Abstract
The language classroom as a space for reflection, interaction, and enactment calls for language teaching and learning that makes meaning and prepares intercultural communicators who value local knowledge, are sensitive to diversity, and are aware of their global community. This work aims to examine the role of a pedagogy of multiliteracies in the development of pre-service teachers' intercultural awareness. This study was conducted with a group of 12 pre-service teachers at a state university in Colombia. It was based on a pedagogy of multiliteracies, through the knowledge processes, approached from a qualitative interpretive case study perspective. The findings indicate that connecting personal experiences to those of others through global literacies and multimodal tasks helped develop intercultural awareness in relation to issues of ethnicity, gender, physical ability, and social class, thus expanding participants' limited nationalist perspective and taking them to embrace a more intersectional view of others.
TopBackground
The Intercultural Dimension and Intercultural Awareness
The study of intercultural communication has contributed to the development of interlinguistic and intercultural understanding, helping break social and geographic boundaries and build relationships among peoples of diverse origins. It has also brought about research agendas developed by advocates from different disciplines to advance the foreign language teaching (FLT) field. The terms vary according to the focus that diverse authors give to intercultural studies, including intercultural communication (Coulby, 2006; Hua, 2016), intercultural understanding (Kramsch, 2013), intercultural competence (Bennett, 1993; Bennet & Bennet, 2004; Deardorff, 2006; Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013), intercultural communicative competence (Byram, 1997; Byram et al., 2002), intercultural awareness, sensitivity and adroitness (Chen & Starosta, 1998), and cross-cultural communication (Bennett & Bennett, 2004; Woodin, 2016). Specifically, Chen and Starosta (1998) define intercultural awareness as the “cognitive aspect of intercultural communication competence that refers to the understanding of cultural conventions that affect how we think and behave” (Chen & Starosta, 1998, p. 28).
Additionally, Kramsch (2009) examines the intercultural dimension as central to the constitution of the subjective dimensions of language users. She maintains that “the subject is a symbolic entity that is constituted and maintained through symbolic systems such as language” (p. 13). Kramsch remarks that these subjective dimensions require particular sensitivity on the part of the language teacher and states that “pedagogies that reduce language to its informational value, be it grammatical, social, or cultural information, miss an important dimension of the language learning experience” (2009, p. 11). That means that language teachers are to create spaces in which the language can be meaningful so that it does not play a mere instrumental role, but becomes an important and intrinsic element of the language learner, with which they can solve real-life situations and live significant experiences.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Intercultural Awareness: Cognitive aspect of intercultural communication that projects our knowledge of diversity.
Verbocentricity: Focuses on language alone without taking into account diverse literacy practices that favor intercultural understandings.
Intercultural Communication: Developing understanding of people from diverse origins to negotiate a multiplicity of meanings and enact them at specific situations.
Intercultural Adroitness: Behavioral aspect of intercultural communication that displays our thoughts and feelings toward others.
Multiliteracies: Exploring new knowledge and gaining language and cultural insights; that is, the three Ms—multilingual, multicultural, and multimodal—view of literacy (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000).
Intercultural Sensitivity: Psychological aspect of intercultural communication that determines how we behave in face of a specific situation.
Global Literacies: Stories developed in a specific setting to make global to local connections (Short et al., 2016).
Knowledge Processes: Experiencing, conceptualizing, analyzing, and applying new knowledge (Cope and Kalantzis, 2006). It is the materialization of a pedagogy of multiliteracies.
Literacies: Reading and writing beyond the decoding and drafting of alphabetical texts to develop an understanding of the world around us.
Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: It is a practical guide to welcome reflection and action in a language class. It portrays modes of representation much broader than language alone, and adapts to specific cultural contexts (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009).