons by teaching a particular grammatical principle to the class. Students would then practise the grammatical rule through various focused practice activities. Only after the rule had been practised would students be asked to utilise the rule in a pseudo-authentic context that aimed to replicate the domains in which the L2 might be used authentically in real-world contexts—for example, buying food and drink in a restaurant, purchasing a train ticket at a station, booking into a hotel. This was often done through structured roleplay scenarios. Intercultural notions were implicit in how the TL user was supposed to interact appropriately, for example with the waiter, the ticket clerk or the hotel receptionist (i.e., sociolinguistic competence). However, the main focus of practice for these encounters was on (grammatically correct) *language*, not on the dynamics of real-world interaction.

Where culture was attended to in the PPP-based classroom, it was frequently enacted in ways that Byram described over twenty years ago as "something to talk over if there are a few minutes free from the *real* business of language learning" (1991, pp. 17–18, our emphasis)—for example, "on Friday afternoon we will learn about the Eiffel Tower." The language–culture interface was effectively minimised. When it came to the intercultural dimension, a PPP-oriented approach to CLT was found wanting.

#### *1.5.3 Strong CLT*

Some communicatively oriented teachers perceived significant limitations in grammar-translation, and focused primarily on meaning and fluency, alongside dominant or exclusive use of the TL. The principle here was that students should be "immersed" in the TL, that is, exposed to wide-ranging authentic TL input, and being given extensive opportunities to use language creatively. It was left up to the students to work out and assimilate the grammar rules for themselves, by noticing in the input patterns and structures, and how they were used.

At its strongest, CLT was proposed as a wholly learner-centred and experiential approach to the extent that the teacher had little, if any, role to play. Although this extreme reaction to teacher-dominant pedagogy did not prove to be as popular as PPP, Richards (2006) spoke of a *developmental* phase to the CLT model (from the 1990s onwards) which, according to Brown (2014), continued to de-emphasise the structural and cognitive aspects of communication, with its focus on accuracy as a necessary component of successful communication, in favour of exploring its social, cultural and pragmatic dimensions. This, Brown argued, has focused teachers' and learners' attention on "language as *interactive communication* among individuals, *each with a sociocultural identity*" (p. 206, our emphases). This has arguably created greater space for attention to the sociolinguistic and intercultural due to the wide range of authentic input to which learners would be exposed, and the centrality of "learning by doing."

#### *1.5.4 Task-Based Language Teaching*

A more strongly constructivist-oriented approach, where the role of the teacher shifts from instructor to facilitator, emerged in the 1980s as the phenomenon of task-based language teaching or TBLT—an approach that sees "important roles for holism, experiential learning, and learner-centered pedagogy" alongside "the interactive roles of the social and linguistic environment in providing learning opportunities, and scaffolding learners into them" (Norris et al., 2009, p. 15). In contrast to PPP, TBLT starts with language in use and subsequently focuses on the forms of the language on the basis of the errors that students make with language and/or the language structures that they notice as they attempt to use language for themselves—a kind of PPP in reverse. In TBLT, language learners have a crucial level of responsibility to work out how language functions through engagement in communicative "tasks"—that is, "the hundred and one things that people do in everyday life at work, at play, and in between" (Long, 1985, p. 89) or "the real-world activities people think of when planning, conducting, or recalling their day" (Long, 2015, p. 6). The teacher's role is nonetheless crucial in helping learners to notice (and then correct) errors through such mechanisms as corrective feedback.

TBLT offers some potential for a stronger focus on the intercultural dimension in line with Brown's (2014) acknowledgement of a pedagogical shift in emphasis. As learners engage in a series of tasks, they are able to focus on authentic samples of language as used in genuine real-world contexts. In TBLT, the broader cultural contexts for language use take on added relevance and significance. Indeed, the interface between TBLT and the intercultural dimension is something that is beginning to emerge in the task-based literature as potentially important (see, e.g., East, 2012a; Gonzáles-Lloret, 2020; Müller-Hartmann & Schocker, 2018). Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that TBLT is built on particular understandings and theories of second language acquisition, and that exploration of the TBLT-intercultural interface is in its infancy.

#### **1.6 What Has Been Lacking in CLT Approaches**

The isolationist approach to culture that was apparent in the early days of CLT might have been seen as a valuable starting point for language learners who may have enjoyed learning about "a series of selected facts, customs and traditions learners need to understand and appreciate in order to become 'culturally competent'" (Flinders Humanities Research Centre, 2005, p. 3). Nevertheless, when cultural knowledge is viewed as "the marginalized sister of language" (Hennebry, 2014, p. 135), separated from learning the L2, it effectively becomes an "optional extra," not regarded as an important component of the development of learners' communicative competence. The problem, however, is that this approach does not help learners of an L2 to appreciate and navigate the challenges that might emerge in encounters with TL speakers.

Kramsch (1986) gave an early illustration of what appeared to be absent from a CLT model in which language and culture were essentially separate. She took as her example "[t]he difficulty in ordering the legendary cup of coffee in a French restaurant after three years of French" (p. 368). That is, in the traditional communicative classroom students might learn the basics of how to order a cup of coffee through being taught appropriate language and grammar, effectively practised through some kind of role-play. In Kramsch's view, if, in a subsequent real-world scenario, the customer could not secure the wanted cup of coffee, this could hardly be put down to not knowing, or not being able to put to use, the right vocabulary or grammar. Something was amiss that went *beyond* language. Kramsch continued that the lack of intended outcome was:

… more likely due to a lack of awareness of the different social relationships existing in France between waiters and customers, of the different affective, social, and cultural values attached to cups of coffee, of the different perception French waiters might have of [for example] American citizens. (p. 368)

Kramsch (1986) concluded, "[i]n short, the difficulty lies in the differences in expectations, assumptions, and general representations of the world between two speakers" (p. 368). Kramsch thus viewed an approach that stresses grammar and lexis (even in specific communicative contexts) as overlooking what she referred to as the "*dynamic* process of communication" (p. 368, our emphasis). Effective communication, as Kramsch later asserted, is "*more than* just learning to get one's message across," even if that message is delivered "clearly, accurately, and appropriately" (Kramsch, 2005, p. 551, our emphasis).

Kramsch's (2005) "more than" element has become the focus of debates around the integration of the intercultural into language learning and language use. This developed understanding of what it means to communicate effectively has given rise to a rich and varied literature spanning several decades which we will explore in subsequent chapters (e.g., Byram, 1997, 2009; Byram et al., 2002; Liddicoat, 2005b, 2008; Liddicoat & Crozet, 2000; Lo Bianco et al., 1999). Furthermore, this developed understanding has influenced the refinement of pedagogical practices aligned to CLT approaches.

#### **1.7 Intercultural Communicative Competence**

More recent thinking about the communicative competence construct has recognised that the intercultural dimension must be made more explicit. Martinez-Flor et al. (2006), for example, made the implicit elements of the Canale and Swain model more visible when they suggested that the development of communicative competence needed to include intercultural competence. They went on to define this competence initially in *linguistic* terms, that is, as knowledge of appropriate language use within a specific sociocultural context (i.e., sociolinguistic competence). However, from this perspective the intercultural dimension included, in *addition* to appropriate language choice, an awareness of "the rules of behavior that exist in a particular community in order to avoid possible miscommunication" as well as "non-verbal means of communication (i.e., body language, facial expressions, eye contact, etc.)" (p. 150).

East (2016) put it like this: if interactions between two interlocutors are to be effective, what the interlocutors arguably need is "some level of understanding of, and competence in, appropriate interactional *behaviour* (when, for example, it is appropriate, in France, to shake someone's hand or kiss them on the cheek – *faire la bise*)" (p. 29). In other words, "[i]nappropriate behaviour may lead to a breakdown in communication that is not related to *linguistic* proficiency but is nonetheless related to *intercultural* proficiency (or lack thereof)" (p. 29). Thus, a view emerges that intercultural competence entails not only a "culture-in-language" element, made apparent in helping learners to acquire proficiency in handling *language* appropriately in a range of contexts, but also a behavioural element, made apparent in helping learners to understand what is and what is not appropriate *behaviour* in a given context.

A further dimension of intercultural competence which embraces *attitudinal* or *positioning* elements becomes apparent, for example, in Byram's five-facet *savoirs* (knowledge or skills) model of Intercultural Communicative Competence or ICC (e.g., Byram, 1997, 2021), a model we present in more depth in Chaps. 2 and 4. Essentially, Byram's *savoirs* took us beyond linguistic and behavioural appropriacy to the *attitudes* that intercultural speakers hold towards their interlocutors. Although for Byram et al. (2002) a crucial element of ICC is knowledge, this is not primarily knowledge *about* the target culture (or even about appropriate language and behaviours)—even though such knowledge is important; rather, it is knowledge *of* how individuals and societies function and what that means for interaction with others. The *savoirs* enable language learners and language users to step back from their own views of the world (to "de-centre," as Byram et al. put it), and to consider and take into account the views of their interlocutors in comparative terms.

