1.1 Introduction

The intercultural dimension of the language learning experience is one that has taken on increasing significance over the past decades. As Byram (2018) reminded us, “intercultural competence” (IC) as a term of relevance to language pedagogy arose in the 1980s as a development to “communicative competence.” The construct of communicative competence was, by that time, beginning to become embedded as informing the principal aim of language teaching and learning programmes. That is, for many years students have been learning languages in a variety of ways and in a range of different contexts, but with a primary goal of learning how to communicate in the target language (TL). However, as TL users in real-world contexts initiate communication with TL speakers, they are necessarily confronted with situations that move communication beyond the pure use of language and require them to negotiate with, as Byram (e.g., 2021) put it, beliefs, meanings, values and behaviours that may be very different from their own. This has implications for effective communication. Indeed, all TL interactions are encounters with “otherness” that require navigation beyond just choosing the appropriate words for the context; hence the emergence of IC as a construct of interest in language education.

The study we present in this book is rooted in the diverse multilingual and multicultural context of New Zealand. Ours was a two-year project, funded by New Zealand’s Ministry of Education, that sought to investigate the ways in which five teachers working at the intermediate school levelFootnote 1 could be supported to embrace an intercultural dimension in the context of students learning an additional language (L2). We began from the premise that the increasing diversity of backgrounds of learners and their families in New Zealand creates an imperative to utilise L2 programmes as vehicles to increase L2 learners’ capacity to understand and relate effectively to diversity, not only the diversity represented in the TL, but also the diversity that makes up the classroom environment. Through data collected in a range of ways—classroom observations, reflective interviews with the teachers, focus groups with students, meetings, email correspondence and our own reflections—this book presents the journeys and voices of three groups of stakeholders in the intercultural educational endeavour—students, teachers and researchers/teacher educators.

The purpose of this introductory chapter is to set the scene for the journeys we will present later in this book. The chapter begins by outlining what we see as the significance of the study we undertook. We go on to provide a brief historical overview of how, and to what extent, a cultural/intercultural dimension has been included in the communicative L2 classroom over the years. We raise some of the challenges that have been encountered in more contemporary understandings of the “intercultural” in the context of the construct of communicative competence. We then briefly describe the site of the present study—New Zealand. We conclude by providing an overview of how the journeys of the different stakeholders in our study will unfold in the remainder of the book.

1.2 The Significance of Our Study

To date, very little research has been conducted into the intercultural dimension in L2 learning among young language learners (i.e., those who are beginning to learn a new language at the school level), particularly in what might be termed acquisition-poor contexts where these young learners are exposed to very minimal teaching time for the L2 and might not even encounter TL speakers with whom they can interact authentically. The paucity of research at this level means that we know little as yet about young language learners’ capacity for intercultural development. Byram (1997) argued, however, that research was needed to “provide a more systematic base for formulating the cultural learning aims of language teaching in the early years” (p. 46). More recently, Perry and Southwell (2011) highlighted the need for more research into how the intercultural dimension can be developed among school-aged students. Our study sought to add to current knowledge and understanding of how young language learners might develop intercultural skills in time-limited language learning contexts.

Our study is also significant in its focus on three groups of stakeholders—students, teachers and researchers/teacher educators. We present and reflect on what happened as students in different language classes experienced a range of ways of engaging with otherness and difference as they were learning an L2. We look at what happened when the teachers with whom we worked as researchers enacted “teaching as inquiry” cyclesFootnote 2 to explore the intercultural dimension with their students. We also take a step back from the project and the data and consider what we, as researchers and teacher educators, learned as we reflected on the extent to which the intercultural dimension can be developed in young students who are at the beginning stages of learning a new language and as we reflected on how teachers could be supported to reframe their language teaching in intercultural terms.

Looking back on what we experienced during the two years of our project, we drew a conclusion that needs to be stated at the outset of presenting the journeys of the different stakeholders: for many reasons, the development of the intercultural dimension through L2 learning (particularly with younger students) is fraught with challenges. Dervin et al. (2020), for example, asserted that the notion of IC “has been with us for decades” (p. 4) and that “[t]oday it feels like everything has been said and written about IC” (p. 5). If that is the case, its enactment and development in the context of L2 learning should be a straightforward process. Nevertheless, Dervin and colleagues went on to present a collection of studies that illustrated not only “the diverse and uneven pathways which educators have taken” towards understanding IC, whereby they have confronted “personal and pedagogical risk, growth, and, in a number of cases, struggle and frustration” (p. 9), but also problematised the very construct of IC in the face of real-world experiences. Furthermore, as Brunsmeier (2017) suggested in the European context, the development of L2 learners’ IC is hugely challenging because the construct is yet to be adequately defined, both more broadly and, in particular, with regard to young learners. The knowledge and understanding emerging from our study therefore includes careful consideration of the complexities involved in developing young language learners’ intercultural skills in time-limited contexts. Hence, we frame what we present as “journeys towards.” We cannot claim to have arrived.

