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Over the past decades, globalisation and increased mobility have led to extensive interaction among diverse languages and cultures. As the development of social and cultural contacts in intercultural or multicultural contexts has accelerated, there has been growing recognition of the need to integrate culture teaching and intercultural communicative competence (ICC) into foreign language teaching and learning.
The primary aim of the present study, which was a part of the author’s larger-scale research, was to explore teachers' attitudes and practices regarding the development of their students' cultural diversity awareness (CDA) and ICC. For this purpose, in-depth interviews were conducted with fifteen English language teachers working at an international school in Budapest to investigate how they perceive the concept of culture, what they think about culture learning and teaching, and what practices they use for developing CDA and ICC in their English classes. Besides investigating the development of CDA and ICC, the study also explored the deep and critical teaching of cultures — that is, critical cultural awareness (Byram, 1997) and critical intercultural competence (Olaya & Gómez Rodríguez, 2013; Gómez Rodríguez, 2015a; Gómez Rodríguez, 2015b) — which encourages students to think deeply by examining the reasons behind perspectives, practices and products in their own and other cultures and learning about and critically evaluating controversial cultural issues, such as inequality, poverty, social class, injustice, discrimination, racism, etc.
The results of this study show that most teachers find culture and culture teaching to be important, and that they use a variety of methods to develop their students' CDA and ICC, although these methods are largely limited to transmitting knowledge-based information. The teachers' unwillingness to teach certain topics, primarily connected with elements of deep culture, including controversial cultural topics, in order to develop students' critical ICC, points to the conclusion that they need guidance on analytical culture teaching and on developing their students' CDA and ICC. The insights presented in the study are timely and transformative for teacher training programs. By providing examples of how experienced educators address cultural challenges in their classrooms, this study serves as a valuable resource for preparing future teachers to meet the intercultural demands of modern classrooms. It encourages teacher training programs to prioritise ICC and equips pre-service teachers with strategies to approach critical culture teaching with confidence and sensitivity.
Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Multilingual Matters.
Gómez Rodríguez, L.F. (2015a). The cultural content in EFL textbooks and what teachers need to do about it. Profile Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development, 17(2), 167-187. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/prosfile.v17n2.44272
Gómez Rodríguez, L.F. (2015b). Critical intercultural learning through topics of deep culture in an EFL classroom. Ikala, Revista de Lenguaje y Cultura, 20(1),43-59.
Olaya, A., & Gómez, L. F. (2013). Exploring EFL pre-service teachers’ experience with cultural content and intercultural communicative competence at three Colombian universities. Profile Issues in Teachers’ Professional Development, 15(2), 49-67.
| Principal domain of study | English language teaching / English as a foreign language |
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