Byram et al. (2002) concluded, "it is not the purpose of teaching to try to change learners' values, but to make them explicit and conscious in any evaluative response to others" (p. 8). Ultimately this would lead to "knowing how to negotiate several potentially conflicting codes of acting and thinking, and how to handle the feelings that those negotiations evoke, which may at times be uncomfortable" (East, 2012b, p. 140). As we explain in more detail in Chap. 2, this place of negotiation or "intercultural positioning" has been variously labelled as a "third place" (Lo Bianco et al., 1999), "third space" (Bhabha, 1994), "third culture," "third stance," or "thirdness" (Kramsch, 2009). MacDonald (2019) acknowledged ongoing tensions and contradictions in the ways in which these terms are used and interpreted, but found the "third place" emerging as a term to represent "a pedagogic site where the 'hybrid' identity of the language learner/intercultural subject can be worked out" (p. 106).

#### **1.8 Intercultural Communicative Language Teaching**

All that we have presented so far suggests that intercultural competence must be a component of communicative competence, that there can arguably be no communicative competence without the intercultural, and that L2 learning must involve elements that enable learners to focus on the intercultural in comparative terms. Liddicoat (2008) put it like this: "[a] language learner who has learnt only the grammar and vocabulary of a language is … not well equipped to communicate in that language." In his view, "learners require *cultural* knowledge *as much as* they require grammar and vocabulary" (p. 278, our emphases). However, this cultural knowledge moves beyond facts about the target culture (which may have been how this knowledge was interpreted in the early days of CLT); it also moves beyond knowledge of linguistic and behavioural appropriacy (elements that were implicit in the foundations of CLT, even if not fully realised); it includes attitudes and positioning in relation to the "other." As Liddicoat (2005a) argued, cultural knowledge is "not [just] a case of knowing *information* about the culture," as might have been the emphasis in grammar-translation or earlier realisations of CLT; rather it is "about knowing *how to engage* with it" (p. 31, our emphases).

Discourses around the language–culture interface, and the development of theoretical frameworks such as ICC, have given rise to the concept of Intercultural Communicative Language Teaching (ICTL). Pi˛atkowska (2015) provided a useful summation of the aims of ICLT. She argued that, central to the ICC construct as operationalised in an ICLT model, culture is viewed as a dynamic concept where language and culture are interdependent and where focus is put on both awareness of inseparability of language and culture and the need to prepare learners to communicate across cultures. As part of this preparation for interaction, intercultural teaching focuses learners' attention on both the TL culture and their own culture in an exploratory, comparative way. The goal of teaching is not to introduce the TL culture or L1 speakers in a static and exclusively facts-based way, thereby "neglecting the skills of analysis, evaluation and interpretation of cultural meanings, beliefs and values" (p. 400). It is, rather, to reach a range of cultural outcomes. Such teaching, Pi˛atkowska asserted, is "in line with constructivist approaches in that it is a learner-centred approach that promotes student autonomy, meaning construction and transfer of abilities to other contexts not previously met by a learner," where the learning outcomes are no longer seen in terms of a uniform view of culture, but rather of culture as dynamic and heterogeneous. The focus therefore is "on *attitudes and skills* in the first place and *knowledge* in the second" (p. 403, our emphases). ICLT as conceptualised in this way shares much in common with TBLT.

#### **1.9 Challenges in Practice**

The above presentation of developments to our understanding about the intercultural dimension, and the interface between language and culture, leads, in both theory and practice, to several significant challenges. Indeed, even though Pi˛atkowska (2015) appeared to conclude that ICC provides the most comprehensive, meaningful and integrative theoretical framework by which to understand what IC is, what it entails, and how it might be developed, she accepted nonetheless that culture is "a complex phenomenon" (p. 397). Likewise, although Kramsch (2005) acknowledged the shortcomings of the traditional linguistic foci of language learning, she also highlighted a lack of consensus about what intercultural competence in the context of L2 learning actually was and entailed. Furthermore, the proliferation of a range of acronyms, including those we have so far included in this chapter (IC, ICC, CLT, PPP, TBLT, ICLT) can lead to confusion about exactly which label most adequately applies and which stances to pedagogy should be taken as teachers seek to enact and enhance the language–culture interface. A fundamental challenge is the very nomenclature that should apply to the intercultural dimension in L2 learning and L2 use, and the meanings that nomenclature carries.

Dervin et al. (2020), for example, viewed the construct of IC as sufficiently problematic that they decided not to define the construct in their opening chapter, but, rather, to allow their readers to uncover and reflect on how each individual chapter author in their collection understood the concept. In this regard, they argued:

We each have our own (incomplete) understandings of IC, of course. We agree on some aspects while disagreeing on others … and would not want to give the impression that ours is THE right understanding of IC. That is why we have decided not to share our definitions. (pp. 4–5)

In the same volume, Dervin (2020) argued, "[t]here is a clear lack of agreement about the notion of interculturality in research, practice and decision-making today," leading to a "multiplicity of approaches and meanings" (p. 59). Dervin et al. asserted on this basis, "[w]ho has the power to decide what the intercultural is, how IC is defined?" (p. 8).

Certainly, the notion of IC is very established and frequently used in the literature (see, e.g., Bennett, 2014; Byram, 2018; Deardorff, 2009). Interestingly, Rehbein (2013) also drew on the IC acronym, but reframed this as *intercultural communication*, which he described as "the mediation of cultural differences between social groups through verbal or nonverbal interaction" (p. 1). Arguably the differentiation here is between the underlying competence and the realisation of that competence in practice, but use of the same acronym is potentially confusing. *Intercultural awareness*is another proposed construct (Baker, 2011; Hennebry, 2014). Yet another construct, *intercultural understanding*, features prominently in documents emanating from Australia, where explorations of the intercultural in language teaching and learning have been going on for many years (Australian Curriculum, n.d.). In one Australian state (Victoria State Government, 2018), however, *intercultural capability* is a chosen label (and, indeed, the one chosen by us for our study, for reasons we explain later in this chapter). How, if at all, do these constructs differ? If they do differ, where and why do they differ? Which construct best represents the knowledge, skills and understanding for interaction that we would wish learners of an L2 to acquire in the context of that learning?

The above arguments indicate that defining constructs such as IC and ICC, and enacting them through CLT and ICLT, leads to significant challenges. Furthermore, in practice the apparently simultaneous goals of exploring culture-in-language and critical comparison and contrast across cultures—within the broader overarching goal that, at the end of the day, students will learn how to communicate in the TL (with all that continues to imply about grammar and vocabulary)—lead to a confusing scenario for L2 programme planning. That is, and as we have already acknowledged, the (inter)cultural in language teaching and learning has often been approached in isolation from what Byram (1991) labelled the perceived "real business" of language learning. An integrated approach, especially an approach which is required to build in opportunities for critical reflection, comparison and contrast, is likely to place significant demands on L2 teachers who, with limited time available to them as it is, might view the language itself as their more pressing priority. Additionally, if standard practice in the L2 classroom is principally or exclusively to focus on language, adopting an intercultural stance in the classroom "implies a radical rethinking of one's goals for teaching a language" (Crozet, 2017, p. 157). When it comes to the practices of actual teachers, it is apparent that there is a strong and persistent mismatch between the ideal goal of language–culture integration and the implementation of an integrated approach in real classrooms.

Furthermore, prior studies have emphasised teachers' uncertainty about how to implement intercultural language teaching (see, e.g., Castro et al., 2004; Driscoll et al., 2013; Kohler, 2015). The early language learning years arguably present a particularly challenging (and therefore particularly intriguing) environment for the integration of the intercultural into L2 learning. Despite Byram's (1991) early assertion that separating out culture from language was "fundamentally flawed," carrying with it the implication that the L2 could be "treated in the early learning stages as if it were self-contained and independent of other sociocultural phenomena" (p. 18), studies to date (which we explore in Chaps. 2 and 3) indicate that many teachers still persist in separatist practices that demonstrate limited (or perhaps non-existent) understanding of intercultural integration, even when they may demonstrate a level of openness to the concept.

#### **1.10 Introducing the Present Study**

The study we present in this book is grounded in global debates about, and developments to, the CLT paradigm and, in particular, how the intercultural within this paradigm might be operationalised. It is also situated within the challenges facing the integration of language and culture in the L2 school classroom, particularly at the primary school level. In what follows we introduce the study, beginning with the New Zealand context in which it is situated.

#### *1.10.1 The New Zealand Context for Language Teaching*

In Chap. 3, we explore in some detail the New Zealand context for language teaching, and endeavours that have been made to enhance the intercultural dimension in that context. In what follows here, we provide a brief introduction to language education within the New Zealand school system in order to contextualise the study we report in this book.

In common with other western Anglophone contexts, New Zealand's approach to L2 learning in the school sector over the last few decades has focused on learning a language for purposes of genuine communication, realised through approaches aligned to the CLT paradigm. In the New Zealand school system, students can receive instruction for thirteen years (Years 1–13; ages 5+ to 18+). In the English-medium state or public school system, schools operate in a primarily two- or three-division model, as illustrated in Table 1.2.

Since 2010, teaching and learning in the state school system has been governed by a document known as the *New Zealand Curriculum* or NZC (Ministry of Education, 2007). The curriculum encourages learner-centred and experiential pedagogical approaches. Within the NZC, the learning area that focuses on L2 teaching and learning is appropriately called *Learning Languages*. It comprises three components. These are described as "strands," suggesting that the components are to be interwoven:

Communication in the target language is seen as the overarching goal of L2 programmes. Language knowledge (a focus on grammar) and cultural knowledge (a focus on culture) are seen as equal components that are there to support the communicative agenda. Theoretical constructs of communicative competence inform the three-strand model.