1.3 The Language–Culture Relationship

A relationship between language and culture has long been acknowledged in the field of language teaching and learning. As Brown (1994) put it, “[a] language is a part of a culture and a culture is a part of a language; the two are intricately interwoven so that one cannot separate the two without losing the significance of either language or culture” (p. 165). Brown (2014) subsequently expanded on this notion when he argued that language and culture are components of “a ‘package’ that the L2 learner must grapple with in the journey to successful [L2] acquisition” (p. 197). At the time of first writing this chapter, we googled the phrase “language and culture” and came up with over 100 million results. Many of these results either indicated an inextricable link between the two concepts or posed questions about what the inter-relationship is or should be. It is one thing to recognise the potential interface; it is quite another to pinpoint exactly what that interface means and how it might be realised. Indeed, the interface finds different expressions depending on the pedagogical paradigm in question. In what follows, we consider that interface with reference to the construct of communicative competence and its outworking through pedagogical approaches that may broadly be labelled as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). We follow this with an exploration of intercultural communicative competence (ICC), and Intercultural Communicative Language Teaching (ICLT).

1.4 Communicative Competence

The construct of communicative competence finds its genesis in the arguments of Hymes (e.g., 1972), described by Sherzer et al. (2010) as a leading figure in linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics whose pioneering work included “the study of relations between and among language, culture, and society” (p. 301). Walker et al.’s (2018) introductory chapter provides a useful overview of the development of the construct, using Hymes’ work as a starting point, and outlining advances that have occurred over time.

One significant model of communicative competence which continues to influence thinking in the field of language education was presented by Canale and Swain (1980). Canale (1983) concisely presented its four components (Table 1.1).

Table 1.1 The four components of communicative competence (Canale, 1983)
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Embedded within the concept of sociolinguistic competence was the understanding that the social context needed to play a role in determining the language that was suitable to initiate and maintain an interaction. The social context may be referred to as “the culture-specific context embedding the norms, values, beliefs, and behaviour patterns of a culture,” such that “[a]ppropiate use of the language requires attention to such constructs” (Alptekin, 2002, p. 58). The model thereby began to raise consciousness that an interface needed to exist between language and culture in L2 education.

1.5 Communicative Language Teaching

CLT emerged in the latter half of the last century as a response to calls for greater emphasis on genuine communication in L2 classrooms. Aligned with theoretical constructs of communicative competence as articulated, for example, by Canale and Swain (1980) and Canale (1983), the ability to communicate effectively with others in the TL increasingly became fundamental to the aims and goals of many L2 programmes across the globe (Richards, 2001; Richards & Rodgers, 2014). L2 programmes began to emphasise the comprehension and production of meaningful language in authentic contexts (Hedge, 2000).

In parallel with CLT was the emergence of what Kramsch (1986, 1987) referred to as the proficiency movement in the United States which similarly encouraged, as a primary goal, the ability to communicate in authentic settings (Higgs, 1984). For Kramsch (1986), this meant that “the final justification for developing students’ proficiency in a foreign language” was “to make them interactionally competent on the international scene” (p. 367).

The 1970s and 1980s represented the beginnings of what Richards (2006) referred to as the “classic” CLT phase. In light of different understandings about what makes L2 teaching and learning effective (see, e.g., Mitchell et al., 2019), several polarisations to CLT became apparent during this phase. These polarisations were fundamentally informed by theoretical arguments about where, and how, attention to grammar should be situated. That is, Canale and Swain (1980) had identified grammatical competence as an important component of communicative competence. At the level of the classroom, teachers’ understanding of how to attend to this component essentially led CLT in two contrasting directions—a teacher-led behaviourist-influenced approach that placed strong emphasis on teaching and practising the rules (so-called weak CLT), and, by contrast, a learner-centred constructivist-informed approach that gave learners room to discover the rules for themselves (so-called strong CLT).

1.5.1 Weak CLT

The established approach that had dominated L2 pedagogy since the eighteenth century had come to be known as grammar-translation. As the name suggests, this pedagogical approach placed strong emphasis on studying, practising and mastering the rules of the TL, often through the direct translation of sentences and texts. The medium of instruction was the students’ first language (L1), and L1 explanations became the gateways into L2 acquisition. Thus, knowing a language under the grammar-translation method meant knowing its grammar and vocabulary, with the benchmark of competence being a “native-like” (i.e., L1) level.

A strong component of the grammar-translation approach, particularly as students advanced in their studies, was exposure to authentic texts in the TL. In turn, original (authentic) texts became the windows through which another culture might be viewed, and the primary means to develop “cultural knowledge.” Thus, a language–culture interface was attempted within the grammar-translation paradigm, but the cultural dimension could be interpreted as “high culture” or “culture as artefact” (Crozet et al., 1999; Sehlaoui, 2001). Culture was perceived to focus both on and in a canon of literature (Peiser & Jones, 2013), and cultural knowledge was built on “the conviction that language and culture are two separate domains of language learning, with language competence being given priority over cultural” (Piątkowska, 2015, p. 398).

As the communicative agenda began to take hold, the “traditional anglocentric assumptions” underpinning grammar-translation that “the main purpose of learning foreign languages was to broaden the mind” began to give way to a recognition that students were “learning languages because they needed to use them in an ever-shrinking world” (Benson & Voller, 1997, p. 11). The essential criticism of grammar-translation was that it failed to help learners to develop the ability to communicate. However, for the most part, teachers who were emerging from approaches such as grammar-translation still tended to place grammar teaching at the forefront of their classroom practices, even when there was tacit recognition that effective communication in the TL was now the goal. Thus, grammatical competence continued to take a central place in weak CLT.

