Keywords

8.1 Coverage of Intercultural Competence in Higher Education

This chapter focuses on the MFL teachers’ own educational background. As Kelly (2020, p. 330) writes in his handbook chapter on intercultural second language teacher education, “a growing number of countries include aspects of intercultural or sociocultural pedagogy in the training of teachers”. Since the first edition of Byram’s monograph Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence, which had a considerable impact on the EU educational policy, was published in 1997, several international bodies have published policy papers highlighting the importance of intercultural education (e.g., CoE, 2014; UNESCO, 2013), frequently referring to Byram’s ICC model. It is, therefore, only to be expected that higher educational institutions in the EU but also worldwide (e.g., Fantini, 2020; Moloney et al., 2020; Savignon & Sysoyev, 2005) would try to provide their students with information on ICC in their modern foreign language teacher training programmes. While I encountered intercultural communicative competence and Byram’s framework in a seminar offered by Zoltan Dörnyei in the early 2000s, not all modern foreign language teachers would have been so fortunate to learn about the concepts so soon after Byram’s 1997 monograph or Fantini’s well-known 1995 article were published. Indeed, as some MFL teachers completed their higher educational studies prior to the appearance of these and other publications on the subject, they would not have been able to encounter ICC when they were studying for their degrees.

In developing this research project, I very much hoped that the survey would be completed by a highly diverse group of teachers representing different modern foreign languages, years of teaching experience, genders and ages. Because of this, I felt it important to also ask the teachers if they had encountered intercultural competence during their own higher education studies. Figure 8.1 presents the teachers’ responses to question 9a: Was intercultural competence addressed during your university studies?

Fig. 8.1
A pie chart presents the percentage of 132 teachers responses to a question, Was intercultural competence addressed during your university studies? 1. Yes, 44, 2. No, 48, 3. Dont know, 8, and 4. No comment, 1.

Coverage of intercultural competence in their higher education studies according to the participants (as a percentage of total responses)

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This question was answered by 132 participants. The results show that the percentage of teachers who responded that they did and did not encounter intercultural competence during their higher education studies is nearly even, with 48% not encountering it and 44% encountering it. In addition, 8% of the teachers chose don’t know and 1% preferred not to comment. As discussed in the methodology and in the first four chapters reporting results, the sample of teachers who participated in this research is rather diverse with regard to several characteristics. While in the discussion thus far I have mainly focused on the different languages taught by the teachers—and will do likewise in this chapter—for questions 9a and 9b it is also interesting to analyse the data taking account of the teachers’ ages. While it is, of course, possible to attend university later in life, and thus there may not always be a direct link between one’s age and the time when one attended a particular education institution, the data here show that those participants in the higher age ranges normally had more years of teaching experience, thus pointing to most of them having completed their studies several years ago.Footnote 1

The analysis of the encounters of the teachers with IC during their higher education studies based on age group is presented in Table 8.1. As set out in Chap. 3, teachers could choose one of five different age groups or decide to opt out of this question. Of the 132 teachers who answered question 9a, 130 provided information regarding their age. The age groups were as follows: 20–29 years (11 teachers), 30–39 years (31 teachers), 40–49 years (35 teachers), 50–59 years (36 teachers) and 60+ years (17 teachers).

Table 8.1 Coverage of intercultural competence in their higher education according to the participants, for each age group
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The results show that—as had been anticipated—there is an inverse relationship between age and coverage of IC during higher education studies. In the younger teacher groups (i.e., those aged 20–39), the majority of the teachers encountered IC during their higher education studies, while in the older age groups (40–60+), the majority of teachers did not. This notable difference is schematically illustrated in Fig. 8.2.

Fig. 8.2
A triple bar graph of the coverage of intercultural competence in their higher education according to the participants, by age group, in percentage. Among 20 to 29, yes is 64, no is 18. Among 40 to 49, 50 to 59 and 60 to 69, No is predominant.

Coverage of intercultural competence in their higher education according to the participants, by age group

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The findings also indicate that higher educational institutions currently offering teacher training programmes may wish to consider to what extent—if at all—they address intercultural (communicative) competence in their programmes, since not all of the newly or relatively recently qualified teachers had encountered the concepts, based on this self-report data. Higher educational institutions involved in MFL teaching ought to consider supporting professional development initiatives that provide their staff with the opportunity to obtain information on issues that perhaps may not have been addressed during their own teacher training, as also mentioned in Chap. 7.

In addition to analysing the responses to question 9a based on age groups, I also examined the data in terms of the language groups, as presented in Table 8.2.

Table 8.2 Coverage of intercultural competence in their higher education according to the participants, for each language group
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The data do not indicate any clear link between the L2 taught and teachers having encountered IC during their own studies in the case of English, German, Italian and French. In the Spanish group, the majority stated that IC was not covered, and the same is true for the Dutch and Swedish groups; but group size must be taken into consideration.