The *cultural knowledge* strand sets out the primary learning expectations with regard to culture (Ministry of Education, 2007): students will not only "learn about culture"—an assumption here about learning facts about the target culture—but also about "the interrelationship between culture and language"—an assumption here about the interface between how language is used and the cultural meanings that language carries. Students will also be expected to "compare and contrast different beliefs and cultural practices, including their own" so that they "understand more about themselves and become more understanding of others" (p. 24)—an assumption here about the importance of "third place positioning."

Separately published achievement objectives (Ministry of Education, 2009) are designed to help teachers to understand how the elements of the three strands might be evaluated. With regard to cultural knowledge, it is made clear that beginners with learning a language might be expected to recognise that the target culture is organised in particular ways, and, as they progress, to be able to describe, compare and contrast cultural practices.

To support New Zealand-based teachers with understanding and implementing the *cultural knowledge* strand in the context of communication, a set of principles was published that explored so-called intercultural CLT (Newton et al., 2010).3 The published principles are that an intercultural approach to CLT:

In essence, the principles encourage L2 learners to explore and reflect on how cultural practices may be similar and different across both the learners' own cultures and the target cultures. This reflects both the expectations of the *cultural knowledge* strand (Ministry of Education, 2007) and the curriculum achievement objectives (Ministry of Education, 2009).

In summary, the *Learning Languages* area of the NZC places a definite expectation on teachers to develop their students' intercultural skills in the context of a communicative approach to L2 learning. In practice, however, the expectation is not being realised because, in many cases, teachers are either not aware that they need to do this, or do not know how to do this. The challenge is arguably greater in New Zealand's primary/intermediate school sector because the vast majority of language teachers working in this sector have not received any dedicated teacher education in language acquisition theories and language pedagogy, are inexperienced in teaching languages, and may often be learning the language they are teaching alongside their own students (Scott & Butler, 2007). Students in the primary/intermediate sector are also beginners and, in many cases, receive only minimal instructional time in the L2. The addition of an intercultural element to teachers' practices and students' experiences is therefore a significant step and a huge challenge.

#### *1.10.2 Our Project*

As we noted at the start of this chapter, and explain in more detail in Chap. 4, our two-year project sought to investigate how five teachers working in four primary/intermediate schools in New Zealand could be supported to develop the intercultural dimension of L2 learning for their students.

3 Newton et al. (2010) chose the acronym iCLT (rather than ICLT) as a context-specific means of reflecting the NZC emphasis on communication as the *core* strand and "the concept of intercultural language learning as an effective means of approaching the *supporting* strand of cultural knowledge in the curriculum for learning languages" (p. 4, our emphasis).

The study was framed as a collaborative partnership between the researchers and the teachers. Our teacher partners were Lillian4 (L1 speaker of Mandarin and teacher of Mandarin); Kelly (L2 speaker of Mandarin and teacher of Mandarin); Kathryn (L2 speaker of Japanese and teacher of Japanese); Mike (L2 speaker of French and teacher of French); and Tamara (L2 speaker of M¯aori and teacher of M¯aori). Across all subject areas, the NZC encourages reflective approaches to teaching and learning, that is, approaches that involve some kind of inquiry, whether on the part of the learners (inquiry learning) or on the part of the teachers (teaching as inquiry). This inquiry emphasis became the means through which we aimed to create spaces with and for the teachers and their students for the kinds of intercultural reflections and explorations that we wished to encourage.

On the part of students, the NZC promotes inquiry learning as a means to facilitate students' self-reflective inquiries into specific phenomena, and the development of so-called key competencies such as thinking, managing self, relating to others, and participating and contributing (Ministry of Education, 2007, pp. 12–13). Inquiry learning may be defined as "an investigation into a topic, idea, problem, or issue with a focus on students constructing their own learning and meanings." Inquiry thus "enables students to learn through curiosity, discovery, and collaboration rather than being presented with facts through direct instruction" (National Library of New Zealand, n.d., para. 3).

In turn, teachers are encouraged to approach their own teaching through a teaching as inquiry approach (see Chap. 4 for further details). Teaching as inquiry is carefully articulated in the NZC as a cyclical process through which teachers investigate how a particular teaching strategy plays out in the classroom (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 35). This is essentially an action research model which facilitates what Burns (1999) described as "a process for enhancing reflective practice and professional growth and development" (p. 24), because it "addresses questions of real practical and theoretical interest to many educational practitioners" (p. 25).

The overarching research question that we posed at the outset of the project was as follows: can a teaching as inquiry process in the context of learning an L2 enhance intermediate school learners' intercultural capability? Unlike Dervin et al. (2020) who explicitly stated that they would not define the intercultural dimension in their opening chapter on the basis that the concept might be interpreted in a multiplicity of ways, we chose, at the beginning of the project, to state our stance. In terms of the operationalisation of the construct of interest for the purposes of our study, we chose the label *intercultural capability* and defined the intercultural dimension as follows:

[W]e use the term 'intercultural capability' … as the ability to relate comfortably with people from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, appreciating and valuing the learners' own cultures and uniqueness alongside the cultures and uniqueness of others. Moreover, we use 'capabilities' rather than the most commonly used 'competence' to acknowledge the highly personal individual trajectories that the development of interculturality seems to take. (Biebricher et al., 2019, p. 606)

4 In line with the expectation of the funder of this project that the study would represent genuine teacher-researcher partnerships, these are the teachers' actual names, and not pseudonyms.

We argued that our choice and interpretation were context-bound. That is, where teachers are guided by published achievement objectives (Ministry of Education, 2009), it was important for us to stake a claim to a definition of the intercultural dimension in line with, and not in opposition to, those objectives. The choice of an operational definition also enabled us to support the teachers in thinking through what they wished to investigate, and how they might frame their classroom activities for purposes of inquiry.

One of our aims during the two-year project was to co-construct with the teachers two teaching as inquiry cycles, both lasting up to six months, with an intercultural focus embedded within their L2 programmes. This was essentially a bottom-up process whereby we encouraged teachers to come up with their own context-suitable inquiries. That is, working within the above operational definition of the intercultural, we encouraged the teachers to think through how they might best achieve the outcome—enhanced intercultural capability in the context of L2 learning—in ways that were meaningful and realistic to their own contexts. We did not therefore prescribe which intercultural outcomes the teachers should aim to promote, or how the teachers should enact and then investigate them.

In essence, our project, framed as research with and by teachers, was intended to document how teachers moved forward in planning effective intercultural learning opportunities in line with the learner-centred stance of the NZC, the *cultural knowledge* outcomes anticipated in the *Learning Languages*learning area, and the intercultural achievement objectives teachers were presented with (Ministry of Education, 2007, 2009).

As we indicated at the start of this chapter, the project, as it unfolded, presented several challenges, and what we found in practice was actually quite different to what we had initially anticipated. That is, we began our project with high expectations and optimistic assumptions about what it means to develop young learners' intercultural capability in the context of learning a new language. As we engaged with the process, our thinking about what was possible was developed and refined. Two research questions (RQs) therefore underpin the journeys we will present in this book:

To answer these questions, we take a retrospective look at the whole project and the findings that emerged (RQ1). We then consider the lessons we learned as we reflected on what the findings revealed (RQ2). This book therefore looks back on our journeys, from a range of perspectives, and the stops and redirections we made on the way, as we attempted to address what it means to enhance intercultural capability in the context of L2 learning. It presents and discusses the tensions, challenges and classroom realities, and the ways in which our journeys were shaped by those as our own understandings of what was possibly developed.

#### **1.11 Presenting the Journeys**

In this chapter, we have introduced the project in the broader context of discussing the intercultural dimension of L2 teaching and learning. In Chap. 2, we review the international literature on the intercultural dimension alongside a range of empirical studies that have investigated the development of this dimension in L2 learning, with a particular focus on younger learners. Chapter 3 builds on what has been outlined in this introductory chapter: we revisit and describe in more detail the context of the study—New Zealand—and present prior studies into the intercultural dimension in the New Zealand context. Chapter 4 presents the methodology for our two-year project in more detail, including the teaching as inquiry model as one means for teachers to investigate their own practices.

Chapters 5–7 present the findings of our study. In Chap. 5, we describe the inquiries the teachers undertook by presenting accounts of aspects of their lessons, based on observations of teachers in their classrooms. The chapter also presents findings pertaining to the students, gleaned principally from a series of summative focus groups. Our attention is on the evidence of intercultural learning that students reported had taken place, alongside the problems these revealed. Chapter 6 presents findings pertaining to the teachers, gleaned from discussions they had with the researchers, both individually and collectively, and follow-up reflective interviews. We present the teachers' reflections on the effectiveness of the inquiries they instigated, alongside the problems they encountered. In Chap. 7, we take a step back from the classroom and teacher data and present an account of how we worked with the teachers, alongside how we aimed to enhance reflection on practice through the "critical friend" conversations we undertook at different stages in the project. We reflect on the evidence we collected from the teachers and students, once more alongside the problems we came up against, and what these might mean for an effective focus on the intercultural in L2 classrooms.