1.5.2 Presentation-Practice-Production

One expression of the weak CLT paradigm came to be known as the “classic lesson structure” of Presentation-Practice-Production or PPP (Klapper, 2003). In this teacher-led approach, teachers would begin their lessons by teaching a particular grammatical principle to the class. Students would then practise the grammatical rule through various focused practice activities. Only after the rule had been practised would students be asked to utilise the rule in a pseudo-authentic context that aimed to replicate the domains in which the L2 might be used authentically in real-world contexts—for example, buying food and drink in a restaurant, purchasing a train ticket at a station, booking into a hotel. This was often done through structured role-play scenarios. Intercultural notions were implicit in how the TL user was supposed to interact appropriately, for example with the waiter, the ticket clerk or the hotel receptionist (i.e., sociolinguistic competence). However, the main focus of practice for these encounters was on (grammatically correct) language, not on the dynamics of real-world interaction.

Where culture was attended to in the PPP-based classroom, it was frequently enacted in ways that Byram described over twenty years ago as “something to talk over if there are a few minutes free from the real business of language learning” (1991, pp. 17–18, our emphasis)—for example, “on Friday afternoon we will learn about the Eiffel Tower.” The language–culture interface was effectively minimised. When it came to the intercultural dimension, a PPP-oriented approach to CLT was found wanting.

1.5.3 Strong CLT

Some communicatively oriented teachers perceived significant limitations in grammar-translation, and focused primarily on meaning and fluency, alongside dominant or exclusive use of the TL. The principle here was that students should be “immersed” in the TL, that is, exposed to wide-ranging authentic TL input, and being given extensive opportunities to use language creatively. It was left up to the students to work out and assimilate the grammar rules for themselves, by noticing in the input patterns and structures, and how they were used.

At its strongest, CLT was proposed as a wholly learner-centred and experiential approach to the extent that the teacher had little, if any, role to play. Although this extreme reaction to teacher-dominant pedagogy did not prove to be as popular as PPP, Richards (2006) spoke of a developmental phase to the CLT model (from the 1990s onwards) which, according to Brown (2014), continued to de-emphasise the structural and cognitive aspects of communication, with its focus on accuracy as a necessary component of successful communication, in favour of exploring its social, cultural and pragmatic dimensions. This, Brown argued, has focused teachers’ and learners’ attention on “language as interactive communication among individuals, each with a sociocultural identity” (p. 206, our emphases). This has arguably created greater space for attention to the sociolinguistic and intercultural due to the wide range of authentic input to which learners would be exposed, and the centrality of “learning by doing.”

1.5.4 Task-Based Language Teaching

A more strongly constructivist-oriented approach, where the role of the teacher shifts from instructor to facilitator, emerged in the 1980s as the phenomenon of task-based language teaching or TBLT—an approach that sees “important roles for holism, experiential learning, and learner-centered pedagogy” alongside “the interactive roles of the social and linguistic environment in providing learning opportunities, and scaffolding learners into them” (Norris et al., 2009, p. 15). In contrast to PPP, TBLT starts with language in use and subsequently focuses on the forms of the language on the basis of the errors that students make with language and/or the language structures that they notice as they attempt to use language for themselves—a kind of PPP in reverse. In TBLT, language learners have a crucial level of responsibility to work out how language functions through engagement in communicative “tasks”—that is, “the hundred and one things that people do in everyday life at work, at play, and in between” (Long, 1985, p. 89) or “the real-world activities people think of when planning, conducting, or recalling their day” (Long, 2015, p. 6). The teacher’s role is nonetheless crucial in helping learners to notice (and then correct) errors through such mechanisms as corrective feedback.

TBLT offers some potential for a stronger focus on the intercultural dimension in line with Brown’s (2014) acknowledgement of a pedagogical shift in emphasis. As learners engage in a series of tasks, they are able to focus on authentic samples of language as used in genuine real-world contexts. In TBLT, the broader cultural contexts for language use take on added relevance and significance. Indeed, the interface between TBLT and the intercultural dimension is something that is beginning to emerge in the task-based literature as potentially important (see, e.g., East, 2012a; Gonzáles-Lloret, 2020; Müller-Hartmann & Schocker, 2018). Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that TBLT is built on particular understandings and theories of second language acquisition, and that exploration of the TBLT-intercultural interface is in its infancy.

1.6 What Has Been Lacking in CLT Approaches

The isolationist approach to culture that was apparent in the early days of CLT might have been seen as a valuable starting point for language learners who may have enjoyed learning about “a series of selected facts, customs and traditions learners need to understand and appreciate in order to become ‘culturally competent’” (Flinders Humanities Research Centre, 2005, p. 3). Nevertheless, when cultural knowledge is viewed as “the marginalized sister of language” (Hennebry, 2014, p. 135), separated from learning the L2, it effectively becomes an “optional extra,” not regarded as an important component of the development of learners’ communicative competence. The problem, however, is that this approach does not help learners of an L2 to appreciate and navigate the challenges that might emerge in encounters with TL speakers.

