Introduction
Recently, interest in integrating interculturality into foreign (FL) and second (L2) language learning and teaching practices has intensified (Byram et al., 2002). Thus, interculturality has become a highly overexposed notion in academic discourse and theory, but is less traceable in pedagogical praxis (Gamboa-Díaz, 2014); the notion is also easily related to economic globalization and professional mobility, as well as to the internationalization of higher education and new technologies. Some of the globalization strategies adopted motivate institutions and governments to establish commercial, professional and academic agreements in order to be competent. This in turn increases the need for bilingual, multilingual or plurilingual education. Thus, countries like France and Colombia tend to promote educational policies that contemplate citizens’ linguistic and inter-cultural competences in FL or L2. Besides language learning strategies leading to greater competitivity, these countries deal with social, linguistic and educational realities such as: the coexistence of multiple communities and languages, situations of migration, political conflicts or post-conflicts, etc., that compel institutions and teachers to rethink human relationships through the understanding of otherness as a way of moving ahead, together, in our societies. However, the curricula of many higher education institutions do not seem to contemplate the intercultural dimensions of the languages taught, and there appear to be few explicit pedagogical options on this subject (Gamboa Diaz, 2014).
This article is based on the results of a collaborative action-research project designed to compare two pre-service and in-service teacher development programs. These comparative approaches of teacher training programs aim to make explicit those intercultural dimentions present in foreign and second language teaching. The study was carried out at Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3 university, DILTEC (in France) and Los Andes university, School of Education - CIFE1 and School of Social Sciences - Languages and Culture Department (in Colombia).
Initially, I will outline a series of considerations about the theoretical components of the intercultural dimensions of language learning and teaching: what it means as a hyper-concept, what notions or components it is made of, how these notions are integrated or not into pedagogical praxis or connected or not to students’ social realities. Then, I will present the methodological aspects related to the collection and analysis of the participants’ representations (content - Bardin, 1977- or discursive manifestations of social representations that circulate in an epistemic community - von Münchow, 2015) through a didactic unit aimed at developing reflexivity and awareness related to intercultural conciousness.
Finally, I will discuss some of the findings that result from analyzing multimodal reflections exchanged between students, as well as the expression of their own perceptions (personal and professional experiences) within the framework of interculturality, even though these perceptions were not initially associated with the notion of interculturality. Based on participants’ discursive representations, different key elements of the FL and L2 learning and teaching process (centered on social realities and grounded on intercultural dimensions) are presented.
Interculturality: are teachers overexposed to a conceptual and notional field?
When exploring the field of intercultural research, (Portera, 2008) a dichotomous aspect can easily be noticed. The first one is characterized by a variety of approaches, research and definitions, and the second one by a recurring element imposed by its interdisciplinary and transversal nature. In human and social sciences, several theories, concepts or notions have been evolving - around education, psychology, management, applied linguistics, the didactics of languages and cultures, etc. - in order to deal with contemporary issues in which both culture and relationships with others are placed front and center.
In Europe, intercultural approaches have included issues related to the assimilation of foreigners or minorities, interactions among groups from different nationalities, reciprocity, dialogue or solidarity, in addition to sociological and pedagogical practices (Grant and Portera 2011). In the last 40 years, in the field of the didactics of languages and cultures (DLC) interculturality has progressively been studied. The concept of culture was initially related to studies on civilization and behavioral codes that nonnative speakers of a target language were expected to master in order to “succeed” in social integration. Gradually, there has been a perceptible shift, inherently related to alterity, towards the exploration of culture (Hall, 1987; Ricouer, 1990; Levinas, 1995) and the incorporation of communicative, interactional and discursive strategies in language learning and teaching practices (Camilleri, 1985; Abdallah-Pretceille and Porcher, 1996; Zarate, 1993 and Byram, 1997).
Teaching culture thus focuses not only on aspects related to civilization or the target language characteristics (as expressed by native speakers), but also on the strategies language learners use to negotiate their own linguistic and cultural codes and those associated with the context and the community they are discovering (Coste, 1994). Culture is no longer studied as information, but also includes a deeper knowledge of the Other. In this way, attitudes, behavior, mental and social representations are explored as part of those communicative strategies (or competences)2 that are involved in human interaction and that need - within teacher education programs and teaching methodologies - to be analyzed as an academic subject.
There is growing evidence in Latin America of approaches that resemble European understandings of interculturality as part of communicative strategies or as a competence associated with individual skills that can be acquired and learned. However, in these latitudes, interculturality is frequently discussed from a postcolonial perspective that focuses on the historical condition of rights, as well as on their recognition and legitimacy (Medina and Sinnigen, 2009). Interculturality accounts for the asymmetrical relations of power that have existed between Europeans, their descendants and subordinated groups after Columbus’ arrival in Latin America. These conditions examine different social configurations to allow historically marginalized groups (indigenous and afrodescendants) to achieve cultural, political, and economic equality. According to Medina and Sinnigen (2009), interculturality has been a condition of life in Latin America for over 500 years (introduced through bilingual education - López & Sichra, 2008)3; it is deeply related to social movements against hegemonic world powers, “Spain in the 16th century and United States in the 21st” (Medina and Sinnigen, 2009, p. 253).