Chapter 8, the concluding chapter, draws each of the strands from Chaps. 5–7 together. Bearing in mind challenges with defining the intercultural, and all this means for research and teaching, the concluding chapter revisits some of the problems raised in this introductory chapter and in Chaps. 2 and 3 and discusses the implications of these in light of the findings we report in Chaps. 5, 6 and 7. In particular we focus on the lessons we learned and the recommendations we would make, as both researchers and teacher educators, to move the debates forward about developing the intercultural dimension in the context of classroom-based L2 learning.

#### **1.12 Conclusion**

We have argued in this chapter that L2 pedagogy needs to prepare students for intercultural encounters, and that a pure focus on language, without any attention paid to difference and otherness, will be insufficient. Furthermore, the classrooms and contexts in which students are learning the L2 are often multicultural, with students brought together from diverse backgrounds who collaborate with each other in the language learning endeavour. Attention needs to be paid to the intercultural dimension of communicative interactions, both in and beyond the TL. In Byram's (2018) words, the intercultural dimension serves to enhance the development of communicative competence by focusing on "skills, knowledge, and attitudes for interaction" (p. 1).

As we stated at the start of this chapter, the intercultural as a dimension of communicative L2 teaching and learning began to become apparent in the 1980s and was debated as necessary as a *development* to the construct of communicative competence (e.g., Byram, 2018). As Spada (2018) put it, "twenty-first century CLT" has developed and broadened considerably since its early beginnings, and now reflects "a greater balance, scope and depth" (p. 12). For Spada, this has meant that, in *addition* to an emphasis on language used appropriately for communicative purposes the central element of "traditional" or PPP-oriented CLT—there needed to be the inclusion of "functional and intercultural competence" (p. 12). Moreover, learnercentred and experiential pedagogical approaches may hold out greater possibilities for intercultural exploration than more teacher-dominant approaches.

Two key problems emerge. First, L2 pedagogy often remains largely teacher-led and language-focused in many contexts, and separated from culture, even though Byram (2021) noted that addressing culture as "decontextualised factual information with minimal relationship to the language being learnt" (p. 92) represents a worst-case scenario. It must be acknowledged that, quite early on, the PPP approach quickly became embedded as "more or less standard practice" (Howatt, 1984, p. 279). Furthermore, it persists as a model in many L2 classrooms across the world. Indeed, in the context of reporting a recent interesting study that compared the effectiveness of PPP and TBLT with very young, beginner learners of English as L2 in Japan, Shintani (2016) underscored the ongoing dominance of PPP, both in and beyond her immediate setting.

Second, Byram (2018) problematised the notion of IC, speaking of several different models and interpretations of the concept, and noting that the interface between language and culture can often be obscure. The construct of IC was further problematised by Dervin et al. (2020), who asserted that, despite apparent clarity around IC as the underpinning theoretical construct they had selected, IC is in reality "a mish-mash of a concept" (p. 6), and the "roads of IC in education" are "muddy" (p. 5).

The journeys we present in the remainder of this book illustrate the pedagogical realities highlighted, for example, by Shintani (2016), Byram (2018, 2021) and Dervin et al. (2020). They demonstrate just how the stakeholders got their boots dirty as they made their journeys towards L2 learners' enhanced intercultural capability. In this book, our aim is that, through presenting the journeys of three distinct but intersecting groups of stakeholders—students, teachers and researchers/teacher educators—and by including, as Dervin et al. had expressed it, emerging stories that illustrate risk, growth, struggle and frustration, we will add to the ongoing debates about how to promote and develop the intercultural dimension in L2 classrooms.

#### **References**

Richards, J. C. (2006). *Communicative language teaching today*. Cambridge University Press.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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# **Chapter 2 Studies on the Intercultural Dimension Across the Globe**

# **2.1 Introduction**

In Chap. 1, we introduced the study that is the focus of this book alongside the New Zealand language teaching and learning context in which the study is situated. In this chapter, we present arguments from the international literature on the intercultural dimension, starting with an attempt to synthesise key debates around defining this crucial dimension. In the first part of this chapter, we locate the concept of interculturality in education, in particular in curricular reforms in different jurisdictions and in the teaching/learning of additional languages (L2s). In the second part, we present a range of empirical studies that have investigated the intercultural dimension as it relates to pedagogy, teachers and learners, with a particular focus on younger (school-aged) language learners.

#### **2.2 The Intercultural Dimension**

Interest in understanding the skills required to engage with cultures and learning about cultures is not new, and certainly not exclusive to language education. Several academic fields have contributed to the knowledge base regarding what today is known as "interculturality." Contributions from anthropology, communication studies, education, linguistics and psychology, to name a few, have resulted in a rich and complex interdisciplinary field with numerous definitions, theorisations and applications. Authors like Holmes and MacDonald (2020) consider that the concept of interculturality is present in all aspects of contemporary life and characterise the development of interculturality "through the different forms of ethical practice which we carry out, moment by moment, in the unfolding of our daily lives" (p. 1).

Although scholars agree that culture shapes how individuals communicate, behave and interact with others, defining precisely what *culture* is has been less straightforward. As Byram (2021) put it, "[d]efinitions of 'culture' are many" (p. 50), and it is important to be mindful of the risks of presenting a given culture "as if it were unchanging over time or as if there were only one set of beliefs, meanings and behaviours in any given country" (p. 51). Broadly speaking, the conceptualisation has changed from viewing culture as a relatively static entity made up of "facts" to be learned, to seeing culture as dynamic and constantly changing through interaction and communication. According to Paige et al. (2000), a change in perspective from static to dynamic has been characterised by "conceptual shifts from culture-specific to culture-general models of intercultural competence, cultural stereotypes to cultural generalizations, cultural absolutes to cultural variations (within and across cultures), and culture as distinct from language to culture as integral to language" (p. 5).

The interest in researching the intercultural dimension of human interaction can be traced to the 1950s, with documentation of cross-cultural communication problems encountered by Westerners working overseas followed by three decades of expanded interest in contexts as varied as study abroad or immigrant acculturation (Sinicrope et al., 2007). However, just as there are many meanings to the word "culture," determining exactly what the intercultural dimension is and entails is also complex. Indeed, we pointed out two problems in the opening chapter. First, a range of labels is used in the literature with regard to the intercultural dimension. These include: intercultural *competence*; intercultural *communication*; intercultural *awareness*; intercultural *understanding*; and intercultural *capability* (the label we have chosen for this book). Fantini and Tirmizi (2006) offered a comprehensive list of 19 terms that they noted were often used interchangeably. Intercultural competence (IC) has emerged as a predominant label. However, this label has been used and variously defined by different scholars over the last 30 years, and no single definition has been agreed upon (Deardorff, 2006), making the construct itself messy and difficult to pin down (Dervin et al., 2020).

#### **2.3 Intercultural Competence**

Sercu et al. (2005) provided a multi-faceted description of what intercultural competence might entail:

the willingness to engage with foreign culture, self-awareness and the ability to look upon oneself from the outside, the ability to see the world through the others' eyes, the ability to cope with uncertainty, the ability to act as a cultural mediator, the ability to evaluate others' point of view, the ability to consciously use culture learning skills and to read the cultural context, and the understanding that individuals cannot be reduced to their collective identities. (p. 2)

Taking the above description as a starting point, it can be argued that, despite differences that have emerged, all definitions and conceptualisations acknowledge that IC involves the ability to interact effectively and appropriately with people from other cultures. Such interaction includes both what people do and what people say, and typically encompasses four dimensions: knowledge, attitudes, skills and behaviours (Perry & Southwell, 2011). These four dimensions can be seen in many definitions and models of intercultural competence (see reviews by Dervin, 2016; Perry & Southwell, 2011; Sinicrope et al., 2007; Spitzberg & Changnon, 2009). These models generally agree that intercultural competence refers to "the appropriate and effective management of interaction between people who, to some degree or another, represent different or divergent affective, cognitive, and behavioral orientations to the world" (Spitzberg & Changnon, 2009, p. 7).

In what follows, we briefly describe three models considered influential to current operationalisations of the intercultural dimension in education, each including cognitive, affective and behavioural components operating within an ongoing process of individual and interactional development.

Cited as one of the earlier models of intercultural competence, Bennett's (1986) *Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity* was created as a framework to explain the reactions of people to cultural difference. Drawing on concepts from cognitive psychology, the model charts stages of the individual's evolution from "ethnocentrism" (believing that one's culture is the best) to "ethnorelativism" (realising that all cultures contain elements that are both "good" and "bad"). According to Bennett (2004), in order to navigate intercultural situations successfully, a person's worldview must shift from *avoiding* cultural difference to *seeking* (i.e., consciously not avoiding) cultural difference. The model has been used in both academic and business contexts to inform educational programmes to facilitate individuals' development across stages.

In the context of efforts to develop interculturally competent students at tertiary level who can engage in international education, Deardorff (2006) developed the *Process Model of Intercultural Competence*. Using both a questionnaire completed by administrators of international offices in US universities and a Delphi process (see, e.g., Rowe & Wright, 1999), developing consensus among a panel of intercultural scholars, the resulting framework contains five essential components of intercultural competence: knowledge, attitudes, skills, desired internal outcome and desired external outcome. Deardorff argued that one of the advantages of this model is that it lends itself to the possibility of *assessing* the development of intercultural competence.

