A curriculum for action in the community and intercultural citizenship in higher education

Abstract

(2015) 'A curriculum for action in the community and intercultural citizenship in higher education.', Language, culture and curriculum., 28 (3). pp. 226-242. Further information on publisher's website: Additional information:Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. AbstractThe purpose of the project described here is to demonstrate how the introduction of subject matter and principles from citizenship education into foreign language education combines objectives from both in order to give meaning to language education on the one hand and extend citizenship education beyond a focus on the local and the national on the other. In doing so the educational aims of foreign language teaching -as well as its instrumental purposes -can be met and the scope of citizenship education is extended to include intercultural citizenship. The project was located in Higher Education in Argentina, where 76 students were learning English, and in Britain, where 23 students were learning Spanish. It focused on human rights violations during the football World Cup that took place in Argentina in 1978 during a period of military dictatorship and it was carried out in 2013 during a fourth-month period. Data were collected then and comprise documentary data (posters, powerpoints, videos, etc.) and conversational data (online communication between the Argentinian and British students using Skype). This article describes the processes of the project and the ways in which students reacted, particularly the Argentinian students who felt personally involved, and demonstrates how the combination of language and citizenship education, when given the additional viewpoint of an insider and outsider perspective, leads to significant developments in learners' lives: an identification with a transnational group and perspective, and a willingness to become directly and critically involved in action in the community.

An essay on internationalism in foreign language education

“…Porto has shown in several publications (Porto, 2014;Porto & Byram, 2015;Porto, 2018) that students take internationalist positions on the issues raised in their classrooms and cooperation. They become engaged as internationalists as defined above by Elvin, "a readiness to act on the assumption that mankind as a whole is the proper society to have in mind" when thinking and acting on matters beyond what can be handled by smaller groups.…”

Intercultural citizenship in the (foreign) language classroom

“…Empirical research on ICE reported in the literature tends to be based on qualitative data and be interpretative in nature (e.g. Byram et al, 2017;Porto, 2014Porto, , 2016Porto, , 2017Porto & Byram, 2015). Furthermore, action research is often present, perhaps because of the desire of many teacher-researchers to pursue curriculum development through research.…”

Service learning and intercultural citizenship in foreign-language education

“…This is not the case with ICE, which has been explicitly developed for foreign language teaching and has a strong theoretical foundation in a 'Framework of Intercultural Citizenship Education' (Byram, 2008, 238f.). Fostering intercultural competence on the one hand, and stimulating critical thinking and action in the community on the other hand, ISL and ICE have similar goals, although the development of criticality (Porto & Byram, 2015) and the political focus are perhaps more pronounced in ICE, whereas awareness of the significance of the relationship of provider and recipient is peculiar to Service Learning.…”

“…While ISL and ICE prove to be effective approaches to foster foreign language education, intercultural learning and citizenship competences (e.g. Porto, 2014;Porto & Byram 2015;Rauschert, 2014), there are still practical issues to consider, which are related to teacher expertise, logistic challenges, curriculum design and methodology.…”