Kramsch (1986) gave an early illustration of what appeared to be absent from a CLT model in which language and culture were essentially separate. She took as her example “[t]he difficulty in ordering the legendary cup of coffee in a French restaurant after three years of French” (p. 368). That is, in the traditional communicative classroom students might learn the basics of how to order a cup of coffee through being taught appropriate language and grammar, effectively practised through some kind of role-play. In Kramsch’s view, if, in a subsequent real-world scenario, the customer could not secure the wanted cup of coffee, this could hardly be put down to not knowing, or not being able to put to use, the right vocabulary or grammar. Something was amiss that went beyond language. Kramsch continued that the lack of intended outcome was:

… more likely due to a lack of awareness of the different social relationships existing in France between waiters and customers, of the different affective, social, and cultural values attached to cups of coffee, of the different perception French waiters might have of [for example] American citizens. (p. 368)

Kramsch (1986) concluded, “[i]n short, the difficulty lies in the differences in expectations, assumptions, and general representations of the world between two speakers” (p. 368). Kramsch thus viewed an approach that stresses grammar and lexis (even in specific communicative contexts) as overlooking what she referred to as the “dynamic process of communication” (p. 368, our emphasis). Effective communication, as Kramsch later asserted, is “more than just learning to get one’s message across,” even if that message is delivered “clearly, accurately, and appropriately” (Kramsch, 2005, p. 551, our emphasis).

Kramsch’s (2005) “more than” element has become the focus of debates around the integration of the intercultural into language learning and language use. This developed understanding of what it means to communicate effectively has given rise to a rich and varied literature spanning several decades which we will explore in subsequent chapters (e.g., Byram, 1997, 2009; Byram et al., 2002; Liddicoat, 2005b, 2008; Liddicoat & Crozet, 2000; Lo Bianco et al., 1999). Furthermore, this developed understanding has influenced the refinement of pedagogical practices aligned to CLT approaches.

1.7 Intercultural Communicative Competence

More recent thinking about the communicative competence construct has recognised that the intercultural dimension must be made more explicit. Martinez-Flor et al. (2006), for example, made the implicit elements of the Canale and Swain model more visible when they suggested that the development of communicative competence needed to include intercultural competence. They went on to define this competence initially in linguistic terms, that is, as knowledge of appropriate language use within a specific sociocultural context (i.e., sociolinguistic competence). However, from this perspective the intercultural dimension included, in addition to appropriate language choice, an awareness of “the rules of behavior that exist in a particular community in order to avoid possible miscommunication” as well as “non-verbal means of communication (i.e., body language, facial expressions, eye contact, etc.)” (p. 150).

East (2016) put it like this: if interactions between two interlocutors are to be effective, what the interlocutors arguably need is “some level of understanding of, and competence in, appropriate interactional behaviour (when, for example, it is appropriate, in France, to shake someone’s hand or kiss them on the cheek – faire la bise)” (p. 29). In other words, “[i]nappropriate behaviour may lead to a breakdown in communication that is not related to linguistic proficiency but is nonetheless related to intercultural proficiency (or lack thereof)” (p. 29). Thus, a view emerges that intercultural competence entails not only a “culture-in-language” element, made apparent in helping learners to acquire proficiency in handling language appropriately in a range of contexts, but also a behavioural element, made apparent in helping learners to understand what is and what is not appropriate behaviour in a given context.

A further dimension of intercultural competence which embraces attitudinal or positioning elements becomes apparent, for example, in Byram’s five-facet savoirs (knowledge or skills) model of Intercultural Communicative Competence or ICC (e.g., Byram, 1997, 2021), a model we present in more depth in Chaps. 2 and 4. Essentially, Byram’s savoirs took us beyond linguistic and behavioural appropriacy to the attitudes that intercultural speakers hold towards their interlocutors. Although for Byram et al. (2002) a crucial element of ICC is knowledge, this is not primarily knowledge about the target culture (or even about appropriate language and behaviours)—even though such knowledge is important; rather, it is knowledge of how individuals and societies function and what that means for interaction with others. The savoirs enable language learners and language users to step back from their own views of the world (to “de-centre,” as Byram et al. put it), and to consider and take into account the views of their interlocutors in comparative terms.

Byram et al. (2002) concluded, “it is not the purpose of teaching to try to change learners’ values, but to make them explicit and conscious in any evaluative response to others” (p. 8). Ultimately this would lead to “knowing how to negotiate several potentially conflicting codes of acting and thinking, and how to handle the feelings that those negotiations evoke, which may at times be uncomfortable” (East, 2012b, p. 140). As we explain in more detail in Chap. 2, this place of negotiation or “intercultural positioning” has been variously labelled as a “third place” (Lo Bianco et al., 1999), “third space” (Bhabha, 1994), “third culture,” “third stance,” or “thirdness” (Kramsch, 2009). MacDonald (2019) acknowledged ongoing tensions and contradictions in the ways in which these terms are used and interpreted, but found the “third place” emerging as a term to represent “a pedagogic site where the ‘hybrid’ identity of the language learner/intercultural subject can be worked out” (p. 106).

1.8 Intercultural Communicative Language Teaching

All that we have presented so far suggests that intercultural competence must be a component of communicative competence, that there can arguably be no communicative competence without the intercultural, and that L2 learning must involve elements that enable learners to focus on the intercultural in comparative terms. Liddicoat (2008) put it like this: “[a] language learner who has learnt only the grammar and vocabulary of a language is … not well equipped to communicate in that language.” In his view, “learners require cultural knowledge as much as they require grammar and vocabulary” (p. 278, our emphases). However, this cultural knowledge moves beyond facts about the target culture (which may have been how this knowledge was interpreted in the early days of CLT); it also moves beyond knowledge of linguistic and behavioural appropriacy (elements that were implicit in the foundations of CLT, even if not fully realised); it includes attitudes and positioning in relation to the “other.” As Liddicoat (2005a) argued, cultural knowledge is “not [just] a case of knowing information about the culture,” as might have been the emphasis in grammar-translation or earlier realisations of CLT; rather it is “about knowing how to engage with it” (p. 31, our emphases).

