The influence of teachers’ interests, personalities and life experiences in intercultural languages teaching

Abstract

This paper reports on a study that investigated teachers' perceptions about the significance of intercultural understanding (IU) in the modern foreign languages (MFL) curriculum. The research was conducted in the wake of a National Curriculum revision in 2007 in England that for the first time listed 'IU' as one of the four key concepts underpinning the study of languages in the Programme of Study. In contrast to other writers who frequently explain MFL teachers' attention to intercultural learning as a consequence of their (lack of) knowledge about intercultural languages theory or pedagogy, or as the result of contextual factors, our findings suggest that the significance attached to IU seems to be profoundly affected by the interests, personalities and life experiences of individuals. This finding emerged from a qualitative study involving semi-structured interviews conducted with 18 teachers in 13 secondary schools in the North-West of England between May 2008 and June 2009. We illustrate our point by mapping the narratives of four teachers, conveyed through pen-portraits, with an adapted version of Kelchtermans's personal interpretive framework, and thus draw on narrative inquiry as our research approach. We claim that our hitherto relatively unnoticed finding, i.e. the central influence of the teacher as an individual on intercultural language teaching, has important implications for MFL teacher education. We suggest that the stories of the four teachers could be used as a professional development tool to identify motivators and inhibitors in developing IU that may resonate with practitioners' own beliefs and practice, and that parallel to this, our adapted Kelchtermans's framework may be used as a blank template to scaffold self analysis. Whilst this article considers teacher development in intercultural languages education, it also seeks to make a contribution to the literature on the usefulness of teacher narrative as a professional development tool.

Chapter 2. Culture in foreign language learning – The implications for teachers and teacher training

“…In addition to residence abroad, Peiser & Jones (2013) emphasise the significance of the individual teacher's views and philosophies, as does Lázár (2011). Some teachers accept both the communication axiom and the education axiom, but others do not; they say they want to focus only on communication.…”

“…Other suggestions exist. Peiser & Jones (2013) also recommend that there should be self-analysis using the framework from Kelchterman (2009). There is also Brought to you by | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Authenticated Download Date | 7/22/15 5:01 PM the Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters (AIE) 2 , which provides a means of reflecting on experience and learning the concepts and framework on which it is based, and a second version which focuses on analysing one's own experience of otherness through the visual media.…”

Adopting a Cultural Portfolio Project in Teaching German as a Foreign Language: Language Teacher Cognition as a Dynamic System

“…Intercultural language teaching (see Byram, ; Byram & Zarate, ; Kramsch, ) integrates culture and language, and is described as

teaching skills to critically analyse the ‘other’ (...) in order to be able to view other cultures in a less ethnocentric manner (...) [where] fostering harmonious relationships with people from other cultures should be an explicit purpose of language teaching (...) [and where] cultural and linguistic learning should be closely integrated. (Peiser & Jones, , p. 377)

…”

“…(Peiser & Jones, 2014, p. 377) However, a number of studies have shown that teachers perceive various issues that prevent them from doing intercultural language teaching (e.g., Byram, 1997;Byram & Zarate, 1996;Liddicoat & Crozet, 2000). Studies in the past decade have identified teachers' beliefs about their own lack of personal involvement in the target culture (Sercu et al, 2005;Sercu & St. John, 2007); lack of support, training, and materials (Díaz, 2013;Oranje, 2012;Sercu & St. John, 2007); and lack of practices (Díaz, 2013;Peiser & Jones, 2014). Teachers believe they are stymied by students' lack of sufficient proficiency for intercultural learning (Sercu et al, 2005;Sercu & St. John, 2007), lack of critical ability (Sercu & St. John, 2007), and lack of interest and motivation (Sercu & St. John, 2007).…”

Unravelling Teacher Job Satisfaction: The Contribution of Collective Efficacy and Emotions Towards Professional Role

“…[1]. Current psychological literature widely addresses the role of teachers' personal resources [2][3][4][5][6][7], relationships with students [8,9], and individual professional resources [10,11] in managing the mentioned challenges. Despite the meaningful role of the teacher's individual contributions to these issues, collaborative practices and strategies seem to better fit such needs [12,13].…”