Critical Cultural Awareness Research Articles

The importance of being critical – Polish EFL teachers' beliefs and practices

Sooner or later, countries like Poland will have to welcome immigrants from the Middle East and successfully communicate with the immigrants from different cultural backgrounds. I would like to argue that critical cultural awareness proves to be a cornerstone of the model of Intercultural Communicative Competence (Byram, 1997) and should be considered a prerequisite for developing the rest of the components comprising the model. The main aim of the present research paper is to investigate, analyse and discuss Polish EFL teachers' beliefs on the idea of including critical cultural awareness, a crucial component of intercultural competence, in the EFL lessons, teachers' teaching practices with reference to developing particular elements of intercultural competence in the EFL lessons and the possible discrepancies between their beliefs and practices. A questionnaire administered to 125 Polish EFL teachers and a case study of three practitioners, who were observed, interviewed and confronted in a focus-group discussion, were used to collect the relevant data. The results of my research study suggest that a lot of Polish EFL teachers declare that they consider Byram's intercultural communicative competence model (Byram 1997) relevant to foreign language teaching and learning in the present-day and seem to be willing to implement it in their lessons, yet many of those teachers appear not to prioritize intercultural competence in their teaching practice. This apparent discrepancy between language teachers' beliefs and their practices may stem from teachers' lack of sufficient intercultural training during their professional education. A need for implementing critical cultural awareness into the pre-service teacher trainings was identified. Keywords: intercultural competence, critical cultural awareness, EFL teaching and learning

An intercontinental inquiry on multicultural education: Canadian and Hong Kong university students connected through a Web 2.0 learning environment

Adopting Cummins’ model of intervention for collaborative empowerment, this study reports on a transnational project that examines (1) the effectiveness of enhancing critical cultural awareness by engaging culturally diverse university students in online discussions and (2) students’ perspectives on understanding different cultures through mass media and technology advances. Thirty-five Canadian and 47 Hong Kong university students participated in the project integrating aspects of multicultural education. The results of thematic analysis of the scripts of their postings showed that the innovative learning environment provided students an authentic and constructive intercultural learning experience. It enhanced their cultural sensitivity and competence and reinforced their critical awareness of various texts, information, and discourse arising from the use of new technologies. The results indicated that, when paired with appropriate instructional design, Web 2.0 technologies have a great potential to facilitate multicultural education and practices through effectively forming transnational learning communities that harness the strengths of diverse students.

Critical Cultural Awareness and Diversity in Nursing: A Minority Perspective

With the advent of globalization and migration, the significance of culture in our daily lives has become more acute. Cross-cultural interactions have grown exponentially; from multinational corporations to aviation, people from different cultures interact, some interactions more successful than others. These interactions have resultant outcomes, be they in the form of an efficient and successful business or the sentinel event of an aviation accident. A quick survey of any hospital in the San Francisco Bay Area alone will find great diversity, with more than 110 languages spoken.1 The increase in multicultural interactions in healthcare has made care provision more complicated. There has been much attention given to organizational culture, team development, and effective communication. Similarly, there is the call for patient-centered care, which must incorporate cultural needs and respect for patient wishes; providers must work on becoming culturally competent. Indeed, there is much attention given to the importance of culture. Yet, too frequently, one still encounters the reality of cultural ethnocentrism. It is especially disturbing when ethnocentrism rears its ugly head in healthcare.

Pentecostalismo brasileiro em Moçambique: produção de conhecimento espiritual e cultural em um espaço transnacional

ResumoAlinhado com uma história da religião e da cura no sudeste da África, o pentecostalismo brasileiro em Moçambique criou condições para uma mobilidade em termos culturais e espirituais. Argumenta-se, assim, que o pentecostalismo transnacional estimula as mulheres, com uma mobilidade socioeconômica ascendente, a desenvolverem sua posição crítica em relação às culturas locais. Mulheres moçambicanas que participam das igrejas pentecostais brasileiras tornam-se transnacionais, embarcam em uma viagem em que se confrontam com percepções, valores e práticas socioculturais, pois atravessam subjetivamente as fronteiras nacionais, na medida em que criticam e se distanciam de certas formas de conhecimentos culturais e espirituais locais. Assim, o pentecostalismo brasileiro, em Moçambique, contribui para uma consciência cultural crítica das mulheres e para uma desestabilização da continuidade cultural, tornando-se pessoas "estrangeiras" dentro de sua própria sociedade. Nesse sentido, mulheres pentecostais não necessariamente respondem a situações de mobilidade, tal como ocorre nos processos de globalização, mas, ao contrário, criam mobilidades socioculturais através do poder do Espírito Santo para conquistar novos modos de ser e fazer, em particular nas áreas de gênero, parentesco e casamento.