Discourses around the language–culture interface, and the development of theoretical frameworks such as ICC, have given rise to the concept of Intercultural Communicative Language Teaching (ICTL). Piątkowska (2015) provided a useful summation of the aims of ICLT. She argued that, central to the ICC construct as operationalised in an ICLT model, culture is viewed as a dynamic concept where language and culture are interdependent and where focus is put on both awareness of inseparability of language and culture and the need to prepare learners to communicate across cultures. As part of this preparation for interaction, intercultural teaching focuses learners’ attention on both the TL culture and their own culture in an exploratory, comparative way. The goal of teaching is not to introduce the TL culture or L1 speakers in a static and exclusively facts-based way, thereby “neglecting the skills of analysis, evaluation and interpretation of cultural meanings, beliefs and values” (p. 400). It is, rather, to reach a range of cultural outcomes. Such teaching, Piątkowska asserted, is “in line with constructivist approaches in that it is a learner-centred approach that promotes student autonomy, meaning construction and transfer of abilities to other contexts not previously met by a learner,” where the learning outcomes are no longer seen in terms of a uniform view of culture, but rather of culture as dynamic and heterogeneous. The focus therefore is “on attitudes and skills in the first place and knowledge in the second” (p. 403, our emphases). ICLT as conceptualised in this way shares much in common with TBLT.

1.9 Challenges in Practice

The above presentation of developments to our understanding about the intercultural dimension, and the interface between language and culture, leads, in both theory and practice, to several significant challenges. Indeed, even though Piątkowska (2015) appeared to conclude that ICC provides the most comprehensive, meaningful and integrative theoretical framework by which to understand what IC is, what it entails, and how it might be developed, she accepted nonetheless that culture is “a complex phenomenon” (p. 397). Likewise, although Kramsch (2005) acknowledged the shortcomings of the traditional linguistic foci of language learning, she also highlighted a lack of consensus about what intercultural competence in the context of L2 learning actually was and entailed. Furthermore, the proliferation of a range of acronyms, including those we have so far included in this chapter (IC, ICC, CLT, PPP, TBLT, ICLT) can lead to confusion about exactly which label most adequately applies and which stances to pedagogy should be taken as teachers seek to enact and enhance the language–culture interface. A fundamental challenge is the very nomenclature that should apply to the intercultural dimension in L2 learning and L2 use, and the meanings that nomenclature carries.

Dervin et al. (2020), for example, viewed the construct of IC as sufficiently problematic that they decided not to define the construct in their opening chapter, but, rather, to allow their readers to uncover and reflect on how each individual chapter author in their collection understood the concept. In this regard, they argued:

We each have our own (incomplete) understandings of IC, of course. We agree on some aspects while disagreeing on others … and would not want to give the impression that ours is THE right understanding of IC. That is why we have decided not to share our definitions. (pp. 4–5)

In the same volume, Dervin (2020) argued, “[t]here is a clear lack of agreement about the notion of interculturality in research, practice and decision-making today,” leading to a “multiplicity of approaches and meanings” (p. 59). Dervin et al. asserted on this basis, “[w]ho has the power to decide what the intercultural is, how IC is defined?” (p. 8).

Certainly, the notion of IC is very established and frequently used in the literature (see, e.g., Bennett, 2014; Byram, 2018; Deardorff, 2009). Interestingly, Rehbein (2013) also drew on the IC acronym, but reframed this as intercultural communication, which he described as “the mediation of cultural differences between social groups through verbal or nonverbal interaction” (p. 1). Arguably the differentiation here is between the underlying competence and the realisation of that competence in practice, but use of the same acronym is potentially confusing. Intercultural awareness is another proposed construct (Baker, 2011; Hennebry, 2014). Yet another construct, intercultural understanding, features prominently in documents emanating from Australia, where explorations of the intercultural in language teaching and learning have been going on for many years (Australian Curriculum, n.d.). In one Australian state (Victoria State Government, 2018), however, intercultural capability is a chosen label (and, indeed, the one chosen by us for our study, for reasons we explain later in this chapter). How, if at all, do these constructs differ? If they do differ, where and why do they differ? Which construct best represents the knowledge, skills and understanding for interaction that we would wish learners of an L2 to acquire in the context of that learning?

The above arguments indicate that defining constructs such as IC and ICC, and enacting them through CLT and ICLT, leads to significant challenges. Furthermore, in practice the apparently simultaneous goals of exploring culture-in-language and critical comparison and contrast across cultures—within the broader overarching goal that, at the end of the day, students will learn how to communicate in the TL (with all that continues to imply about grammar and vocabulary)—lead to a confusing scenario for L2 programme planning. That is, and as we have already acknowledged, the (inter)cultural in language teaching and learning has often been approached in isolation from what Byram (1991) labelled the perceived “real business” of language learning. An integrated approach, especially an approach which is required to build in opportunities for critical reflection, comparison and contrast, is likely to place significant demands on L2 teachers who, with limited time available to them as it is, might view the language itself as their more pressing priority. Additionally, if standard practice in the L2 classroom is principally or exclusively to focus on language, adopting an intercultural stance in the classroom “implies a radical rethinking of one’s goals for teaching a language” (Crozet, 2017, p. 157). When it comes to the practices of actual teachers, it is apparent that there is a strong and persistent mismatch between the ideal goal of language–culture integration and the implementation of an integrated approach in real classrooms.

