Foreign Language Teachers’ Intercultural Competence as a New Aspect of Professional Development (original) (raw)
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The contemporary research in initial teacher education is oriented towards development of student-teachers’ teaching competences through the reflective approach and experiential learning. In Croatia, in the context of changes in teacher education at the university level within the 'Bologna reform process', a new competence-development curriculum was introduced in initial foreign language teacher education. The development of foreign language teacher competences and their components within the new university curriculum were examined through the application of the reflective approach and a new instrument, the European portfolio for foreign language teachers. The participants in this study were 66 student-teachers of English, French, and Italian from three Croatian universities. Research was conducted during the practical part of their education in Croatian schools. A mixed research method was applied. It included a quantitative analysis of students’ self-evaluations of gained competences according to the descriptors in the portfolio and a qualitative analysis of a semi-structured interview with the participants about their experiences in working with a portfolio. The results of this research show that new foreign language teacher education programs do not sufficiently develop certain components of teacher competences such as the intercultural competence. Even though this component is stressed in the ministerial programs for foreign language teaching in public schools and it is formally included in the university curriculums, the students seem to fail to recognize the connection between language and culture and are more oriented towards teaching methodology of reading, listening, speaking and writing.
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Intercultural and plurilingual encounters have become increasingly frequent due to ICT developments, mobility and migration. To face the challenges inherent to such encounters, the development of Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) is crucial. ICC development may start in the home but is a responsibility of schooling in particular in language classrooms. To facilitate this, language teachers should attend training programs aimed at giving them the ability to integrate the intercultural dimension into their professional practice. Within this framework, we implemented a training programme entitled The Intercultural Teacher, during 2006/2007, with an experimental group of language teachers from secondary schools in the Aveiro district (Portugal). In this article we describe teachers' social perceptions of ICC and address the following questions: What does ICC mean to languages' teachers? What are teachers' views on the development of ICC? The findings of this analysis enabled us, firstly, to design a heuristic model of ICC, based on teachers' views and perceptions. Then we identified some pathways for developing ICC through teacher education, which are validated by teachers themselves. The background to the study: the intercultural teacher The TP is based on the perspective that human development (personal and/or professional) results from the interaction between research, reflection and practice, in an ecological dynamic (Brofenbrenner 2002