Perhaps the most widely known framework used as a standard for intercultural education and development programmes in the European Union is Byram's (1997) *Intercultural Communicative Competence* (ICC). This model, arguably one that has the most direct relevance to language teaching and learning in a range of contexts, traces its origins to work on communication, and the concept of *communicative competence*, proposed initially by Hymes (1972) and subsequently extended by others (e.g., Canale, 1983; Canale & Swain, 1980).

Acknowledging the importance of communicative competence in language education, the ICC model has shown considerable endurance, with its ongoing relevance being recently reaffirmed in a revised edition of the original 1997 work (Byram, 2021). Indeed, in the Foreword to the revision Byram argued that his model has not been substantially changed, but that, on the contrary, "the central message … remains" (p. xiii). Byram (1997, 2021) argued that the primary intent of L2 education must be to develop a level of competence whereby individuals of different cultures and experiences can understand and relate to one another—or ICC. He based his framework around three essential characteristics that he argued an intercultural speaker should possess: attitudes, knowledge and skills. Furthermore, Byram framed his perception of what was required for intercultural capability in terms of the development of several *savoirs* (knowledges). These represent different dimensions of knowledge, not only about the general processes involved in societal and individual interaction, but also about social groups and how they might behave both in the target language country and in the learner's own country (we present the *savoirs* in more detail in Chap. 4 where we discuss their relevance for the project we undertook).

Diversity with representing what IC might be provides educators with a variety of approaches to understanding and researching the intercultural dimension. Additionally, a consistent element of the intercultural across different conceptualisations is the development of the kind of capability that compares, contrasts and evaluates across cultures. For example, underpinning and informing the development of the *savoirs* is the suggestion that, to attain the goal of becoming *intercultural* speakers, students of an L2 need to abandon their typical role of "tourist" (with the implication of being an outsider and temporary visitor). Instead, they will assume the more active role of "sojourner"—someone who goes beyond "visiting" a target culture to experiencing several aspects of it, exhibiting willingness to engage in new encounters and suspend judgement of others, with openness to question the values and practices of their own culture (Byram, 1997; Sercu, 2010).

#### **2.4 Critiquing the Models of Intercultural Competence**

The above three models of intercultural competence—Bennett (1986), Deardorff (2006), and Byram (1997, 2021)—have not been without comment or criticism. Pi˛atkowska (2015), for example, provided an important caution with regard to the notion of comparison and contrast across cultures. She argued that a contrastive approach to cultural knowledge whereby learners are encouraged to "look for connections and find a bridging gap" between their own culture and the target culture can lead to the danger of creating "a very monolithic and static picture of cultures" (p. 400) which does not sufficiently take into account heterogeneous societies, minority groups and other non-mainstream members of a given society.

While the encouragement of comparison may be to develop in learners "the distinction between 'us' and 'them', that is, between our own and another culture" (Pi˛atkowska, 2015, p. 400), this, Pi˛atkowska warned, may well lead to stereotypical conclusions and does not help to foster attitudes of respect towards difference and variations within cultures. As Byram (2021) put it, it is important to "be aware of the dangers of presenting 'a culture' as if it were unchanging over time or as if there were only one set of beliefs, meanings and behaviours in any given country." Rather, "it is *individuals* who meet and not *cultures*" (p. 51, our emphases). Individuals are unique and bring their own unique understandings to different interactions.

Dervin (2016) has also criticised the three models because of what he perceived as their emphasis on the individual and that individual's positioning, disregarding the relationships in which these individuals are involved or the interactions in which they engage. He went on to warn that models of intercultural competence that are focused on the blurring of difference may run the risk of dissolving the shared values, beliefs and behaviours of specific cultural groups. In fact, he warned that concepts developed in the contexts of Europe and North America may serve the needs of their more heterogeneous and developed societies, but may be problematic for less heterogeneous, less developed societies. Further criticisms point to the fact that such a wide range of theoretical frameworks and models "complexifies the task of communicating about related ideas in a systematic and consistently interpretable way" (Sinicrope et al., 2007, p. 2).

#### **2.5 Third Place Positioning**

Despite critiques, comparison, contrast and evaluation appear to be consistent elements of the intercultural across different conceptualisations. In the process of developing a comparative and reflective intercultural stance, learners need to consider how their capability develops by drawing on their own language and culture as part of the process of coming to understand those from other cultures (Papademetre, 2000). This means that learners need to "decentre" from their own culture and see their own positioning from the perspective of another (Kramsch, 1993). Learning languages has the potential to expose learners to other ways of viewing the world and thereby develop flexibility, independence and separation from a single linguistic and conceptual system (Kramsch, 1993; Liddicoat, 2005).

Underlying the complexity of encounters across cultures is what we introduced in Chap. 1 as the metaphors of "third space" (e.g., Bhabha, 1994) or "third place" (e.g., Lo Bianco et al., 1999). Other labels that have been used include "third culture," "third stance," or simply "thirdness" (Kramsch, 2009). Each label seeks to capture the dynamic nature and multi-faceted relationality of communications that are intercultural. As we acknowledged in the opening chapter, MacDonald (2019) labelled developing understandings of the concept as constituting a "discourse of thirdness," and acknowledged tensions and contradictions in the ways in which the terms are used and interpreted in contemporary studies. He argued nonetheless that "third place" has emerged as a term to represent the space where "the 'hybrid' identity of the language learner/intercultural subject" can be worked out in a pedagogical context (p. 106). However labelled, the concept "draws our central focus *beyond* the entities that interlocutors are conceivably 'locked into' towards a *new site* opened up *between* interlocutors" (Zhou & Pilcher, 2019, p. 1, our emphases). Kramsch (1993) described these interlocutors as "brokers" who will use language in its double role of medium and shaper of culture (Paige et al., 2000).

Preparing students to be brokers and culture learners requires putting culture at the core of language education. The move to language learning as a social practice of meaning-making and interpretation is a much more expanded view than having a pure language focus, and is claimed to provide a more engaging educational experience for students (Scarino & Liddicoat, 2009). Liddicoat (2011) argued that this expanded view "implies a transformational engagement of the learner in the act of learning." This kind of learning "involves the student in oppositional practice that seeks to decentre learners from their existing linguistic and cultural positioning and to develop intercultural identity as a result of an engagement with another culture" (p. 838). To become effective intercultural learners, students must develop a variety of learning strategies, ranging from reflective observation to active experimentation, or what Kolb (1984) referred to as an "experiential" learning style.

#### **2.6 Interculturality in Curricula**

At a conceptual level, there may be challenges in identifying exactly what the intercultural dimension entails. Nonetheless, this dimension has recently been incorporated into national curricular documents in a range of contexts, highlighting the perceived importance of helping learners to develop "complex abilities needed to perform effectively and appropriately when interacting with others who are linguistically and culturally different" (Fantini, 2006, p. 12). An intercultural approach has gained relevance in different contexts because of its potential to contribute to overarching educational objectives (Chan et al., 2015; Hill & Cowie, 2012), in particular to prepare learners for global citizenship, an aim also considered one of the key competencies of the twenty-first century (Byram, 2018; Noddings, 2005; OECD, 2016).

As Byram et al. (2013) argued, the appearance in curriculum documents of references to *culture, intercultural competence, intercultural understanding* and other such phrases, suggests that the "theorists" have persuaded curriculum designers that these concepts are significant and worthy of attention through educational initiatives. These efforts have been widely documented in Europe where countries belonging to the European Union have been at the forefront of reforms to educational policies that reflect the changing demographics of their populations, developing an approach to interculturalism that targets education on three fundamental levels: societal, institutional and pedagogical (Neuner, 2012). Addressing the challenges associated with building multicultural societies, the Council of Europe (2003), for example, has recognised education as an invaluable medium through which to develop intercultural capabilities and support the ideal of "learning to live together" (p. 4).

In Australia, the wider national curriculum has recently included *intercultural understanding* as a general capability articulated as: (1) recognising culture and developing respect; (2) interacting and empathising with others; and (3) reflecting on intercultural experiences and taking responsibility (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2011).

Within a more broadly articulated intercultural interest that has permeated curriculum documents around the world, language education is arguably in a privileged position to advance the intercultural dimension. For example, in the early 1990s, policymakers in Australia put forward a progressive language and literacy policy (Department of Employment, Education and Training, 1991) which motivated a number of initiatives, spearheaded by the Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations (AFMLTA). These initiatives included the publication of the *Principles for Intercultural Language Learning* (Dellit, 2005) and the *Professional Standards for Accomplished Teaching of Languages and Cultures* (AFMLTA, 2005), which were included in a countrywide professional learning and development programme for L2 teachers. In this context, the growth of an intercultural approach to language teaching and learning has been labelled "the most significant development in Australian language pedagogy in the last 20 years" (Harbon & Moloney, 2013, p. 8).

