Abstract
Intercultural competence in foreign language teaching has gained importance in recent times. Although current work has highlighted the advantages of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) for intercultural development, little is known about its potential for teaching literature in secondary schools. Treating literature itself as an art form, the aim of this article is to formulate research-based design principles for an integrated intercultural literary pedagogy (IILP) that may foster intercultural competence through arts integration in foreign language classes. This article reports on the process of evaluating IILP-based pilot lesson materials in pre-university education in the Netherlands. Educational design research was applied as a method that encompasses the systematic study of designing, developing, and evaluating educational interventions through an iterative process of evaluation with stakeholders. Three iterations of formative evaluation were conducted, with additions to the tentative design principles following each of the first two iterations. The process resulted in a set of four refined principles. Results also illustrated the effectiveness of IILP-based lesson materials for intercultural competence. Although participating students encountered some difficulties relating to the functionality of the design, the students appreciated its social relevance and reported that the processing of literary texts through dialogic tasks with peers in the target language fostered intercultural language learning.
Highlights
It is undisputed that literature can foster intercultural competence (BurwitzMelzer, 2001; Matos, 2012)
In sharp contrast with reading for information, aesthetic reading of literary texts is an interpretative and affective process through which readers bring their own experiences to the text (Bredella, 1996) and engage in self-reflection, which is a crucial element of intercultural competence
For the purpose of describing principles for intercultural language learning through arts integration at the secondary level, we have used the intercultural literary competence (ILC) construct that we developed in an earlier study (Schat et al, 2021)
Summary
It is undisputed that literature can foster intercultural competence (BurwitzMelzer, 2001; Matos, 2012). When reading literature, we encounter cultural practices, products, and perspectives that are different from our own, and through these ‘intercultural encounters’, we may relate to otherness and become aware of how we are shaped by our own cultural make-up. This potential ‘to engage readers in the exploration of the deepest layers of our selves through representations of other subjective worlds’ This potential ‘to engage readers in the exploration of the deepest layers of our selves through representations of other subjective worlds’ (Matos, 2012, p. 4) makes literary texts highly valuable artistic expressions for intercultural development
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