For authors like García Canclini (2004), De Sousa Santos (2011), Mato (2008), Mignolo (in Walsh, García and Mignolo, 2006), Rojas (2011) and Walsh (2010), rather than acculturating the oppressed, interculturality concerns culturally and linguistically marginalized groups’ struggles for mutual respect, as well as economic and political egalitarianism for all citizens. Although interculturality has always existed in Latin America, over the last 50 years countries with large indigenous and afrodescendant populations4 have been immersed in creating new constitutions that recognize linguistic, ethnic and cultural diversity, as well as the promotion of equal intercultural economic and political opportunities. Nowadays, national policies are challenged by both the majority groups holding power and by social movements in the hands of minority groups.
Taking into account the transdisciplinary nature of interculturality (Ladmiral and Lipianski, Clanet, 1985; Demorgon, in Demorgon, Lipiansky, Müller, and Nicklas, 2003; Hofstede et al., 2010; Blanchet & Coste, 2010; Portera, 2008; Beacco, In Beacco and Coste, 2018) epistemological approaches related to this notion are still in progress and are centered on philosophical, sociological, psychological, anthropological, educational, aesthetic and ethical interpretative processes of understanding. Interculturality can be explored as a competence, as a way of managing cultural, linguistic or ethnic diversity, or as an intermediate space of mutual understanding in the pluralistic societies of today. Accordingly, we may ask, can it be considered an epistemological category that a) articulates one’s relationship to the world or to others from a personal perspective, and b) one that recognizes the legitimacy of other cultural perspectives?
As an epistemological category, interculturality can admit and validate southern, northern, western or eastern scholastic viewpoints, as well as the motivations of social movements all over the world. The problem is not what theoretical or societal approach individuals or groups have towards interculturality, but the economic, political, intellectual or social power and legitimacy granted to this approach.
In DLC research, literature and educational practices have been confronting us with the use of several terms, notions or concepts related to what I call intercultural dimensions. These dimensions respond to a wide range of critical epistemological, methodological, pedagogical and societal concerns, which are chosen and studied according to one’s interests or needs. A list that shows this variety, and also the way I understand the interconnection of terms, is shown below and illustrated by Figure 1.
Interculturality (noun, Blanchet et al., 2010).
Intercultural (adjective or noun, Ferréol, & Jucquois, 2003).
Intercultural management (socio-economic concerns, Hofstede, Hofstede & Minkov, 2010).
Intercultural paradigm (epistemological theoretical concerns, Abdallah-Pretceille, 2004).
Intercultural education (pedagogical concerns, Abdallah-Pretceille, 2004).
Intercultural communicative competence (methodological concerns, Byram, 1997).
Intercultural competence (linguistic and professional concerns, Neuner, Parmeter, & Starkey, 2003).
Intercultural dimension of language learning and teaching (pedagogical and political concerns, Byram, Gribkova, & Starkey, 2002).
Intercultural perspective (theoretical-methodological concerns, Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013).
Intercultural mediation (cognitive, relational, linguistic, socio-biographical concerns, Coste & Cavalli, 2014).
Critical interculturality (societal, pedagogical concerns, Viaña, Tapia &Walsh, 2010).
In the DCL French context, researchers and teachers have become familiarized with most of the above-mentioned terminology (particularly numbers 1 to 10) for more than 40 years. In the Colombian context, however, researchers and teachers are mainly familiarized with number 11, and also to some extent with numbers 5, 6 and 7, more actively studied in the last two decades. Can these 40 years in France or 20 years in Colombia be considered periods of epistemological and hermeneutical but not practical overexposure to intercultural dimensions?
Theory is still emerging or stabilizing, and a period of 40 years of studies in France (Groux & Barthélemy, 2016) or 20 years of reactivation in Colombia (Galindo Martinez et al., 2013) can be considered recent. According to the revised literature, it seems we are most familiar with the theory of intercultural dimensions and now we are gradually moving closer to connecting it with educational practices (Auger, 2008, Green Stockel, 2016), and to understanding the contextual and multidirectional aspects involved. Intercultural dimensions invite us (or force us) to explore interpersonal encounters, exchanges and interactions inside and outside of our own families, neighborhoods, cities, regions, country and countries, and, according to this, I would maintain that it is important to identify and to understand, as Martuccelli (2013) suggests, both close and distant forms of alterity.
Therefore, I would define intercultural dimensions as all situations of interaction with every single person in which the capacity to explore and to analyze similarities, differences or unexpected elements of another culture is required. Here, culture is assumed to be the result of a tension between our idio-culture, or our own vision of the world, and our pluri-culture, or the visions of the world we share with others (Gamboa Diaz, 2016). This capacity helps us to develop strategies of comprehension and adaptation from a critical perspective, and to try to understand and associate diversity with people we know and those we do not know. It also may help us to understand familiar and unfamiliar situations and multiple historic and geographical contexts, close and distant ones.