In the United States, a report demonstrating the influence of language learning on economic growth, cultural diplomacy and productivity has advocated for a twentyfirst-century education that fosters *international competencies* and "nurtures deep expertise in world languages and cultures" (American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2017, p. 19). The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) published the *Standards for Foreign Language Learning* in 1996 to guide language teaching and learning. These standards were later arranged into five areas that were designed to guide the teaching of a range of L2s: communication, culture, connections, comparisons and communities. A revised version (ACTFL, 2014) included *global competence*, defined as the ability to communicate with respect and cultural understanding in different languages inside and outside the classroom.

A milestone for L2 teaching in the European context was the development of the *Common European Framework of Reference for Languages* or CEFR (Council of Europe, 2001), a document adopted throughout Europe and used as a benchmark around the world (including New Zealand, as we note in the next chapter). The CEFR provides guidelines for defining common descriptors for language proficiency levels and language qualifications. Pedagogically relevant points are the recognition that competence is relative and not absolute, and the formulation of *levels of competence* alongside a general orientation of L2 teaching towards output and outcomes (e.g., interaction with others to achieve specific goals) instead of input and content (e.g., reading and processing texts in the target language [TL]), as was previously the case (Hu, 2013). The framework also highlights the importance of developing intercultural awareness and intercultural skills, to enhance intercultural communication and prevent intercultural misunderstandings.

To support the implementation of the CEFR framework in curricula across the European Union, a group of scholars developed a guide (Beacco et al., 2010) using the concept of plurilingualism as a special feature of multicultural and multilingual member states. It was argued that since plurilingualism is linked to the maintenance of democratic values across Europe, it should be paired with interculturalism. From those initial guidelines, Beacco and colleagues developed an intercultural L2 curriculum addressing both macro issues (e.g., syllabus, professional development standards) and micro issues (e.g., course content, textbooks, resources) to be adapted by the various school systems in Europe. The aim was to provide stakeholders with the necessary resources to implement an approach to the development of intercultural competencies in an effective way, drawing on the theoretical work developed in the Anglophone context by Byram and others (e.g., Byram, 1997). More widely, UNESCO (2013) outlined a vision for the development of intercultural competence within L2 education that insisted that ministries of education, policy makers, teacher education programmes, materials developers and teacher educators, as well as administrators and schools, must all provide classroom practitioners with the knowledge, skills, experiences, resources and support they require. The pivotal role of teachers in the intercultural endeavour was therefore clearly recognised.

In summary, the goal of developing intercultural competence has become significant at both curricular and policy levels, both within and beyond the L2 context. It must be noted, however, that these efforts at the level of vision and even policy have not resulted in the effective implementation initially envisioned (Byram, 2014). This, it seems, is a consequence of the complexity of defining and then operationalising the construct of intercultural competence in the L2 classroom. This complexity in practice is an issue we take up in what follows.

#### *2.6.1 Interculturality in Language Classrooms*

Both scholars and policymakers have agreed that developing intercultural competence needs to be addressed explicitly in learning and teaching; more specifically, from this perspective language teaching needs to enable L2 students to develop into multilingually and multiculturally aware world citizens, something that might be labelled a "cultural turn" (Byram et al., 2013). As we discussed in the previous chapter, this growing emphasis can be traced in L2 pedagogy back to the emergence of Communicative Language Teaching in the 1970s, to perceived gaps in what CLT was aiming to achieve, and to the theorisation of intercultural communicative competence or ICC.

Byram's ICC model (1997, 2021), which we referred to earlier, provides one means of articulating for teachers the skills that might be developed in the L2 teaching and learning context. Taking into account sets of principles for language learning and teaching that have been developed in different contexts, Liddicoat (2011) proposed a complementary means of articulating the intercultural dimension for teachers. He clarified that intercultural language teaching does not constitute a language teaching "method." Nor is it a set of prescribed pedagogical practices. Rather, it should be viewed as a "stance" which Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999) described as "positions teachers and others … take toward knowledge and its relationship to practice" (p. 289). This means that intercultural language teaching and learning "is best considered as a set of shared assumptions about the nature of language, culture and learning that shapes an overall understanding of what it means to teach language and to do this in an intercultural way" (Liddicoat, 2011, p. 840). Liddicoat's review identified a number of themes:

In essence, language learning from an intercultural perspective requires "an understanding of culture as facts, artifacts, information and social practices, as well as an understanding of culture as the lens through which people mutually interpret and communicate meaning" (Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013, p. 46). Byram and Wagner (2018) concluded that if language educators move from teaching "knowledge about" cultures to developing in their students the skills and attitudes to "know how to" develop intercultural competence, students will "value language education as an education for developing their identity rather than as the learning of a code that can only be used in some restricted environments" (p. 147).

In the last decade, Byram has further broadened the treatment of intercultural competence to include, in addition to the competencies of intercultural communication, the competencies of intercultural citizenship (e.g., Byram, 2012). The concept of education for intercultural citizenship brings together L2 education and citizenship education (Byram & Wagner, 2018). This is an attempt to integrate the notion of ICC from L2 education with an emphasis on civic action in the community as addressed in citizenship education (e.g., Porto, 2016). This further illustrates the interest in the intercultural that moves *beyond* language education and the L2 classroom.

#### *2.6.2 Challenges for L2 Teachers*

The development of the intercultural dimension in the context of language learning has posed several challenges for many L2 teachers, who must often assume this responsibility without adequate supporting mechanisms. As Peiser (2015) asserted, the re-conceptualisation of language teaching as encompassing *both* linguistic *and* intercultural elements has not been easy to realise in practice. When it comes to the implementation of an intercultural dimension into language pedagogy, Rauschert and Byram (2018) acknowledged the multiple challenges experienced by teachers in the form of expertise, logistics, curriculum design and methodology.

First, a significant problem for the implementation of an intercultural dimension in L2 teaching and learning, which we have noted both in Chap. 1 and earlier in this chapter, is that there is, as yet, no agreement on a definition of what the intercultural dimension is and what it entails. Teachers are therefore being asked to implement a dimension of learning for which there currently exists no definitive or universally accepted characterisation.

Second, Byram's use of the term "interculturally competent" highlights a significant shift in thinking with regard to the goals of L2 learning. Byram differentiates between the cultural competence of the "native" (L1) speaker, who identifies with one language, and the "intercultural" (L2) speaker, who is able to "see the relationships between the learner's and the native-speaker's languages and cultures, to perceive and cope with difference" (Byram & Risager, 1999, p. 2).

The notion of "*the*" native speaker, where the definite article suggests uniformity among users of a language, is now much challenged and discussed (May, 2014), and has given way to the notion of the *interculturally competent* speaker as someone who is able to mediate between several languages and cultures (Byram, 2012). That is, Byram's model of intercultural competence recognises the illusory nature of the Chomskyan concept of the "ideal speaker-listener" (Chomsky, 1965) and challenges the consequent notion that the goal of L2 learning should be to help learners to reach native-speaker-like (or perfect) competence in the L2. It also recognises that perfect or error-free command of the TL is no longer the goal of the communicatively oriented classroom (a positioning that is tangibly realised, for example, in the different levels of competence articulated in the CEFR). In terms of language acquisition, Fantini and Tirmizi (2006) argued that the shift from a monolingual speaker possessing (perfect) communicative competence and a single worldview in their own language to a second language speaker possessing a multicultural worldview with communicative competence in an L2 requires an intercultural pedagogy that develops *both* communicative competence *and* intercultural competence, and that recognises that neither of these competences is absolute, but, rather, relative. This, in turn, requires a significant pedagogical shift in thinking with regard to linguistic accuracy.

Third, if teachers are to be the key brokers between theoretical understandings of interculturality and their application to the L2 within language classrooms (Young & Sachdev, 2011), they have to be equipped with the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes required to accomplish this wider task appropriately (Sercu, 2006). Developing intercultural stances is a process that is both cognitive and affective and it impacts teachers' personal theories of teaching as well as their professional identities (Byram, 2015). A key conceptual barrier is that interculturality, in addition to being theoretically abstract, is usually "presented in universalist terms, i.e. independent of context and age of the learners" (Hu & Byram, 2009, p. xii). What is more, teachers themselves may not have confronted their own conceptualisations and understandings of interculturality and often do not fully understand their role in the development of intercultural stances in their students (Moloney, 2008).

Fourth, the focus on the intercultural in L2 classrooms requires teachers to move from the role of "instructor" to that of "facilitator" who supports learners in developing their own interpretations of language and culture (see, e.g., Moeller & Nugent, 2014; Moloney et al., 2015; Peiser, 2015). This constructivist-informed pedagogical approach places the learner into a central position, and emphasises learners' *active construction* of their own knowledge, in contrast to taking a passive role and developing their knowledge via input from teachers or textbooks. From this standpoint, learners require opportunities to construct their own meanings as they collaborate with others and "raise their own questions, generate their own hypotheses and models as possibilities and test them for validity" (Fosnet, 1996, p. 29). This approach acknowledges the support and facilitation that teachers need to offer, but emphasises what the learners themselves are required to bring to their own learning.

The shift away from a central (and often teacher-led) focus on *the language* and towards a wider, more learner-centred and reflective stance also demands the development of "interculturally sensitive language teachers" (Siqueira, 2017, p. 398) who are willing to take a step back from their current practices and reflect on what might need to change. In Siqueira's view, teachers need to be supported to deal with "issues like identity, power, racial conflicts, social change, global mobility, just to cite a few" (p. 400). Siqueira encouraged the development of *critical* intercultural teachers who develop a critical consciousness and "put reflection into action" (p. 402).