Furthermore, prior studies have emphasised teachers’ uncertainty about how to implement intercultural language teaching (see, e.g., Castro et al., 2004; Driscoll et al., 2013; Kohler, 2015). The early language learning years arguably present a particularly challenging (and therefore particularly intriguing) environment for the integration of the intercultural into L2 learning. Despite Byram’s (1991) early assertion that separating out culture from language was “fundamentally flawed,” carrying with it the implication that the L2 could be “treated in the early learning stages as if it were self-contained and independent of other sociocultural phenomena” (p. 18), studies to date (which we explore in Chaps. 2 and 3) indicate that many teachers still persist in separatist practices that demonstrate limited (or perhaps non-existent) understanding of intercultural integration, even when they may demonstrate a level of openness to the concept.

1.10 Introducing the Present Study

The study we present in this book is grounded in global debates about, and developments to, the CLT paradigm and, in particular, how the intercultural within this paradigm might be operationalised. It is also situated within the challenges facing the integration of language and culture in the L2 school classroom, particularly at the primary school level. In what follows we introduce the study, beginning with the New Zealand context in which it is situated.

1.10.1 The New Zealand Context for Language Teaching

In Chap. 3, we explore in some detail the New Zealand context for language teaching, and endeavours that have been made to enhance the intercultural dimension in that context. In what follows here, we provide a brief introduction to language education within the New Zealand school system in order to contextualise the study we report in this book.

In common with other western Anglophone contexts, New Zealand’s approach to L2 learning in the school sector over the last few decades has focused on learning a language for purposes of genuine communication, realised through approaches aligned to the CLT paradigm. In the New Zealand school system, students can receive instruction for thirteen years (Years 1–13; ages 5+ to 18+). In the English-medium state or public school system, schools operate in a primarily two- or three-division model, as illustrated in Table 1.2.

Table 1.2 New Zealand’s state school system
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Since 2010, teaching and learning in the state school system has been governed by a document known as the New Zealand Curriculum or NZC (Ministry of Education, 2007). The curriculum encourages learner-centred and experiential pedagogical approaches. Within the NZC, the learning area that focuses on L2 teaching and learning is appropriately called Learning Languages. It comprises three components. These are described as “strands,” suggesting that the components are to be interwoven:

  1. 1.

    The core communication strand

  2. 2.

    The supporting language knowledge strand

  3. 3.

    The supporting cultural knowledge strand.

Communication in the target language is seen as the overarching goal of L2 programmes. Language knowledge (a focus on grammar) and cultural knowledge (a focus on culture) are seen as equal components that are there to support the communicative agenda. Theoretical constructs of communicative competence inform the three-strand model.

The cultural knowledge strand sets out the primary learning expectations with regard to culture (Ministry of Education, 2007): students will not only “learn about culture”—an assumption here about learning facts about the target culture—but also about “the interrelationship between culture and language”—an assumption here about the interface between how language is used and the cultural meanings that language carries. Students will also be expected to “compare and contrast different beliefs and cultural practices, including their own” so that they “understand more about themselves and become more understanding of others” (p. 24)—an assumption here about the importance of “third place positioning.”

Separately published achievement objectives (Ministry of Education, 2009) are designed to help teachers to understand how the elements of the three strands might be evaluated. With regard to cultural knowledge, it is made clear that beginners with learning a language might be expected to recognise that the target culture is organised in particular ways, and, as they progress, to be able to describe, compare and contrast cultural practices.

To support New Zealand-based teachers with understanding and implementing the cultural knowledge strand in the context of communication, a set of principles was published that explored so-called intercultural CLT (Newton et al., 2010).Footnote 3 The published principles are that an intercultural approach to CLT:

  1. 1.

    integrates language and culture from the beginning

  2. 2.

    engages learners in genuine social interaction

  3. 3.

    encourages and develops an exploratory and reflective approach to culture and culture-in-language

  4. 4.

    fosters explicit comparisons and connections between languages and cultures

  5. 5.

    acknowledges and responds appropriately to diverse learners and learning contexts

  6. 6.

    emphasises intercultural communicative competence rather than native-speaker competence (p. 63).

In essence, the principles encourage L2 learners to explore and reflect on how cultural practices may be similar and different across both the learners’ own cultures and the target cultures. This reflects both the expectations of the cultural knowledge strand (Ministry of Education, 2007) and the curriculum achievement objectives (Ministry of Education, 2009).

In summary, the Learning Languages area of the NZC places a definite expectation on teachers to develop their students’ intercultural skills in the context of a communicative approach to L2 learning. In practice, however, the expectation is not being realised because, in many cases, teachers are either not aware that they need to do this, or do not know how to do this. The challenge is arguably greater in New Zealand’s primary/intermediate school sector because the vast majority of language teachers working in this sector have not received any dedicated teacher education in language acquisition theories and language pedagogy, are inexperienced in teaching languages, and may often be learning the language they are teaching alongside their own students (Scott & Butler, 2007). Students in the primary/intermediate sector are also beginners and, in many cases, receive only minimal instructional time in the L2. The addition of an intercultural element to teachers’ practices and students’ experiences is therefore a significant step and a huge challenge.

