Teachers' roles and training in intercultural education

Authors: Inma Álvarez and Cecilia Garrido

© Inma Alvarez and Cecilia Garrido

Table of contents

• 1. Redefining language teaching and learning
• 2. New demands and training for language teachers
• 3. Conclusions
• Bibliography

This paper was originally presented at the Navigating the new landscape for languages conference (www.llas.ac.uk/navlang), 30 June - 1 July 2004.

1. Redefining language teaching and learning

Language and culture are widely accepted as an interrelated inseparable pair for the purpose of language teaching and learning (e.g. Furstenberg et al., 2001; Sercu, 2002a), for some it has added a critical ethical and political angle to language communicative competence (Kramsch, 2002; Guilherme, 2002).

The new context requires professional and personal development on many fronts: "changes in their [the teachers"] self concept, in their professional qualifications, in their attitudes and skills" (Sercu,1998:256); "to be acquainted with basic insights from cultural anthropology, culture learning theory and intercultural communication" (Sercu, 2002b: 152). In addition, teachers are asked to anticipate and understand their learners' needs and professionally cater for them (Field, 2000; Willems, 2002), and to "develop an understanding of the learners" investments in the target language and their changing identities" (Norton, 2000:137).

The redefinition of the subject has triggered the reformulation of educational policies. Even though intercultural competence appears in many programmes, in practice, the integration of intercultural skills remains behind the teaching of the language. This integration hasn't proved easy. First, the teaching of culture remains unproblematic, uncritical, teacher-centred and mainly geared towards the transmission of information (Byram, 1997; Freeman and Johnson, 1998; Sercu, 2002b). Second, the lack of a consistent methodology for the teaching of culture makes it difficult for practitioners to identify cultural objectives and in many cases such objectives remain outside core language teaching and learning (Starkey, 1990). Third, even when cultural objectives have been outlined, further decisions have to be made as to what cultural elements should be included to enhance communication. Fourth, research has shown that most teachers neither have "a systematic plan as to how to go about teaching intercultural competence, or as to how to deal with stereotypes and prejudice in the foreign language classroom" (Sercu, 2002b: 162), nor clear criteria that could facilitate such decisions (Met, 1993). This is reasonably linked to the fact that teachers are not getting an appropriate preparation and often find themselves sponsoring a variety of aims that they feel unable to fulfil (Byram and Morgan, 1994; Sercu, 2002a).

2. New demands and training for language teachers

Language teachers now have to perform educational, technical, ethical and psycho-social functions, with various responsibilities attached to each of them. Separately, and equally important, teachers also have to become learners side by side with their students (Sercu, 1998).

Of all these, it is the ethical dimension that makes many language teachers uneasy due to the high social and political involvement it implies. They have been told that "[t]heir aim is to enable their students to understand the world around them, to communicate across linguistic and cultural boundaries, and to play an active role at many levels in the world" (Kelly, 2002: 3). Their role as cultural workers means that they need to facilitate and challenge "the on-going interaction between learners and the other culture" (Jones, 2000: 169). This role can be specifically linked to their responsibility to transform students' consciousness (Boylan, 2001). Teachers are asked to fully embrace a critical pedagogy that understands that they shouldn't be neutral, but committed to "moral and political struggle" (Phipps and Guilherme, 2004; Guilherme, 2002). However, not all are willing to proclaim language teachers as educators with a political agenda, some doubt the role should reach that far (Ruane, 1999).

How prepared teachers are to fulfil all their roles and to carry out their responsibilities depends greatly on their training and professional development. There are always two cohorts of student teachers: those who are getting ready to get into the profession and need initial teacher training (ITT) and those with experience, who require in-service teacher training (INSET). Unfortunately, the education agencies responsible for each type of training in many cases seem to work independently from each other and do not address teaching and learning needs within their common context.

The main gap in current teacher education programmes seems to be in the connection between "philosophical and educational theoretical frameworks" and practice (Guilherme, 2002:5). This connection between theory and practice should come from a critical reflective exercise from the student teachers themselves (Richards, 1990; Halbach, 2000; Vélez-Rendón, 2002). Other gaps seem to point at little subject specific training during teachers' careers (Easton, 2001) and lack of opportunities for keeping up to date with changing practices (Lieberman, 2003; Sercu, 1998; Ruane, 1999). More specifically, recent studies in the United States report that, the ethical dimension is absent in teacher education (Sockett and LePage, 2002). In Europe it has been recommended a more extensive integration of intercultural or socio-cultural pedagogy in language teacher education (Kelly, 2002). Indeed, it is widely acknowledged that training does not prepare teachers to deal with the specifics of the intercultural dimension (Dunnett et al., 1986; Met, 1993; Lázár, 2001; Ruane, 1999; Guilherme, 2002; Gundara, 2003). The absence of a systematic approach to intercultural education means that teachers lack depth of knowledge of the nature and implications of the cultural dimension in their subject (Castellotti and Moore, 2002).

Finally, it has also been suggested that training programmes should ideally include periods of residence in the countries where the language is spoken to support cultural understanding (Glisan, 2001).

3. Conclusions

The adequate development of learners' intercultural competence can't be achieved exclusively through policies, materials or residence abroad (Byram and Zarate, 1996). Without teachers' awareness and understanding of the main issues in intercultural communication, students' progress is under threat (Sercu, 2002b). In turn, language teachers' intercultural skills cannot develop without appropriate training.

It is clear that "Professional growth is thus essentially a question of time, struggle, commitment and support" (Kohonen, 2002:49). Time, struggle and commitment are clearly in teachers' hands; support, however, needs a strong external coordinated hand. Only through the combined effort from institutions and education agencies, teachers will be able to fulfil their responsibilities with a greater confidence.

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