If the visions of the world - mental and social representations of others (Zarate, 1995) and our own frameworks of reference or cultural filters (Kramsch, 1998) - are shared as a result of belonging to similar historical, geographical and social backgrounds, people will be engaged in a micro-intercultural level of interaction. If the frameworks of reference are less common or not shared, people will be engaged in a macro-intercultural level of interaction. In regards to these two levels, those who participate in the interaction could be involved in what Hofstede (2010) calls a cultural conflict or a cultural breakdown. From my point of view, the idea is to identify and to understand micro-interculturality (close forms of alterity) to better deal with macro-interculturality (distant forms of alterity) (Gamboa Diaz, 2019).
Research context: Analyzing needs, materials and activities
The action research (Burns, 2015) project described here is a follow-up of my doctoral work entitled Intercultural Education, International Mobility and Higher Education: A Case Study of Colombia. Doctoral research findings allowed me to highlight the necessary, but not mandatory, bases of interculturality when it comes to establishing the relationship between language and culture, and when it comes to recognizing diversity and alterity in language teacher education programs. The production of two contextualized and adaptable educational units, aimed at understanding the developing awareness-raising processes of intercultural dimensions, show the outcome of this doctoral research. The present project, Comparative Approaches of Teacher Training Programs to Make Intercultural Dimensios en Foreign and Second Language Teaching Explicit, gave me the opportunity of putting into practice one of the didactic units of development of reflexivity and awareness of intercultural dimensions conciousness. As mentioned before, my colleagues from los Andes and Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 35 and I tried to establish an international (Master´s program participants) and interdisciplinary dialogue between acquisition, seen from an educational perspective, and didactics of languages and cultures, seen from a language point of view. Our goals focus on the development of a number of responses and recommendations regarding the following considerations and needs:
To take into account the diversity of contexts in which learners’ bilingual, multilingual, plurilingual and intercultural experiences are situated in order to co-construct other approaches for language teachers.
To promote empowerment processes among teachers, so that the diversity of individual pathways and collective histories become educational vectors, as well as levers for social cohesion.
To develop cognitive, methodological and ethical resources, in order to share these with other colleagues.
Participants
At Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris, three university participants were registered in the first and second year of the Master’s degree program in the Didactique du Français Langue Etrangère (DFLE) department. In their second year, students can choose among three specializations. In our case, we worked with future specialists in the didactics of French as a foreign language (FFL), second language (FSL) and world language (FWL).
Our project was divided into three stages, corresponding to three consecutive semesters. Participants’ ages were between 22 and 44. We had 6 women and 1 man in the first group, 11 women and 1 man in the second one and 23 women and 2 men in the third one. By and large, students were working as FFL or FSL teachers in associations, public or private schools (primary or secondary leves), language institutes, or taught in private lessons.
At los Andes university, participants were registered in the Bilingualism and Multilingualism education option, one of seven specializations offered in the Master’s program or “Maestría en Educación.” They were aged between 25 and 52 years old. 3 women and 1 man participated in the first semester, 6 women and 2 men during the second semester and 7 women and 2 men in the third one. These future specialists in bilingual and multilingual education were working as teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL), English as a second language (ESL) or Spanish as a mother tongue (SMT), in public or private schools, language institutes or private universities, or taught in private lessons.
Data collection
The results presented in this article are related to the implementation of a didactic unit designed to develop critical reflexivity and intercultural dimensions consciousness (Gamboa Diaz, 2014) through a video work guide adaptation. Exploring multimodal activities, pre-service and in-service teachers were actively involved in the iterative phases of this action-research project and were helped to analyze and to objectivize subjective processes that determine intercultural interactions: 1) apprehensibility (what it means to me to be conceptually and pragmatically recognized via a plurality of interpretations) from a personal point of view, 2) critical distance from a personal, but also a teacher’s perspective, 3) comprehensibility (being conceptually and pragmatically understood via a plurality of interpretations) from a trainee researcher’s stance (Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013), and 4) adaptation (appropriation-transformation-contextualization) from a practical-didactic approach.
In the first semester we asked our participants to answer an online diagnostic questionnaire in order to find out about their personal or mental representations of intercultural dimensions. They were also asked to reflect and to write about their own reading and writing processes in all the languages they spoke. These reflections were exchanged between the participants in France and Colombia by means of the Moodle platform. Finally, students were asked to propose an individual or group lesson plan based on intercultural dimensions and reading and writing processes. The proposal had to be adaptable to each participant’s teaching context.
In the second semester, students answered the online diagnostic questionnaire and read three articles based on interculturality, in order to complete a diagnostic workshop related to a video work guide activity aimed at developing critical reflexivity.
In the third semester, after answering the diagnostic questionnaire and reading the three articles, students completed an individual and collective reading comprehension workshop, as well as the video work guide activity. In this part of the project, participants had to adapt and apply the video work guide activity to their own educational context (Gamboa Diaz, 2014). Thus, after the selection and classification processes,6 our data consisted of 44 multimodal (written, audio-visual) productions from students in France and 21 from students in Colombia. These included:
65 diagnosis questionnaires.
11 written productions associated with socio-biographical reflexivity on reading and writing processes.
40 multimodal productions associated with the theoretical exploration of intercultural dimensions.
