Expanding ‘conceptual horizons’: a reflexive approach to intercultural pedagogies in higher education

Abstract

ABSTRACT Intercultural pedagogies are increasingly seen as affording opportunities for students to share perspectives, understandings and knowledge. In the shift towards such pedagogies, ways that language is conceptualised and the interrelationship between language, culture and knowing are often underexplored. This paper reports on an auto-ethnographic study that explores our experience as teachers of extending intercultural pedagogies beyond the context of language learning in higher education. Drawing on Bakhtin’s (1981) The dialogic imagination: Four essays notion of dialogism and Derrida’s (1997) Of grammatology notion of translation, we describe and explain how our reflexive practice enables us to deepen our focus both on language, culture, and knowing as integral in creating and interpreting meaning, and the self.