Promoting teacher professionalism in language education from the perspective of critical intercultural literacy

Abstract

Against the backdrop of globalisation, many English language teaching (ELT) curricula emphasise the need to promote awareness of intercultural communication. However, in many settings, the current ELT practices still predominantly focus on Anglophone cultures or interactions with Anglophone speakers, as the teachers and materials may not fully anticipate the cultural complexity and diversity the students will encounter in the future. This paper reports on a case study designed to build teachers’ critical intercultural literacy through a series of workshops at a university located in southeast China, specifically aiming to train Chinese university teachers in how to challenge textbook content from a critical perspective. Through an analysis of interviews with teachers and their reflective journal entries, this paper examines how teachers made sense of critically-oriented teaching and it discusses the implications for developing a critical stance beyond the classroom informed by critical pedagogy and Global Englishes language teaching.