40 multimodal productions associated with the video work guide adaptation.
Through these multimodal productions we intended to compare the approaches used in the two contexts in order to examine common classical educational needs (theories, methodologies or strategies to teach foreign or second languages), as well as active social issues, such as taking into account processes of linguistic and cultural blending, imbalances between social classes, situations of terrorist incidents or how to terminate armed conflict.
Methodology
The data exploration was based on content analysis (Bardin, 1977, and ATLAS-TI software) and discourse analysis (von Münchow, 2015; Maingueneau, 2015). It allowed us to determine:
A socio-educational characterization of institutions and individuals.
The establishment of needs analysis.
The perception of intercultural dimensions.
Critical reflexivity and experiences processes.
Critical engaged praxis.
We felt that studying teachers’ cooperative approaches and actions (Baudrit, 2005) by comparing their written and audiovisual narratives would help us - by integrating new knowledge (linguistic and/or cultural) associated with the development of critical reflexivity and intercultural dimensions consciousness - to create a meeting point between ideas and teaching practices, as well as to question prior knowledge and other perceptions of world realities.
Figure 2 –
The iterative and cyclical process of action-research adapted to our collaborative project.
The questions that guided our analyses focused on:
How to identify participants’ perceptions, attitudes and behaviours when facing alterity?
How do teachers (and their own students) verbalize alterity in French or Colombian contexts, which are characterized by linguistic variations and plural (cultural and linguistic) identities inside and outside the language classroom?
How do teachers understand and adapt this reflexivity concerning alterity in order to take the inevitable plurality of intercultural dimensions onto a didactic level?
Results – Moving from reflexivity and consciousness to intercultural dimensions repertoires
Since content analysis and discourse analysis guided us to take into account issues related to recognizing discursive representation out of its natural context of production, I decided to involve the integration of categories of analysis that can describe its functioning.
Participant’s apprehensibility from a personal point of view.
Critical distance from a personal and teacher’s perspective.
Comprehensibility from a trainee researcher’s stance.
Adaptation (appropriation-transformation-contextualization) from a practical-didactic approach.
In order to restrict the studied perceptions to a given production context, the analysis was based on co-occurrence values or the same or similar text segments’ presence in the participant’s answers (Bardin, 1977), as well as on discursive representations, (von Münchow, 2015). It means that the discursive manifestations are articulated to social places, to given communities, and require that what is linguistically marked be distinguished from what remains implicit. Thus, information is not only limited to the way it is shown in the text but it also gives acces to presupposed knowledge or presuppositions and to hidden knowledge or sub-text (Ducrot, 2018). Presupposition may refer to the concept in a literal sense, whereas the sub-text refers to making it possible to advance an idea without saying it. In this regard, attention was paid to what I said participants had said and to the multidirectional interpretations these mental and social representations could have.
The video work guide7 was based on Gran Torino, a film directed by Cleant Eastwood and released in 2009. I decided to use this visual support because it was suitable to work with adults or late adolescents, and also to illustrate three levels of interculturality: among the members of a family, among the members of the same community, and among members of the same country (but from different historical and geographical backgrounds). After pre-viewing, viewing and post-viewing sessions, participants’ productions related to the established categories (apprehensibility, critical distance, comprehensibility, adaptation) can be illustrated by the following examples:
A French student´s answer after watching the first 20 minutes of the movie.
Tâche 2: Accent sur l’adoption d’une autre perspective. Jouer le rôle de… [Task 2: Focus on adopting someone else’s perspective. Role playing].
« 1. Expliquez pourquoi avez-vous choisi cette scène ? J’ai choisi cette scène parce que je trouvais que malgré le fait qu’il y a très peu de dialogue, il se passe beaucoup de choses dans les têtes de ces deux personnages qui ne sont pas dites. Je pense qu’il pourrait être intéressant d’explorer un peu cela. Pour des raisons pratiques (travail en binôme à distance) nous avons décidé de travailler avec le dessin. J’ai écrit le dialogue et ma camarade l’a interprété par le moyen de du dessin.8
2. Expliquez pourquoi avez-vous choisi ces personnages ? J’ai choisi ces deux personnages parce qu’ils sont tellement éloignés l’un de l’autre sur le plan relationnel que ça pourrait être intéressant de représenter dans une version de la scène au garage. Il s’agit également d’une scène où il y a justement un manque de médiation. Aucun des deux personnages fait l’effort de comprendre l’autre et le résultat est une scène de ratage d’interaction réelle. Ils se parlent mais aucun des deux n’a vraiment envie d’être là.
3. Expliquez pourquoi faites-vous interagir les personnages de la façon proposée ? Je voulais dévoiler par le moyen du dessin les vraies pensées de ces deux personnages qui ont des liens sanguins mais peu d’autre. Je n’ai pas vraiment changé de l’interaction telle qu’elle se présente dans le film, j’ai juste simplifié quelques éléments de dialogue afin de mettre en relief les pensées de chaque personnage pendant l’interaction. (Les pensées sont en rouge, les dialogues sont en bleu) ». E9S2F9
A Colombian student´s answer after watching the first 20 minutes of the movie.