8.2 Scholars Associated with Intercultural Competence

In addition to finding out whether IC had been covered during the participants’ own higher educational studies, I was interested in learning more about the scholars that the teachers associated with IC and therefore asked them in 9b: Do you associate particular scholars with intercultural competence? The names of five IC researchers had been included as possible answer options—Michael Byram, Alvino Fantini, Sandra Savignon, Helen Spencer-Oatey and Stella Ting-Toomey—but participants were invited to add as many others as they liked.

This question was only answered by 51 participants, fewer than half of the participants that took part in the survey, which presumably indicates that the majority of the teachers did not link the names of particular scholars to IC. Since 58 teachers had stated that they encountered IC during their higher education in response to question 9a, it could be assumed that 51 of them then selected familiar names or typed in the names of scholars they had encountered during their own studies.

However, this is not the case. Instead, the picture is more mixed, with teachers who had not encountered IC during their studies providing or selecting names, and others not doing so even though they had learned about it during their own higher education studies. This also suggests that at least some of the teachers who did not encounter IC during their own studies—or could not remember doing so and therefore chose the don’t know option—had learned about it in some other way, perhaps while doing independent reading, in formal in-service teacher education development programmes or in more informal settings (e.g., chats with fellow teachers). The overview of all scholars mentioned by the teachers who answered this question is provided in Fig. 8.3.Footnote 2

Fig. 8.3
A horizontal bar charts of the number of participants associated with I C, ordered by the number of teachers who mentioned them. Byram is 33. Spencer-Oatey is 16.

Scholars whom participants associated with IC, ordered by the number of teachers who mentioned them

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The results are presented here in terms of the number of teachers (rather than a percentage), since there were many scholars that were named only by a single teacher. The results show that the majority, 65% of the teachers, associated Michael Byram with IC followed by Helen Spencer-Oatey and Stella Ting-Toomey (both with 31%), Alvino Fantini and Sandra Savignon (both with 18%) and Geert Hofstede (12%). All other scholars were named by fewer than 10% of the teachers who responded to this question. Thus, the results indicate that L2 teachers working in higher education who are familiar with IC also tend to be familiar with very well-known scholars in the field while also showing awareness of a wider variety of scholars researching IC.

I was also interested in exploring if teachers’ knowledge of scholars associated with IC was connected to the language that the teachers taught and therefore analysed the data accordingly. The results are presented in Table 8.3 and reflect the data from 29 English teachers, six German teachers, four Italian teachers, three Spanish teachers, two French teachers and one Swedish teacher (a total of 45 teachers).

Table 8.3 Scholars whom participants in each language group associated with intercultural competence
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The findings show that the majority of the scholars who were associated with IC by more than 10% of the teachers who answered this question were also named by teachers representing different languages. For example, Byram was named by teachers from all language groups but the Dutch one (though it is important to take into consideration that the Dutch group consisted of only three members, none of whom named anyone in this question). A striking finding is, however, that Hofstede was only named by English teachers. Based on the data, it is not clear why this occurred, since the data revealed no other factor that could explain this, as the teachers who added his name had studied and worked in a variety of different countries and shared no other background features explored in the survey. Overall, it would be interesting to have more research on names associated with IC from a variety of MFL groups, as this may provide insights into the models and conceptualizations of IC that teachers have encountered during their training and career and which may be informing their own teaching. Data from different parts of the world would be particularly interesting in this light.

8.3 Summary

This chapter focused on research questions 9a and 9b, which addressed aspects of MFL teachers’ own educational background with regard to intercultural competence. The responses to question 9a, which asked if teachers had encountered IC during their own studies, revealed a nearly even split between the teachers who reported that they had encountered IC (44%) and those who had not (48%), with 8% selecting don’t know and 1% preferring not to comment. Analysing the data from question 9a with regard to teachers’ ages showed that of teachers aged under 40, more than 60% had encountered IC during their studies, while for those aged 40 or more, the opposite was the case, with more than 60% of them not having encountered IC during their studies. This ties in with the dates of publication of important books and articles on IC, such as Byram’s 1997 monograph or Fantini’s 1995 article, since there often is a delay between the publication of key texts and them being covered in seminars and lectures, as this may involve restructuring course components. On the other hand, the responses to question 9a do not suggest a link between coverage of IC in university education and the L2 taught, as the number of teachers who encountered IC or not tends to be nearly evenly split in most of the language groups.

The results of question 9b, which asked the MFL teachers to indicate whether they associated particular names with IC and also gave them the opportunity to add further names, showed that the clear majority of the teachers who responded (65%) associated Michael Byram with IC. Other scholars associated with IC that were selected or named by more than 10% of the teachers who responded were Helen Spencer-Oatey and Stella Ting-Toomey (both with 31%), Alvino Fantini and Sandra Savignon (both with 18%) and Geert Hofstede (12%). In addition, 23 other scholars were named, indicating that many of the teachers who answered this question were aware of a variety of researchers working in this field. The analysis of the findings based on the different language group showed that most of the more well-known scholars were known by teachers from at least three language groups, with Byram again being the most well-known scholar, since he was known by teachers in all language teacher groups (apart from the Dutch group, where no teachers responded to this question). Interestingly, Hofstede, whose name was noted by several teachers even though he was not included as a set option for selection in the survey, was only referred to by teachers of English.