The importance of reflection is also highlighted by Jokikokko (2016) who saw reflective teachers as those who evaluate and develop themselves. With regard to intercultural learning, this implies an ability to reflect critically on situations, to consider the context and to accept that IC is continuously developing. Jokikokko identified a need for teachers to learn to "examine their assumptions, values and beliefs towards different learners" (p. 220), and to realise how those influence their practices. Teachers need to question their own beliefs and confront potentially discomforting emotions attached to those beliefs.

Critical reflection and awareness are also emphasised by Díaz (2016) as essential skills needed by teachers so that they become aware of their own assumptions but can also reflect critically and interpret information with which they are presented. According to Díaz, critical awareness can be triggered by moments of "cognitive dissonance" (p. 123), that is, the mental conflict people experience when they are presented with evidence that their beliefs are limited. This can be achieved by being confronted with beliefs that contradict existing beliefs. The mind is then compelled to modify beliefs or develop new understandings. In doing so, we become more consciously aware of our own and others' beliefs and have the opportunity to transform our perspective, a crucial part in developing intercultural understanding. Thus, Díaz argued that uncritically acquired assumptions are called into critical consciousness and have the potential to transform a person's perspective.

#### **2.7 Studies into the Intercultural in L2 Teaching**

Having highlighted a gap between policies, academic literature and perceived values of intercultural capabilities and their implementation in practice, as well as the range of additional (and often new) responsibilities and expectations of teachers relating to intercultural education, there remains the question of whether and how educators have used approaches to help their L2 learners enhance their intercultural capability. It must be acknowledged that, as interculturality grows in attention from academics and practitioners, empirical studies have investigated—with relative degrees of success the development of intercultural capabilities in learners of widely different ages and in vastly different contexts. Our particular focus here is on those studies that relate to learners of an L2 in school contexts. These studies highlight different dimensions of practice and the different complexities of the inclusion of an intercultural dimension in classrooms. We start by reporting promising findings of several studies related to younger L2 learners. We go on to present studies that can be organised into those that (1) illustrate the challenges that teachers of languages face when implementing an intercultural dimension; (2) advocate a collaboration between teachers and teacher educators or researchers; and (3) promote the explicit teaching and scaffolding of intercultural learning to aid critical reflection.

#### *2.7.1 Studies into the Intercultural with Young Learners*

In a report on primary-level learners in England, Barton et al. (2009) discussed a sixterm language awareness initiative, designed to address a government-initiated new emphasis on L2 teaching in the primary school sector, in which generalist teachers in seven primary schools learned the basics of five languages alongside their Year 5 and 6 (9–11-year-old) students. Several objectives for the "Discovering Language" programme were set, including increasing learners' motivation to learn languages; highlighting similarities and differences between learners' L1 and a range of European and non-European languages; and enhancing students' intercultural awareness and understanding. The researchers used a summative student questionnaire to investigate students' perspectives on the programme. Additionally, the perceptions of teachers and head teachers, and a subset of students, were collected by interviews.

One of the intercultural aims of the programme was "to make pupils aware of the cultural context of each of the languages they studied." This included "exploring the various differences and similarities between, for instance, traditions and schooling in their home country and overseas" (Barton et al., 2009, p. 154). The researchers reported "generally positive intercultural awareness" (p. 159) among the students, but also mixed findings in relation to the programmes' motivational objectives. Barton et al. were also uncertain of the extent to which the students' more positive attitudes could be attributed to the programme itself or to the students' overseas travel experiences outside of the teaching and learning context.

In the Australian setting, Morgan (2010) described a lesson with a group of eight primary 6–7-year-old students learning Indonesian. Her focus was on linguistic interactions designed to enhance these young L2 learners' intercultural understandings regarding ways of talking about self, and about and to others, in both Indonesian and Australian contexts. Interactions were planned so that there could be scaffolded comparative exploration of the language of self and others in Indonesian and English, including how language is situated within social and cultural contexts that influence its use. Differences and similarities across the languages and contexts were highlighted.

Morgan's study presented "an intercultural orientation to learning Indonesian names and pronouns, where a deliberate emphasis on understanding what pronouns say about identity and sense of self, for young learners, is foregrounded" (Morgan, 2010, p. 27). Bearing in mind the young age of the learners, the scaffolded explorations took place in English. Morgan reported that, although young, the students "were able to compare languages and cultures and reflect on their language use and enculturation, in rudimentary but significant ways" (p. 33).

Wagner et al. (2017) presented a series of "participatory action research" studies across a broad age range in several different contexts, with a view to presenting "the perspectives of experienced language teachers who have successfully integrated intercultural projects … incorporating a contemporary intercultural stance within the language curriculum" (p. x).

The Wagner et al. collection included accounts from four American primary/middle school classrooms for L2 learners where Byram's (1997) intercultural model was a criterion for teachers and their research partners as they integrated intercultural activities into their Spanish lessons. Positive intercultural outcomes perceived by the teacher-researcher partners included 6th grade (11–12-year-old) students' "growing ability to critically consider their preconceived notions" (Roher & Kagan, 2017, p. 74), and 8th grade (13–14-year-old) students moving from a focus on their own perspectives to "a point of view which also included questions and different perspectives" (Despoteris & Ananda, 2017, p. 89).

Each of the above studies reported some success with regard to the inclusion of an intercultural dimension. Wagner et al. (2017) cautioned, however, that, although most teachers believe that culture should be "an integral component" of the L2 classroom, teachers generally "lack the skills to accomplish this task [of integration] effectively." This, they suggested, indicated that "additional guidance in the area of intercultural communicative competence may empower teachers to confidently design lessons in intercultural competence (IC)" (p. x). In what follows, we consider studies that have highlighted specific challenges and issues.

# *2.7.2 Embedding Intercultural Explorations in School Contexts*

In this section, we present several studies that illustrate challenges faced by teachers who have attempted to embed intercultural exploration into L2 classrooms. Acknowledging that *intercultural understanding* had been incorporated as one of seven General Capabilities of the Australian Curriculum (see earlier in this chapter), Díaz (2013) reported findings from a teacher professional development programme "based on focusing on a topic/linguistic aspect to be explored, [and] integrating activities aimed at fostering intercultural understanding" (p. 14). Data from interviews and observations prior to the intervention had revealed several constraints. Teachers perceived that they lacked both time and resources to integrate an intercultural dimension into their L2 teaching, struggled with how to assess their students' gains in intercultural understanding, and could not see how an intercultural emphasis could be sustained. Attempts were made to address these challenges in the programme, which included workshops and classroom-based action research projects. Díaz' findings suggested nonetheless that, despite proactive intervention, teachers continued to struggle as they attempted to translate theoretical conceptualisations into classroom practice. Díaz concluded that teachers needed to rethink the underpinning assumptions about what L2 teaching is and entails, noting that this level of critical reflection on current assumptions, beliefs and practices "lies at the core of developing, and modelling, the underpinnings of intercultural understanding" (p. 19).

Sercu (2005) investigated the extent to which Flemish secondary school-level teachers were aware of the intercultural dimension in language teaching and whether they incorporated an intercultural stance in their teaching. Her participants were teachers of English, French and German. It was found that most teachers were aware of and wanted to promote intercultural learning, but that they were unsure how to include intercultural competencies due to practical circumstances, teaching materials or their own lack of preparation.

Similarly, Castro et al. (2004) investigated language and intercultural practices and beliefs among 35 secondary teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Spain. They found that most teachers perceived the learning of the language as more important than reaching cultural objectives. As a consequence, the teachers devoted around 80% of their time to language instruction. Despite a desire to include more culture in their teaching, teachers felt that curriculum requirements and time constraints made this endeavour almost impossible.

A longitudinal study involving 40 primary schools in England indicated a mismatch between the clearly articulated importance of the intercultural dimension in policy documents and statements by teachers, and teachers' actual practices (Driscoll et al., 2013). Although many schools included experiential opportunities for students to connect with other cultures by, for example, organising whole-school intercultural events or establishing international partnerships, the study found that children did not as a consequence demonstrate a greater understanding of their own lives or cultural identity and did not show heightened global awareness. The authors' explanation was that, although the activities were potentially enriching in themselves, they were not connected to each other. They concluded that cultural development needed to be included systematically and required collaborative planning and an overarching cultural framework, with links between all curricular subjects.

The study by Driscoll et al. (2013) also concluded that *incidental* teaching of intercultural aspects was insufficient to create intercultural understanding and that *explicit* teaching and reflection were necessary. Naidu (2020) came to a similar conclusion. She interviewed Indonesian language teachers at both primary and secondary levels in Australia, with the aim of establishing the teachers' understanding of "culture" and concepts of interculturality. Teachers in her study found the idea of intercultural teaching appealing, but were aware of their own limitations with regard to knowledge and understanding of Indonesian culture and queried whether they had the tools to foster intercultural learning. Naidu also encountered confusion about what culture actually was and acknowledged that teachers' uncertainties surrounding the cultural dimension in L2 teaching and how to address it could leave teachers reluctant to address the complexity of culture, avoiding it altogether and instead focusing on more straightforward linguistic aspects.