Tarea 2: Enfoque en la adopción de la perspectiva de otra persona. Ponerse en los zapatos de…
“Personaje elegido: Ashley Kowalski.
La relación que se da entre Ashley (nieta) y Walt es bastante distante, como con el resto de su familia, pero con ella es mucho más, por la diferencia generacional y de experiencias. El solo hecho de ver cómo se viste le parece incorrecto. Para él, ella se muestra como una muchacha metida dentro de su burbuja, que poco le interesa lo demás, aunque trata de establecer cierto contacto con él al ver su auto, con un tono más bien interesado.
Ya lo explican Liddicoat y Scarino (2013) cuando hacen mención a la construcción de sí mismo frente a otros. No han construido un lenguaje en común, por lo cual hay poca interacción. Si no hay un interés agregado, no compartirán experiencias en un futuro, no entenderán sus historias y su percepción del otro no cambiará. El lenguaje de cada uno será diferente y no se comprenderán”. E11S2C.10
Apprehensibility from a personal point of view is illustrated by E9S2F when she states:
…il se passe beaucoup de choses dans les têtes de ces deux personnages qui ne sont pas dites… […there is a lot going on in the heads of these two characters, things that are not said…]
J’ai choisi ces deux personnages parce qu’ils sont tellement éloignés l’un de l’autre sur le plan relationnel… [I chose these two characters because they are far apart from each other on a relationship level…]
Il s’agit également d’une scène où il y a justement un manque de médiation. Aucun des deux personnages fait l’effort de comprendre l’autre et le résultat est une scène de ratage d’interaction réelle… [It is also a scene where there is a lack of mediation. Neither of the two characters makes the effort to understand the other and the result is a missed real interaction.]
Je voulais dévoiler par le moyen du dessin les vraies pensées de ces deux personnages qui ont des liens sanguins mais peu d’autre… [Using the drawing, I wanted to reveal the real thoughts of these two characters that have blood ties but nothing else.]
On the other hand, E11S2C states:
La relación que se da entre Ashley (nieta) y Walt es bastante distante, como con el resto de su familia, pero con ella es mucho más, por la diferencia generacional y de experiencias. [The relationship between Ashley (granddaughter) and Walt is quite distant, as well as with the rest of his family, but with her there is much more distance, because of the generational and experience differences.]
Para él, ella se muestra como una muchacha metida dentro de su burbuja, que poco le interesa lo demás, aunque trata de establecer cierto contacto con él al ver su auto, con un tono más bien interesado. [For him, she shows herself as a girl living in a bubble, who does not care for others, even though she tries to establish some contact with him when she discovers his car, a rather interested contact.]
From a personal point of view, each participant interpreted the interaction between Walt and his grandaughter starting from their own framework of reference or personal and cultural filters (Kramsch, 1998), in order to mentally and experientially reach awareness or understanding of the situation (real or fictional) they were confronted with.
E9S2F: Il s’agit également d’une scène où il y a justement un manque de médiation. [It is also a scene where there is a lack of mediation].
E11S2C: pero con ella es mucho más, por la diferencia generacional y de experiencias. [but with her there is much more distance, because of the generational and experience differences.]
The critical distance from a personal and teacher’s perspective takes place when participants move from their initial interpretation to an answer based on reflexivity and knowledge, resulting from the bibliographical references discussed in the course and centered on interculturality.
E11S2C: Ya lo explican Liddicoat y Scarino (2013) cuando hacen mención a la construcción de sí mismo frente a otros. No han construido un lenguaje en común, por lo cual hay poca interacción. Si no hay un interés agregado, no compartirán experiencias en un futuro, no entenderán sus historias y su percepción del otro no cambiará. El lenguaje de cada uno será diferente y no se comprenderán”.
[E11S2C: It is explained by Liddicoat and Scarino (2013) when they mention the construction of oneself in front of others. Walt and Ashley have not built a common language, which is why there is little interaction. If there is no added interest, they will not share experiences in the future, they will not understand each one’s stories, and the perception they have of each other will not change. The language each one uses will be different and they will not understand each other.”]
Comprehensibility from a trainee researcher’s stance was based on examples provided in order to find out whether the same kind of situation (shown during the first 20 minutes of the movie) had happened in the participant’s own family, neighborhood, city or country.
“La similitud que puedo encontrar en mi contexto respecto a la película se da en torno al papel de las personas cabeza de familia y de las reuniones familiares. Aunque no se da desde un abuelo o un padre, esa figura de autoridad se refleja en mi mamá, quien, aunque no tiene un carácter tan fuerte como el personaje de la película, representa esa persona con experiencia que no siempre concuerda con las nuevas generaciones de la familia, compara constantemente los comportamientos de su época con los actuales, cuestionándolos. Busca siempre hacer las cosas como ella las concibe”. E11S2C.
As researchers, participants had to explain the expected behavior in a family or social interaction, contrasting the individual and collective cultural filter parameters they were discovering through the movie with those they were used to experiencing or had experienced in their own lives. Thus, they were focused not only on distinguishing initial feelings, but also on differentiating this emotional state from rational thought.
