35.1658, Review: Intercultural Citizenship in Language Education: Kong and Spenader (eds.) (2024)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-35-1658. Thu Jun 06 2024. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 35.1658, Review: Intercultural Citizenship in Language Education: Kong and Spenader (eds.) (2024)

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Date: 06-Jun-2024
From: Alisha Reaves [areaves at towson.edu]
Subject: Applied Linguistics: Kong and Spenader (eds.) (2024)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/34.3149

EDITOR: Kaishan Kong
EDITOR: Allison Spenader
TITLE: Intercultural Citizenship in Language Education
SUBTITLE: Teaching and Learning Through Social Action
SERIES TITLE: Languages for Intercultural Communication and Education
PUBLISHER: Multilingual Matters
YEAR: 2023

REVIEWER: Alisha Reaves

SUMMARY

The volume ‘Intercultural Citizenship in Language Education: Teaching
and Learning Through Social Action’, edited by Kashan Kong and Allison
J. Spenader, aims to provide a framework and guidelines for
incorporating the concept of intercultural citizenship as a primary
goal in world language study. The concept of intercultural citizenship
as described in this volume is grounded in the work of Byram (2021)
and Byram and Wagner (2018), Wagner also being a contributor to the
first two of the six chapters that make up the work. In their
introduction, the editors describe a desire to respond to the
politicization of education and infuse not only multiculturalism, but
also critical thinking, critical cultural awareness and social justice
into the world language classroom. The volume comprises six chapters.
Chapter 1 provides the theoretical foundation for the concept of
intercultural citizenship while Chapters 2 through 6 give examples of
its implementation in a variety of case studies at different levels of
study, languages, and learner populations.

Chapter 1, ‘The Why and How of Teaching Languages for Social Justice
and Intercultural Citizenship’, authored by Cassandra Glynn and
Manuela Wagner, outlines the theoretical framework for intercultural
citizenship (ICit) in the language classroom. Wagner is in fact an
expert in this framework and is cited throughout the volume. The
chapter describes the motivations of the ICit framework as redirecting
language education to focus on topics that are important to diverse
learners, rather than only targeting primarily white students who will
have the opportunity to study abroad. ICit, as conceived by Wagner and
Glynn, is intended to prepare learners for ‘global citizenship’ and to
help them develop competencies beyond the purely linguistic. In the
second half of the chapter, Wagner and Glynn present tools that
teachers can use in the classroom to guide their students towards
intercultural citizenship. These tools are inspired by Hackman’s
(2005) components for social justice education, social justice
standards for language learning from Learning for Justice, the ACTFL
world-readiness standards and content-based instruction. They present
activities for understanding the role of identity, for critical
analysis, for dialogue and listening, for developing the agency to
act, and for self-reflection. The chapter concludes with examples from
a unit for novice level learners.  General advice for implementing
intercultural citizenship in the classroom emphasizes the need to
leave behind textbooks and develop a theme that can be explored during
an entire year or at least for a full term or semester. Ultimately,
the authors encourage teachers to start slowly by developing a single
curricular unit and to engage in collaboration with other like-minded
teachers.

Chapter 2, ‘Developing a Professional Learning Community to Teach
Arabic for Intercultural Citizenship’, authored by Donna Clementi,
Salah Ayari, and Manuela Wagner, focuses on the implementation of
professional development for teachers of Arabic at the Concordia
Language Villages. The chapter describes multiple iterations of the
collaborative exploration that these teachers engaged in, in order to
incorporate intercultural citizenship in their teaching practice.
Three questions that the authors ask at the beginning of this chapter
are 1) “How can the framework of ICit be applied to different contexts
of Arabic language teaching?”, 2) “What does this way of teaching
afford teachers, students and society as a whole?” and 3) “What
challenges did participants of the Professional Learning Community
(PLC) face, and what solutions were considered?” (p. 30). The chapter
emphasizes the importance of intercultural citizenship in the Arabic
language classroom in the United States, especially because of this
country’s political history and the American public’s myriad biases
and suspicions towards Arabic speaking communities. During two rounds
of the workshop, participants developed sample lessons and units using
backwards design. A sample unit on food waste highlighted how the
topic could be used to engage high school learners of Arabic with a
local refugee community. From these professional development
workshops, the authors learned the importance of creating community
among teachers rather than hosting one-off workshops, the need to
build upon prior knowledge, the importance of providing teachers with
the opportunity to learn from each other, and the need to provide
resources and scaffolding for teachers who may be stepping outside of
their comfort zone and learning something new.