1.10.2 Our Project

As we noted at the start of this chapter, and explain in more detail in Chap. 4, our two-year project sought to investigate how five teachers working in four primary/intermediate schools in New Zealand could be supported to develop the intercultural dimension of L2 learning for their students.

The study was framed as a collaborative partnership between the researchers and the teachers. Our teacher partners were LillianFootnote 4 (L1 speaker of Mandarin and teacher of Mandarin); Kelly (L2 speaker of Mandarin and teacher of Mandarin); Kathryn (L2 speaker of Japanese and teacher of Japanese); Mike (L2 speaker of French and teacher of French); and Tamara (L2 speaker of Māori and teacher of Māori). Across all subject areas, the NZC encourages reflective approaches to teaching and learning, that is, approaches that involve some kind of inquiry, whether on the part of the learners (inquiry learning) or on the part of the teachers (teaching as inquiry). This inquiry emphasis became the means through which we aimed to create spaces with and for the teachers and their students for the kinds of intercultural reflections and explorations that we wished to encourage.

On the part of students, the NZC promotes inquiry learning as a means to facilitate students’ self-reflective inquiries into specific phenomena, and the development of so-called key competencies such as thinking, managing self, relating to others, and participating and contributing (Ministry of Education, 2007, pp. 12–13). Inquiry learning may be defined as “an investigation into a topic, idea, problem, or issue with a focus on students constructing their own learning and meanings.” Inquiry thus “enables students to learn through curiosity, discovery, and collaboration rather than being presented with facts through direct instruction” (National Library of New Zealand, n.d., para. 3).

In turn, teachers are encouraged to approach their own teaching through a teaching as inquiry approach (see Chap. 4 for further details). Teaching as inquiry is carefully articulated in the NZC as a cyclical process through which teachers investigate how a particular teaching strategy plays out in the classroom (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 35). This is essentially an action research model which facilitates what Burns (1999) described as “a process for enhancing reflective practice and professional growth and development” (p. 24), because it “addresses questions of real practical and theoretical interest to many educational practitioners” (p. 25).

The overarching research question that we posed at the outset of the project was as follows: can a teaching as inquiry process in the context of learning an L2 enhance intermediate school learners’ intercultural capability? Unlike Dervin et al. (2020) who explicitly stated that they would not define the intercultural dimension in their opening chapter on the basis that the concept might be interpreted in a multiplicity of ways, we chose, at the beginning of the project, to state our stance. In terms of the operationalisation of the construct of interest for the purposes of our study, we chose the label intercultural capability and defined the intercultural dimension as follows:

[W]e use the term ‘intercultural capability’ … as the ability to relate comfortably with people from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, appreciating and valuing the learners’ own cultures and uniqueness alongside the cultures and uniqueness of others. Moreover, we use ‘capabilities’ rather than the most commonly used ‘competence’ to acknowledge the highly personal individual trajectories that the development of interculturality seems to take. (Biebricher et al., 2019, p. 606)

We argued that our choice and interpretation were context-bound. That is, where teachers are guided by published achievement objectives (Ministry of Education, 2009), it was important for us to stake a claim to a definition of the intercultural dimension in line with, and not in opposition to, those objectives. The choice of an operational definition also enabled us to support the teachers in thinking through what they wished to investigate, and how they might frame their classroom activities for purposes of inquiry.

One of our aims during the two-year project was to co-construct with the teachers two teaching as inquiry cycles, both lasting up to six months, with an intercultural focus embedded within their L2 programmes. This was essentially a bottom-up process whereby we encouraged teachers to come up with their own context-suitable inquiries. That is, working within the above operational definition of the intercultural, we encouraged the teachers to think through how they might best achieve the outcome—enhanced intercultural capability in the context of L2 learning—in ways that were meaningful and realistic to their own contexts. We did not therefore prescribe which intercultural outcomes the teachers should aim to promote, or how the teachers should enact and then investigate them.

In essence, our project, framed as research with and by teachers, was intended to document how teachers moved forward in planning effective intercultural learning opportunities in line with the learner-centred stance of the NZC, the cultural knowledge outcomes anticipated in the Learning Languages learning area, and the intercultural achievement objectives teachers were presented with (Ministry of Education, 2007, 2009).

As we indicated at the start of this chapter, the project, as it unfolded, presented several challenges, and what we found in practice was actually quite different to what we had initially anticipated. That is, we began our project with high expectations and optimistic assumptions about what it means to develop young learners’ intercultural capability in the context of learning a new language. As we engaged with the process, our thinking about what was possible was developed and refined. Two research questions (RQs) therefore underpin the journeys we will present in this book:

  1. 1.

    How do stakeholders’ understandings about enhancing language learners’ intercultural capability change and develop over time?

  2. 2.

    What are the implications for language education going forward?

To answer these questions, we take a retrospective look at the whole project and the findings that emerged (RQ1). We then consider the lessons we learned as we reflected on what the findings revealed (RQ2). This book therefore looks back on our journeys, from a range of perspectives, and the stops and redirections we made on the way, as we attempted to address what it means to enhance intercultural capability in the context of L2 learning. It presents and discusses the tensions, challenges and classroom realities, and the ways in which our journeys were shaped by those as our own understandings of what was possibly developed.