Adaptation (appropriation-transformation-contextualization) from a practical-didactic approach gives participants the opportunity to understand that people in contact are unconsciously involved in micro-intercultural and macro-intercultural interactions with themselves and others. Consciously explored, these micro and macro levels help to build bridges between discourses and practices associated with foreign (FL) and second (L2) language intercultural dimensions, as one student recognizes:
« Travaillant dans le cadre de mon mémoire de master 2 sur la formation des enseignants à l’approche plurilingue et interculturelle, j’ai pu constater combien ce cours répond au processus impliquant l’enseignant-formé dans son projet de formation : celui-ci alterne entre réflexivité-décentration-recentration, apports théoriques et mise en œuvre sur son terrain professionnel. En tant qu’étudiante-chercheure, mon terrain de stage sur la conception d’une formation pour enseignants de secteur ordinaire en réseau d’éducation prioritaire renforcé (REP+) aura été impacté par le cours de médiations, mon analyse du dispositif de formation proposé bénéficiant de l’expérience vécue lors du cours. Étant également enseignante en auto-formation sur la question du développement du plurilinguisme et de l’interculturel à l’école française, j’envisage de poursuivre ce type d’approche dans mon travail au quotidien car j’ai pu constater qu’il permettait de développer des compétences tant linguistiques, langagières que relationnelles. En effet, le fait d’avoir pu l’expérimenter lors de la transposition didactique m’aura donné une vision éclairée des effets d’une approche interculturelle sur les apprenants, en tant que locuteurs et acteurs-sociaux développant des compétences évolutives en termes de savoirs, savoir-faire et savoir-être, et sur le rôle de médiateur rempli par l’enseignant. Cependant, force est de constater que l’approche interculturelle ainsi conçue comme processus de recherche-action-formation ne constitue pas un axe principal de la formation initiale des professeurs en écoles supérieures du professorat et de l’éducation (ESPE), ni même un sujet de réflexion régulier pour la formation continue (en animations pédagogiques de circonscription ou dans le programme académique de formation professionnelle). Pourtant, la dimension plurilingue et multiculturelle entre désormais dans les nouveaux programmes pour l’école primaire française ». E13S3F.
Consciously exploring micro-intercultural and macro-intercultural interactions implies an effort to understand others from an intellectual perspective, involving being capable to question our daily communication parametres. Trying to recognize, for instance, which of the attitudes determined by Porter (1950) are used when relating with others (advising, evaluative, interpretative, supportive, probing and understanding) in order to develop intercultural dimensions repertoires - based on a mutual active listening-interaction - is relevant not only to personal life, but also to the academic and professional one. This could operate as a set of interactional linguistic and cultural units which individuals assemble in order to understand and interrelate with another person, regardless of his/her membership, and not worrying about whether the person is part of the same family, community, city or country or of a different one. Subsequently, intercultural dimensions repertoires (see chart number 3) could lead to processes of empowerment.
For example, answering the video work guide questions invites students to explore characters’individual attitudes, behaviors and an interaction beween them from a personal perception. For E9S2F (in the French university) “there is a lack of mediation” and for E11S2C (in the Colombian university) “there is much more distance” between the grandfather (Walt) and his granddaughter (Ashley); this can be identified as a communication conflict (Hofstede, 2010) between family members. Thus, the micro-intercultural dimension to which the Kowalski family is exposed is identified (intercultural dimensions repertoire) by the two Master’s degree students that took part in our action-research project. De-centering partially happens when E9S2F seems to adopt an understanding attitude rather than an evaluative one by stating “Neither of the two characters makes the effort to understand the other, and the result is a missed real interaction scene”. What is linguistically marked “…makes the effort to understand the other…,” indicates E9S2F sees Walt as well as Ashley as responsible for the interaction’s success or failure parameters. However, what remains implicit in E9S2F statement, “…the result is a missed real interaction scene” indicates that a family relationship is succesfull when closer, congenial and good agreement interactions take place; hidden knowledge or sub-text (Ducrot, 2018) is probably determined by E9S2F’s idiocultural, pluricultural or discursive culture belonging.
How can intercultural dimensions repertoires be developed? There are various ways in which this may be facilitated, for example, by expliciting intercultural dimensions in regular education programs, creating dedicated and transdisciplinary courses focused on the implementation of a mutual active listening-interaction and critical experiences in pre-service and in-service teacher development programs. In this regard, and based on the results of our action-research project, my colleagues and I co-designed a MOOC aimed at understanding intercultural dimensions in everyday life. Therefore, the teacher development programs (curricula, courses, lesson plans, etc.) could be based on critical reflexivity (discernment, thinking and pedagogy); the aim will be to keep analyzing the way intercultural epistemology (approaches, notions, perspectives, practices, etc.) can be explored in order to continue understanding linguistic and cultural contact, exchange, interaction, similarities or differences in the FL or L2 classroom, as well as to question and to avoid the reproduction of unequal socio-educational models. This critical reflexivity focused on intercultural dimensions pedagogy and repertoires development is illustrated in the video work guide adaptation activity E22S3F made. In order to create counciousness of the historical and present importance of the creole languages in Martinique, a school project was carried out (projet pédagogique et culturel «Tout moun sé moun !». «Tout homme est un homme !», dans le but d’ouvrir l’élève à son humanité et à son histoire plurilingues), [educational and cultural project «Tout Moun sé Moun!». “Every man is a man!,” which aims to open the learner to his humanity and plurilingual history].