Chapter 3, ‘Dual Language and Immersion Programs: Naturally Fostering
Intercultural Citizenship’, by Allison J. Spenader and Brandon T.
Locke, examines how intercultural citizenship might be encouraged in
K12 dual language immersion (DLI) programs in the Anchorage School
District. The authors highlight that cross-cultural understanding or
intercultural competence is often overlooked in DLI programs,
partially due to a lack of consensus within the field on what it is
and how to do it. They argue that intercultural competence should be
incorporated into these programs precisely because advanced
proficiency in a language does not guarantee high levels of
intercultural development on its own. The chapter summarizes the
status of immersion and DLI programs in the United States and the
limited role that intercultural competence has previously played in
these models. The study they report focuses on three programs in the
Anchorage School District for K8 Japanese, K3 Yup’ik (an indigenous
language of Alaska) and 6th-8th grade Spanish. In examining these
programs, they ask what ICit looks like in DLI and immersion
classrooms and what challenges prevent immersion programs and teachers
from pursuing ICit as a goal. Through an ethnographic case study, the
researchers observe that many aspects of intercultural communicative
competence are being engaged in all three classroom settings. However,
the action beyond the classroom component (with a focus on social
justice) that is essential to the ICit framework was mostly only
observed in the Spanish context, with minimal opportunities for
engagement in Japanese and Yup’ik beyond more traditional language and
cultural exchanges. Ultimately the authors conclude that ICit can be
difficult to fully implement in K12 dual immersion programs and that
more work is needed to engage students in active citizenship beyond
the classroom.

Chapter 4, ‘Intercultural Talk: fostering Intercultural Citizenship in
a Chinese Program’, by Kaishon Kong, is the only contribution to this
volume to focus exclusively on college-level classroom learners. After
a review of the theory and prior work on intercultural citizenship by
Byram and Wagner, Kong describes an intercultural talk project that
they implemented in her own Chinese language program and considers how
well this project reflected the ACTFL World Readiness standards and
the ICit framework, positing how the standards and the framework may
be incorporated through virtual exchange with the target language
community. The intercultural talk project was a semester-long activity
in which students learning Chinese at beginner and intermediate levels
were paired with a conversation partner from mainland China who was an
international student at the university. The goal of the project was
to foster linguistic proficiency as well as intercultural citizenship
and to offer mutual and equitable benefits for both the Chinese as a
Foreign Language (CFL) students and the Chinese international
students. CFL students were paired with Chinese student volunteers.
Throughout the semester, the pairs would meet for a structured
communication activity provided by the instruction/researcher. At the
end of every meeting, students prepared a weekly written report which
the researcher analyzed along with the students’ final reflection
papers, end of semester interviews, and the recorded meetings. The
goal of Kong’s study was to determine how students on both sides of
the intercultural talk project perceive the partnership and in what
ways this project fostered intercultural citizenship among all
participants. Overall, Kong found that the project was positively
perceived by both groups of students (CFL and Chinese). While there
was ample evidence of increased intercultural communicative competence
for both groups of students, there was little evidence of community
engagement as the project did not afford students the opportunity to
solve real world problems. Kong ultimately concludes that the project
demonstrates the immense potential for the implementation of ICit at
the university level.

Chapter 5, ‘Study Abroad in Teacher Education: Fostering Intercultural
Citizenship’, by Allison J. Spenader and Adriana L. Medina, focuses on
the importance of intercultural citizenship in pre-service world
language teachers with limited abilities to study abroad. Spenader and
Medina first highlight the importance of internationalizing K12
curricula due to the demands of globalization, noting that teacher
education programs prepare teachers to work in racially, culturally,
and linguistically diverse settings, which are supplemented through
study abroad experiences. They argue that incorporating ICit can add
an action dimension to teachers’ intercultural competence. Despite
this importance, they highlight that there has been limited focus on
the impact of study abroad on pre-service teachers and ask how these
teachers can bring the intercultural competence they acquire through
study abroad into the classroom when they begin teaching. Crucially,
teachers cannot teach intercultural communicative competence and ICit
if they themselves do not have it. For this study, they ask what the
impact of study abroad is on preparing future teachers to employ ICit
in their classrooms and what traits of ICit do teachers eventually
incorporate into their teaching as a result of their study abroad
experience. The study examines participants from an 11-year span of
graduates at a private and a public institution in the Midwest.
Participants responded to a questionnaire that asked about the
influence of study abroad on their personal and professional lives as
well as questioned their intercultural knowledge and belief systems.
The results highlighted that participants had strong agreement with
statements pertaining to the value of study abroad for the development
of intercultural knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Many of the
respondents also provided feedback that indicated that they were
engaging in social justice and anti-bias education in their
classrooms, partially as a result of their study abroad experience.