1.11 Presenting the Journeys

In this chapter, we have introduced the project in the broader context of discussing the intercultural dimension of L2 teaching and learning. In Chap. 2, we review the international literature on the intercultural dimension alongside a range of empirical studies that have investigated the development of this dimension in L2 learning, with a particular focus on younger learners. Chapter 3 builds on what has been outlined in this introductory chapter: we revisit and describe in more detail the context of the study—New Zealand—and present prior studies into the intercultural dimension in the New Zealand context. Chapter 4 presents the methodology for our two-year project in more detail, including the teaching as inquiry model as one means for teachers to investigate their own practices.

Chapters 5–7 present the findings of our study. In Chap. 5, we describe the inquiries the teachers undertook by presenting accounts of aspects of their lessons, based on observations of teachers in their classrooms. The chapter also presents findings pertaining to the students, gleaned principally from a series of summative focus groups. Our attention is on the evidence of intercultural learning that students reported had taken place, alongside the problems these revealed. Chapter 6 presents findings pertaining to the teachers, gleaned from discussions they had with the researchers, both individually and collectively, and follow-up reflective interviews. We present the teachers’ reflections on the effectiveness of the inquiries they instigated, alongside the problems they encountered. In Chap. 7, we take a step back from the classroom and teacher data and present an account of how we worked with the teachers, alongside how we aimed to enhance reflection on practice through the “critical friend” conversations we undertook at different stages in the project. We reflect on the evidence we collected from the teachers and students, once more alongside the problems we came up against, and what these might mean for an effective focus on the intercultural in L2 classrooms.

Chapter 8, the concluding chapter, draws each of the strands from Chaps. 5–7 together. Bearing in mind challenges with defining the intercultural, and all this means for research and teaching, the concluding chapter revisits some of the problems raised in this introductory chapter and in Chaps. 2 and 3 and discusses the implications of these in light of the findings we report in Chaps. 5, 6 and 7. In particular we focus on the lessons we learned and the recommendations we would make, as both researchers and teacher educators, to move the debates forward about developing the intercultural dimension in the context of classroom-based L2 learning.

1.12 Conclusion

We have argued in this chapter that L2 pedagogy needs to prepare students for intercultural encounters, and that a pure focus on language, without any attention paid to difference and otherness, will be insufficient. Furthermore, the classrooms and contexts in which students are learning the L2 are often multicultural, with students brought together from diverse backgrounds who collaborate with each other in the language learning endeavour. Attention needs to be paid to the intercultural dimension of communicative interactions, both in and beyond the TL. In Byram’s (2018) words, the intercultural dimension serves to enhance the development of communicative competence by focusing on “skills, knowledge, and attitudes for interaction” (p. 1).

As we stated at the start of this chapter, the intercultural as a dimension of communicative L2 teaching and learning began to become apparent in the 1980s and was debated as necessary as a development to the construct of communicative competence (e.g., Byram, 2018). As Spada (2018) put it, “twenty-first century CLT” has developed and broadened considerably since its early beginnings, and now reflects “a greater balance, scope and depth” (p. 12). For Spada, this has meant that, in addition to an emphasis on language used appropriately for communicative purposes—the central element of “traditional” or PPP-oriented CLT—there needed to be the inclusion of “functional and intercultural competence” (p. 12). Moreover, learner-centred and experiential pedagogical approaches may hold out greater possibilities for intercultural exploration than more teacher-dominant approaches.

Two key problems emerge. First, L2 pedagogy often remains largely teacher-led and language-focused in many contexts, and separated from culture, even though Byram (2021) noted that addressing culture as “decontextualised factual information with minimal relationship to the language being learnt” (p. 92) represents a worst-case scenario. It must be acknowledged that, quite early on, the PPP approach quickly became embedded as “more or less standard practice” (Howatt, 1984, p. 279). Furthermore, it persists as a model in many L2 classrooms across the world. Indeed, in the context of reporting a recent interesting study that compared the effectiveness of PPP and TBLT with very young, beginner learners of English as L2 in Japan, Shintani (2016) underscored the ongoing dominance of PPP, both in and beyond her immediate setting.

Second, Byram (2018) problematised the notion of IC, speaking of several different models and interpretations of the concept, and noting that the interface between language and culture can often be obscure. The construct of IC was further problematised by Dervin et al. (2020), who asserted that, despite apparent clarity around IC as the underpinning theoretical construct they had selected, IC is in reality “a mish-mash of a concept” (p. 6), and the “roads of IC in education” are “muddy” (p. 5).

The journeys we present in the remainder of this book illustrate the pedagogical realities highlighted, for example, by Shintani (2016), Byram (2018, 2021) and Dervin et al. (2020). They demonstrate just how the stakeholders got their boots dirty as they made their journeys towards L2 learners’ enhanced intercultural capability. In this book, our aim is that, through presenting the journeys of three distinct but intersecting groups of stakeholders—students, teachers and researchers/teacher educators—and by including, as Dervin et al. had expressed it, emerging stories that illustrate risk, growth, struggle and frustration, we will add to the ongoing debates about how to promote and develop the intercultural dimension in L2 classrooms.