In Colombia, E2S2C contextualized the video work guide activity to create a project based on identifying and promoting male and female rights equality. E1S2C, on the other hand, explicitly integrates theoretical and methodological components into a higher education program by proposing the creation of an intercultural module in English to train students at an institute where tourism is taught. Identifying the change of perception, attitude or behavior happens thanks to the video work guide didactic transpositions proposed by the students, and they decided to promote cultural, linguistic, gender and academic plurality. Then, understanding and / or (potentially) adopting change can be perceived through the way the propositions are integrated to the curricula not as an operational practice, but rather as an official one.
Discussion
In order to answer the research questions that guide the study, and based on participants’ discoursive representation, I consider that intercultural dimensions exist within our sense of belonging to human groups who are either nearer or more distant from us depending on our ontological, epistemological and methodological stance (posture, approach, viewpoint, etc.); this implies a constant tension between ideo-cultural and pluri-cultural mediation, whether this negotiation happens at a cognitive, behavioral or linguistic level.
Making intercultural dimensions explicit requires an effort towards the intellectual understanding of others, which consists of a training process to explore interactions and relationships. Making interculturality explicit should not involve a “vision of the truth,” but rather a mutual and active-listening of “other existing truths,” more contextualized and less unified, in order to learn about others - to understand the mechanisms of their reasoning - by placing dialogue at the center of an epistemology of interculturality. This would help to avoid falling into the traps of relativization or universalism, and would enable an awareness of the limits of a unilateral conception of the world that could be validated by a single personal experience; even if personal experience plays a decisive role in one’s life path, the single story should not be considered a universal parameter that leads to a generalized norm of interaction.
That kind of training may take into account the research conducted by Porter (1950), which focused on counseling interview procedures, which led to identifying six large groups of attitudes that we spontaneously use in our interpersonal relationships:
Advising attitude
Evaluative attitude
Interpretative attitude
Supportive attitude
Probing attitude
Understanding attitude
Thus, listening takes central place in communication and requires that we pay great attention to our interlocutors, bearing in mind the importance of resisting our natural inclinations to interpret or mechanically attribute a personal meaning to someone else’s purposes. These personal interpretations are often based on our own experiences, our own linguistic standards, our communities of belonging and on our cultural filters or framework of interpretation (reading grid) of the world. What we learn from Porter’s work is that in the communication processes we may regularly tend to adopt advising, evaluative or supportive attitudes. Adopting these attitudes potentially results in the non-recognition of a person’s autonomy to direct her/his actions, leading her/him, unintentionally, to a state of dependence. According to Porter, the attitude of empathetic understanding favours in others their individual expression. It helps the listener to adopt a more considerate interior disposition, which allows for a better intellectual understanding of others. It concerns an active stance that requires attention; it also requires training because it involves an effort to perceive or feel from the point of view of her/his interlocutor.
Making intercultural dimensions explicit on the bases of mutual active listening-interaction and critical experiences helps to identify multimodal forms of expression in a clearer and more objective way. The participants will become aware of the idio-cultural, pluri-cultural, idio-lectic and sociolectic parametters involved in their interactions with others. Potentially, the conditions for a more neutral communication - to explore, to hesitate, to look for possible answers or for solutions - will be created, questioning the ready-made answers or the empty formulas exchanged without critical thinking. This approach aims at supporting a mutual emotional, relational and intellectual effort.
An education based on this approach supposes a change of stance in participants’ interactions or communication processes, geared to ensuring the following aims:
To pay attention (helping others to express themselves rather than telling them what to say or to do).
To establish a climate of confidence (being ready to exchange by giving indications of attention and synthesis).
To be conscious of each person’s motivations, knowledge, experiences and limitations.
To participate in the outline of an action plan leading to decision-making.
To make intercultural dimensions explicit also means questioning mental and social representations. For Jodelet (1992), a mental representation is the mental image of an absent or previously perceived reality, whether it is an object, a person, an event or an idea. As for social representation, this is seen as a cultural product generated by social interactions, necessary to understand and to construct the surrounding reality - a universe of beliefs, opinions and attitudes organized around a central meaning; a way of interpreting and thinking about our daily reality (Jodelet, 1992).
A representation (mental or social) is an active component of the psychological and social structure of an individual, but it is not static; it evolves with the person and with the times and society, and it can change if individuals give themselves the opportunity to integrate new (but critically acquired) information. As Moscovici (1961) Moscovici & Marková (1996) points out, a representation reflects the state of an individual, a group or society that has created it, so it differs from individual to individual, from group to group and from society to society - and it shows us that a certain vision of the world is not unique or universal.