Chapter 6, ‘Promoting Intercultural Citizenship in Study Abroad
through Contemplative Pedagogy’, by Ana Conboy and Kevin Clancy,
focuses on the effect of study abroad on developing intercultural
citizenship during a semester-long program in France with students
from two different universities. They ground their study in
experiential learning theory and constructivism with an emphasis on
self-reflection and analysis. They go on to describe how contemplative
pedagogy can provide an intersubjective lens and approach to
intercultural awareness and engagement that can align well with
experiential learning. This case study reviewed a course entitled
“Experiencing French Culture through the Five Senses (and Beyond…)”,
during which students were expected to experience, reflect, and take
action through their study abroad period. Sometime after the
completion of the program, Conboy and Clancy surveyed participants in
the program on two occasions to determine the long-term effects of
this course. They found that many students became motivated to engage
with society upon their return from study abroad through activities
such as tutoring ESL. Others participated in the Teaching
Assistantship Program in France (TAPIF) or indicated an intention to
pursue a career in education. Conboy and Clancy conclude by noting
that a redesign of the curriculum at both universities will more
purposefully align with the principles of ICit both during study
abroad and at the home institution.

EVALUATION

This volume sets out to define and describe the concept of
intercultural citizenship for world language teachers and its
importance in the classroom. The authors provide examples of the
integration of ICit in a variety of educational contexts: K12,
university-level (both domestic and abroad), pre-service teacher
training, and continuing professional development for current
teachers. They also demonstrate the use of ICit in different language
classrooms: French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Yup’ik.
While the volume very clearly and consistently describes the
principles of ICit and its components, the argument for including ICit
as opposed to a focus on intercultural competence alone is less clear.
The key difference between the two seems to be an emphasis on social
justice, engaging students in action outside of the classroom through
the medium of their language learning. However, the realities of
globalization alone are not convincing enough to presume that social
justice action should be a primary goal of every world language
classroom.

The first chapter, by Glynn and Wagner, suggests that the ICit
approach is a necessary remedy to the lack of participation in world
language classes by minoritized groups. They are correct in asserting
that groups such as African American students are underrepresented in
the world language classroom and in study abroad, something other
scholars have also discussed (Anya, 2020).  However, it is unclear how
they arrive at the conclusion that the remedy for this
underrepresentation is to refocus the world language classroom on
social justice, as a topic that might more interest these groups as
opposed to traditional language classroom instruction that prepares
students for a study abroad experience that may be less accessible to
them. This suggestion assumes that 1) students from minoritized groups
are more concerned with social justice than other students and 2) that
these students are not interested in studying abroad, despite
potential financial barriers. Rather than presume that the financial
barriers to studying abroad for students from underrepresented groups
necessitate this kind of curricular change, more efforts should be
devoted to creating greater access to these kinds of experiences for
all students. The actual problem highlighted is one of a Euro-centric
view of language study, a problem which organizations such as the
Diversity, Decolonization and the French Curriculum (DDFC Collective)
and the Diversity and Decolonization and the German Curriculum (DDGC
Collective) have highlighted in recent years, both publishing edited
volumes with approaches to more inclusive and culturally sensitive
study of French and German (Criser & Malakaj, 2020; Bouamer &
Bourdeau, 2022), that also incorporate the option of social justice
approaches in the classroom.

These points aside, those world language teachers who already desire
to incorporate social justice into their classroom will find this
volume incredibly useful. The various chapters provide numerous
examples of classroom activities and projects that can be adapted to
different classroom concepts to achieve the goals of intercultural
communicative competence and intercultural citizenship. The different
chapters seem well aligned with one another on a theoretical and on a
practical basis, especially considering that many of the chapter
authors overlap (Wagner and Spenader each being a co-author on two
separate chapters and Kong and Spenader serving as both editors and
contributors). There are numerous avenues for future research from
each of the six chapters, as all represent relatively small case
studies with primarily qualitative approaches. Additionally, most of
the studies described in the volume found that the ‘action’ aspect of
ICit was difficult to observe in each of their scenarios. Thus, future
work that intentionally engages with the ‘action’ aspect of ICit would
be of great value.

REFERENCES

Anya, U. (2020). African Americans in World Language Study: The Forged
Path and Future Directions. Annual   Review of Applied Linguistics,
40, 97 – 112.
Bouamer, S. & Bourdeau, L. (eds). (2022). Diversity and Decolonization
in French Studies: New Approaches to Teaching. Palgrave Macmillan.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-953577_11
Byram, M. (2021). Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative
Competence: Revisited (2nd Ed.). Multilingual Matters.
https://doi.org/10.21832/9781800410251.
Byram, M. & Wagner, M. (2018) Making a difference: Language teaching
for intercultural and international        dialogue. Foreign Language
Annals 51(1), 140 – 151.
Criser, R. & Malakaj, E. (2020). Diversity and Decolonization in
German Studies. Palgrave Macmillan.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34342-2
Hackman, H. (2005) Five essential components for social justice
education. Equity & Excellence in Education 38(2), 103 – 109.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Dr. Reaves is an Assistant Professor of French & Linguistics at Towson
University in Towson, MD, where she teaches French language classes at
all levels as well as courses in linguistics. Her research
concentrates primarily on the second language acquisition of French
with further interests in French sociolinguistics and French language
pedagogy. She has recently published an article in The French Review
on the teaching of linguistic diversity in the French language
classroom and her book ‘Discourse Markers in Second Language French’
was published with Routledge in March 2023.



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