Abstract
This chapter describes a case study in which 53 prospective teachers of English at university level completed an intercultural unit designed around films addressing cultural borders and identities in a ubiquitous learning environment. In a pre-test/post-test experiment design, students' intercultural competence (IC) was assessed through a rubric to estimate their development in three dimensions before and after intervention. Intercultural portfolios and a self-report questionnaire were also used to gather both quantitative and qualitative data that provided further evidence of IC development in nine sub-dimensions. The t-test analysis revealed statistically significant improvement in the dimensions studied and in students' global IC after intervention. The results confirmed the initial hypothesis that using foreign films within EFL contexts helps develop a high level of intercultural self-reflection and sensitivity in pre-service teachers and that these IC skills are likely to be transferred to their future teaching practice.
TopIntroduction
One of the challenges foreign language teachers face in a globalized and multicultural society is finding effective strategies to foster intercultural competence (IC) skills. There is a consensus among scholars and teachers that foreign language instruction should be designed to facilitate the acquisition of new cultural frames of reference that promote tolerance and understanding of difference (Byram, 2008; Comello & Buonanno, 2016; Houghton, 2013; Porto, 2010; Porto et al., 2018). In English as a Foreign Language (EFL) settings, educators have broadened their curricula to include an intercultural dimension to prepare students for intercultural encounters (Cortazzi & Jim, 1999; González & Borham, 2012; Lin & Wang, 2018), and scholars highlight the need to intensify research on IC pedagogy to investigate ways of enhancing student intercultural understanding and sensitivity (Borghetti, 2017; Deardoff, 2012; Juan-Garau & Jacob, 2015; Moloney & Oguro, 2014; Su, 2011). In the context of teacher education, gaining intercultural proficiency becomes a fundamental prerequisite for professional development (Bell, 1989; Cuartas, 2020; Lazarevic, 2020), as teachers will have to address specific cognitive and affective issues related to cultural diversity. By alerting pre-service teachers to the contribution of the intercultural dimension to professional growth in EFL contexts, they will become better equipped to meet students’ needs in an intercultural milieu.
As the goals of foreign language education have been redefined, teachers are urged to adopt new roles as social agents of change by guiding students in exploring cultural complexities, overcoming cultural barriers and acquiring the target language in multimodal and ubiquitous learning environments. In higher education settings, most EFL educators are searching for new methods and materials to respond to the growing demand for incorporating a cultural dimension in their programs (Boby, 2013; Chapelle, 2010; González & Borham, 2012; Yeh, 2014). They are also shifting towards ubiquitous learning paradigms that expand learning spaces and provide opportunities for unlimited and immediate access to information from multiple sources (Burbules, 2014; García-Sánchez & Luján-García, 2015). Films provide an opportunity for nurturing empathy and cultural sensitivity as they indirectly and engagingly illustrate a variety of intercultural voices, encounters and experiences. Even though films have become widely used in EFL teaching (Chao, 2013; Comello & Buonanno, 2016; Smith et al., 2010), more research is needed to determine and evaluate their effectiveness in promoting intercultural awareness, deconstructing stereotypes and overcoming cross-cultural barriers (Griffith et al., 2016). Moreover, as Lazarevic (2020) and Sales (2012) contend, more attention should be devoted to pre-service language teachers’ training in IC skills. In response to this, the first purpose of this study is to use films containing intercultural content to nurture tolerant attitudes and empathy of trainee EFL teachers by designing tasks that activate cognitive, meta-cognitive, and affective responses. The second aim is to monitor the efficiency of using these materials by assessing the capacity of these future teachers while exploring cultural attitudes that can be transferred to their future teaching practices.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Cognitive Domain: The knowledge and development of intellectual skills that includes the recognition or recall of specific facts, procedural patterns, and concepts that succor in the development of intellectual abilities and skills on six levels: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
Intercultural Encounters: An experience between people from different cultures, or an authentic cultural artefact that manifests an in-person like experience either in a foreign country, or in the country of origin.
Multimodal Materials: Instructional materials that include a mixture of linguistic, visual, gestural, spatial, and audio elements that engage learners in sensorial learning, as opposed to uni-modal, text-only materials; for example, picture books, newspapers, brochures, storyboards, e-books, videos, etc.
Multiliteracies Pedagogy: A response to the changing citizenship, globalization, immigration, identities, and social worlds of work that includes a balanced classroom design of Situated Practice, Overt Instruction, Critical Framing and Transformed Practice in which students draw on their own experiences and semiotic literacy practices to represent and communicate meaning.
Affective Domain: Involves feelings, emotions and attitudes, values, appreciation, enthusiasm, and motivation. It forms a hierarchical structure and is based on internalization which refers to the process whereby our affect toward something moves from a general awareness level to a point where the affect is internalized and consistently guides or controls behavior.
Intercultural Awareness/Sensibility: The understanding of the similarities and differences between one’s own culture and another, particularly in terms of social ideologies, i.e., values, beliefs, and behaviors that are socially learned.