Conclusion
Although historically and socially intercultural dimensions seem to be more marked by differences, interculturality not only circumscribes to what is unknown or unfamiliar, but it is also experienced through people and contexts we are in contact with on a daily basis. However, interculturality can be hidden by the idea of resemblance that makes us belong or adhere to groups, giving us the impression that only what is distant deserves to be recognized as alterity.
Activities involving reflexivity (mutual active listening-interaction and critical experiences) in this study led to processes of empowerment through which participants took part in interdisciplinary, interinstitutional or international collaborative projects, to co-construct elements of global, but critical, educational cultures. They were able to identify and to use theoretical and methodological elements to understand and to implement alterity in their daily teaching practices. Adapting the video work guide activity to explore individual and collective prejudices helped the participants to understand the reflexivity leading to actions linked with developing intercultural dimensions repertoires: decentering, self-questionning, relativizing, accepting other view points / world experiences, and objectivizing existing information. As E20S3C notes:
“My training as an English teacher has been flooded with teaching techniques and influenced by the theories of Stephen Krashen…However, a new world was presented to me when the idea of interculturality was recently introduced. I conclude that I have been exposed to the psycholinguistic debates of the field but blind to the sociocultural approaches.” E20S3C.
Other aspects that illustrated reflexivity concerned integrating new information, negotiating emotions and / or actions, as well as understanding and / or (potentially) adopting change to conduct engaged teaching praxis, as can be seen in the following observation:
“…a successful English teacher needs much more than… technical ability…Teachers have the ability to reinforce and perpetuate hatred or stimulate diversity and inspire students to create a better world.” E20S3C
Through alterity verbalization processes, teachers (and their own students) began processes of empowerment (Le Bossé et Lavallée, 1993) as strategies towards developing didactic, pedagogical and research knowledge, initially observable thanks to:
Recognition of the multi-directionality of interculturality, associated to different narratives that are co-constructed by people from different countries or from the same country, from different regions or from the same region, from different cities or from the same city, or from the same neighborhood or family.
Integration of interculturality in the teaching of L1, L2, FL in a multidisciplinary and multimodal way (videos, chat, letters, audios, etc.).
Ability for designing and implementing didactic sequences based on interculturality.
Experiences of meaningful learning involving critical reflexivity and iterative action research cycles.
Interest in the explicitness of feelings involved in situation of alterity (objectivizing intercultural relationships).
Interest in the recognition of self identities and narratives.
A proposal of original and creative activities.
The possibility of re-adaptating to the original institutional curriculum proposal, a potential solution to the opposition between the official curriculum versus the operational one.
Helping teachers comes to terms with intercultural dimensions from an explicit perspective allows them to take into account the paradox of human intreractions in a sense close to what Dervin (2017) calls simplexity, enhancing the possibility of recognizing alterity, diversity and taking into account the social realities shaped by the plurality of human groups, cultures, languages or world perceptions, as stated by Walsh (2010):
Entender la interculturalidad como proceso y proyecto dirigido hacia la construcción de modos “otros” del poder, saber, ser y vivir, permite ir mucho más allá de los supuestos y manifestaciones actuales de la educación intercultural, la educación intercultural bilingüe o inclusive la filosofía intercultural. Es argumentar no por la simple relación entre grupos, prácticas o pensamientos culturales, por la incorporación de los tradicionalmente excluidos dentro de las estructuras (educativas, disciplinares o de pensamiento) existentes, o solamente por la creación de programas “especiales” que permitan que la educación “normal” y “universal” siga perpetuando practicas y pensamientos racializados y excluyentes.
Es señalar la necesidad de visibilizar, enfrentar y transformar las estructuras e instituciones que diferencialmente posicionan grupos, prácticas y pensamientos dentro de un orden y lógica que, a la vez y todavía, es racial, moderno-occidental y colonial. Un orden en que todos hemos sido, de una forma u otra, partícipes. (…)
Por eso, la interculturalidad crítica debe ser entendida como una herramienta pedagógica, la que pone en cuestionamiento continuo la racialización, subalternización e inferiorización y sus patrones de poder, visibiliza maneras distintas de ser, vivir y saber, y busca el desarrollo y creación de comprensiones y condiciones que no sólo articulan y hacen dialogar las diferencias en un marco de legitimidad, dignidad, igualdad, equidad y respeto, sino que también -y a la vez- alientan la creación de modos “otros” de pensar, ser, estar, aprender, enseñar, soñar y vivir que cruzan fronteras. (p. 92).
As explained by Walsh, I believe that studying and implementing critical intercultural dimensions and engaged praxis calls upon the de-construction of the traditional ways through which language classroom education is still being carried out in many communities. New or different world visions and experiences that integrate historically subordinated minorities need to be put into practice in order to enhance the development and creation of circumstances favorable to articulating similarities, differences and desires to explore, thus allowing for the exchange of ideas in a context of legitimacy, egalitarianism and respect. It is about encouraging the co-construction of projects, processes and efforts (epistemological, ethical, cultural, social, political, etc.) interconnected from conceptual, methodological, pedagogical and didactic points of view, making way for questioning, shifting, upgrading, de-constructing and re-constructing other ways of thinking, of being, of learning, of teaching and ultimately of living.