Walton et al. (2013) systematically reviewed the literature focusing on schoolbased approaches to developing students' intercultural understanding. Some of their key findings were that only building cultural knowledge and awareness was not enough to promote long-term changes in attitudes and that a critical approach towards cultural diversity was needed by teachers and students to develop appropriate understanding. Furthermore, the reviewed studies suggested the importance of ongoing intercultural contact. The studies also called consistently for investment in supporting the development of teachers' professional and personal intercultural capabilities, as the onus was often on the teachers to implement strategies to support intercultural understanding, with minimal support.

The research studies reviewed by Walton et al. (2013) suggested that teachers needed support to feel more confident before having complex cultural discussions and having to respond to questions or controversial cultural aspects. This notion was supported by Brunsmeier's (2017) study of 19 primary school teachers' intercultural practices in Germany. The teachers stated a need for a framework to deal with learners' cultural and intercultural questions and to help them to "trigger" ageappropriate reflection on students' own culture(s). Similarly, Toner (2010) found that primary school teachers in Australia were reluctant to discuss issues they considered too complex or controversial, even when students initiated such discussions. This is echoed in Naidu's (2020) study, where it was found that teachers avoided teaching cultural aspects when they were uncertain how to approach a topic.

Walton et al.'s (2013) review of studies highlighted that there was no or only minimal long-term effect in programmes designed to foster intercultural understanding unless a systematic and school-wide approach was implemented. This is supported by Driscoll et al. (2013) who called for a systematic implementation of intercultural learning and an overarching framework for it. Along the same lines, Ohi et al. (2019) supported the call to embed intercultural learning into broader school contexts and practices, reflected in actions and interactions across school leaders and students.

The above studies highlight how implementing an intercultural dimension in school classrooms faces a number of challenges, mostly relating to the expectations placed on the teachers of languages. A possible way forward seems to be embedding intercultural education at school- and system-levels with a concerted and coherent approach to supporting the schools in doing this.

# *2.7.3 Collaborations Between Teachers and Teacher Educators/Researchers*

Several studies in addition to Díaz (2013) highlight collaborations to support intercultural learning, and note particular benefits. Kohler's (2015) study with three teachers of Indonesian in Australian secondary schools was framed as a collective case study involving participant action research. In the longitudinal study which took place across one school year, Kohler supported the teachers' intercultural learning through processes of collaborative planning, providing input and resources, feedback on classroom observations, and probing and questioning of what was observed. Her input was often in the form of suggestions or clarifications rather than as directives. One key component for Kohler was the exploration of how authentic L2 texts could be used as means to explore the inter-relationship between language and culture. The teachers used this emphasis in their practice. However, each mediated an intercultural perspective in their own way, depending on their individual understanding and beliefs.

Müller-Hartmann and Schocker (2018) integrated task-based language teaching (TBLT) and intercultural language teaching in a three-year action research project with secondary school-level EFL teachers in Germany. Specifically, and as we noted in Chap. 1, TBLT is a constructivist-informed learner-centred and experiential approach to L2 pedagogy. In TBLT, the role of the teacher shifts from instructor to facilitator, and language learners have a crucial level of responsibility to process language in use and work out how it functions through engagement in communicative tasks. As such, there is arguably a synergy between the theoretical impetus for task use and intercultural exploration (an issue we take up again in Chap. 8).

The project instigated by Müller-Hartmann and Schocker (2018) was designed as professional learning and development for 20 in-service secondary teachers and was based on a collaboration between teachers, researchers and teacher educators. The project had several components. Initially, the researchers presented Byram's ICC model alongside proposals for TBLT and teachers shared the kinds of language use tasks they typically used in their classrooms. In a collaborative workshop, teachers and researchers jointly reflected on these tasks and discussed how ICC might be incorporated, brainstorming different options, designing tasks, and considering how they might be trialled. Teachers then went on to trial the designed tasks in their own classrooms before the next collaborative workshop session in which all participants reflected again on the effectiveness of the tasks. Over time, the teachers set up cycles of regular collaboration, including a cyclical approach to planning and teaching, and pooling of ideas. The authors report that, as a result of the longitudinal teachereducator-researcher collaboration, the teachers designed tasks from their learners' perspectives, involved learners in task creation, tapped into the students' own experiences, and thus turned theoretical concepts into do-able experiences for their learners. However, the authors highlighted the need for ongoing support from peers, teacher educators and researchers.

# *2.7.4 Promoting Explicit Teaching and Scaffolding for Intercultural Learning*

In this section, we review studies where teachers embarked on carefully scaffolded intercultural learning experiences in online and face-to-face settings.

An online school exchange between school classes in England and Germany was the focus of Peiser's (2015) study. The project aimed to develop intercultural understanding through online communication over a period of four months. The activities involved asynchronous communication, text and videos, which were uploaded to websites, and posts on discussion boards. Topics involved interests, hobbies, holiday activities and school, and students asked and answered each other's questions in small-group settings to encourage discussion around observed similarities and differences.

Peiser's (2015) study raises important questions around the role of the teacher in the constructivist-informed classroom. Although it might be assumed that the teacher's role is less directive and more facilitative in telecollaborative projects between students, an increasing body of research has revealed that pedagogical involvement (i.e., teacher direction) becomes important for intercultural learning. Teachers, according to Peiser's study, needed to guide students on how to become aware of and describe their own cultures, and on how to locate and interpret information provided by the project partners in a wider cultural context. Peiser concluded that without this explicit scaffolding provided by the teacher, students' lack of intercultural understanding could easily lead to cultural misunderstandings.

Using a similar approach to Peiser (2015), Yates and Fellinger (2016) designed an 11-week telecollaboration between two groups of school learners of German, one group in New Zealand and one in the United States. The activities set up for the German language learners in both settings explicitly focused on intercultural learning, including aspects of German, US and New Zealand cultures, and included online collaboration between students communicating in German. The activities were carefully scaffolded and focused on explicit reflections on students' own and other cultures. It was found that the project was a positive experience for the students, allowing them to be creative, communicating with students from other countries, and becoming more aware of similarities and differences between cultures.

In her classroom-based research, Jäger (2011) used literary texts and dramaoriented activities in a German secondary school setting to explicitly support the development of the intercultural understanding of her EFL students. Her study showed that neither a seemingly appropriate text, for example a story of migration, nor a drama activity focusing on improvisation or role-play, automatically guaranteed or even fostered intercultural learning. While literary texts and accompanying drama activities were promising starting points, the teacher's skill was a crucial factor in challenging stereotypes, supporting in-depth reflection and creating an awareness in students that communication was culture-bound and had a performative dimension. The study concluded that students were able to portray people from different cultural backgrounds in drama activities, transferring their intercultural learning to adequate body language, gestures or facial expressions, but only once they were provided with scaffolded and explicit support relating to socio-cultural background knowledge, body language and enhancing communicative effectiveness.

In a study looking at school-wide implementation of intercultural understanding in Australian schools, Ohi et al. (2019) combined explicit teaching alongside collaboration. Their two-year project included professional learning modules and workshops on intercultural learning and pedagogies for teachers, and schools collaborated in clusters to design specific learning programmes for their schools. The study established that the explicit teaching of intercultural aspects in a language classroom was not sufficient on its own to have a long-term effect and that intercultural learning showed better results through school-wide implementation. Findings, presented as case studies, revealed the effectiveness of school-wide approaches for intercultural capabilities: school leaders developed multi-faceted approaches aimed to impact the whole school, starting with a shared understanding of intercultural learning for the entire school staff. Once core beliefs were established, they were then shared with students, parents and the wider school community. Curriculum leaders worked with the leadership team and teachers to ensure that intercultural capabilities were embedded in the school curriculum across disciplines, and teachers from all year levels collaborated to develop a strategic approach to develop students' and teachers' intercultural capabilities.

#### **2.8 Conclusion**

A recurring theme of the international literature, and in particular of prior schoollevel studies, is just how difficult it appears to be to integrate an intercultural dimension into L2 programmes. Despite some promising results in a handful of studies, a recent volume that has surveyed the field (López-Jiménez & Sánchez-Torres, 2021) confirms this persistent problem. In the European context, Brunsmeier (2017) spoke of the development of L2 learners' intercultural competence as "a big challenge," due to "vague theoretical conceptions" of a construct that "has not yet been clearly defined for young learners" (p. 152). In the Australian context, Kohler (2015) recognised the immense struggle that teachers encountered as they sought to integrate culture into L2 classrooms and Díaz (2013) highlighted the huge gap that exists between theory and practice. As a result, putting an intercultural orientation into practice in many L2 classrooms was, in Díaz (2013) perception, "still at a rudimentary stage," and happening at a pace that she described as "almost glacial" (p. 19).

Díaz (2013) reached the conclusion that putting the intercultural dimension into active practice required L2 teachers to deliberately change their own classroom practices, but that this possibility "remains to be explored beyond the level of passive recognition" (p. 13). This exploration is something that the study that is the focus of this book attempted to address. Before going on to present our study, we turn in the next chapter to research in the immediate context of the study—New Zealand.

### **References**

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# **Chapter 3 The Intercultural Dimension in the New Zealand Language Teaching Context**

# **3.1 Introduction**