Abstract
Communities of practice provide challenging learning opportunities based on the principles of interaction, participation, dialogue, and relationship building. This chapter aims to explore how intercultural telecollaboration contributes to the development of a multicultural community of practice in the context of initial teacher education. Four groups of student teachers from four different languages and cultures—two in Europe, one in Asia, and one in South America—work together through the medium of English in an intercultural telecollaboration project. The project is examined in terms of community building through the experience journal of the student teachers as a reflective narrative on how they built a sense of community to sustain their interactions and negotiation of meaning. The findings strongly suggest that intercultural telecollaboration creates a powerful learning environment where students and teachers can find opportunities to cooperate, understand and support each other, and enhance their perceptions of teaching English from an intercultural perspective.
TopIntroduction
Understanding effective communication in cross-cultural interaction has been a central driving force in language learning contexts, giving rise to an intercultural dimension in language education (Byram, 1997, 2008; Kramsch, 1993, 2009, 2021; Zarate et al., 2011). As Byram (1997) has stated, the success of interaction implies not only an effective interchange of information, as was the goal of communicative language teaching, but also “the ability to decentre and take up the other’s perspective on their own culture, anticipating, and where possible, resolving dysfunctions in communication and behaviour” (p. 42). From this perspective, he coins the notion of Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) that was further developed by Guilherme (2002) with a more critical approach and Risager (2007) with a transnational paradigm.
The recognition of intercultural competences for a successful intercultural communication in institutional contexts is at the heart of ideas of telecollaboration. Baker (2016, p. 78) refers to the need of “an understanding of communication from a multilingual and multicultural perspective with an accompanying range of knowledge, skills and attitudes related to successful communication in this sphere”. The intercultural competences are related to our capacity to identify our own cultural patterns, contrast them with others, and adapt flexibly to unfamiliar ways of being, developing an emotional and cognitive movement towards the other. Intercultural competences are developed through repeated opportunities for cross-cultural interaction and reflection (Deardorff, 2006).
Online intercultural exchange offers great potential for intercultural communication and meaning making (Thorne, 2010). Belz’s (2003) definition of telecollaboration in foreign language education highlights that intercultural communication is institutionally and electronically mediated under the guidance of a languacultural expert (a teacher) for the development of intercultural competence. In fact, the gains of telecollaboration in developing intercultural communicative competence in foreign language education is widely recognized (Helm, 2015; O’Dowd, 2016, 2017, 2021; Thorne, 2016).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Sociocultural Theories of Learning: Theories that consider that human development and learning originate in social, historical, and cultural interactions.
Intercultural Competences: Capacity to identify own cultural patterns, contrast them with others, and adapt flexibly to unfamiliar ways of being, developing an emotional and cognitive movement towards the other.
Experience Journal: Reflective narrative to enhance the learning process and to provide insights about the intercultural dimensions of the telecollaboration.
Community of Practice in Language Learning and Teaching: A tool for knowledge creation and innovation that is based on the principles of interaction, participation, dialogue, and relationship building.
Teacher Education: A dynamic process of (re)-construction and transformation of practices, which focus on the development of competencies through action and reflection.
Intercultural Telecollaboration: A tool for creating a virtual intercultural exchange environment for learning collaboratively.