Developing Intercultural Communicative Competence in ELF Communication

The traditional notion of English as a foreign language solely for communicating with native speakers can no longer be applied in a world that is constantly changing, hence paving the way for an alternative use of the language known as English as a lingua franca. As a result, instead of focusing only on grammatical correctness, research into language pedagogy has also come to recognize the importance of exploring bottom-up learning processes, and developing intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and more communicative-based methods. Nowadays, it is essential to acquire the knowledge, skills, attitudes and critical cultural awareness necessary to communicate successfully. To show the importance of integrating ICC in language pedagogy, a recording from the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English is analysed here to demonstrate the significance of developing critical awareness as well as several communicative strategies, so that language learners can afterwards have the necessary ICC to interact in today’s multi-lingual/cultural society.

Revisiting cultural awareness and cultural relevancy.

Comments on the original article by Christopher et al. (see record 2014-20055-001) regarding critical cultural awareness. The more insights and exploration of the meaning and influence of culture we receive, the better. There is no single treatment of any personal or collective culture(s) that can be inherently complete or totally exhaustive. New hermeneutics and skills are always needed, appreciated, and refreshing.

Beyond the confines of culture: Reflections of two non-American psychologists.

Comments on the original article by Christopher et al. (see record 2014-20055-001) regarding "culturally situated" psychology. In this commentary, the current authors articulate a few points of contention and words of caution to be borne in mind when attempting to cultivate critical cultural awareness.

Intercomprehension: a portal to teachers' intercultural sensitivity

The development of opportunities for teachers' professional development in plurilingual and intercultural education is a key issue in language teacher education and ‘intercomprehension’ (IC) can provide a potential portal for the development of teachers' intercultural sensitivity. Particularly relevant to this is the creation of powerful learning environments in which language teachers can construct new structures of meaning and professional knowledge and develop teaching which is more sensitive to diversity. This article reports on a research project that investigated the use of IC in an initial teacher education programme in Portugal and the effects of this programme on the intercultural sensitivity and professional learning of a group of student-teachers. The study was based on content analysis of participants' narratives, seen as contexts for personal and professional self-discovery/awareness. The results reveal the student-teachers' growing intercultural sensitivity as they build their understanding of IC as a communicative and pedagogic approach, expand their critical cultural awareness and come to recognise how they might implement intercultural and plurilingual education. The article concludes by reflecting on possible ways to encourage language teachers to become more interculturally sensitive and more aware of and engaged with diversity.

The Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters through Visual Media: exploring images of others in telecollaboration

Positioned against the background of the Council of Europe's interest in developing intercultural competence through education, the study presented in this paper investigates the impact on intercultural visual literacy of the Council of Europe's Images of Others – An Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters through Visual Media (AIEVM). In our study, the AIEVM was used within the context of an online intercultural exchange between pre-service language teachers. Findings indicate increased intercultural awareness as students at universities in Germany and Spain engaged with the visually ‘mediated other’ through working systematically with the AIEVM. Multiperspectivity and critical cultural awareness in particular were shown to be enhanced through discussing ‘images of others’ in culturally diverse tandem teams.

Promoting cross-cultural understanding and language use in research-oriented Internet-mediated intercultural exchange

This case study investigated the effectiveness of the United Beyond Our Diversity (UBOD) project for the development of language skills and intercultural communicative competence (including attitudes, knowledge, skills, and critical intercultural awareness) in Taiwanese seventh grade learners. The learners’ attitudes and evaluations of UBOD were also examined. The research-based intercultural exchange project of UBOD 12-15 was designed to develop learners’ critical cultural awareness and to facilitate authentic interactions by engaging students in making deep cross-cultural inquiries. The UBOD 12-15 project, created by the Global Teenager Project, connected participants from five different countries with the help of a Wiki platform and a Moodle, which was used as an intra-class interaction tool. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to collect and analyze the data. The findings suggested that the research-based UBOD had a significant impact on the development of the learners’ critical cultural awareness and foreign language use; in particular, this project encouraged intrinsically motivated cross-cultural learning and, further, led the learners to discard their cultural stereotypes and view others from a different perspective.

Exploring manifestations of curiosity in study abroad as part of intercultural communicative competence

Abstract This paper reports on a study that explores manifestations of curiosity in study abroad emerging in response to teaching materials designed to stimulate interest in it. Having reviewed definitions of curiosity, the rationale for investigating curiosity within the theme of study abroad will be presented before its psychological underpinnings are explored. The development of teaching materials will then be described that were implemented in an English course conducted at a university in Japan. The course aimed to develop intercultural communicative competence (ICC) (Byram, 1997) within the Intercultural Dialogue Model (Houghton, 2012), and the study took the form of case study based on action research. Selected examples of qualitative data will be presented and discussed in relation to Loewenstein's (1994) information-gap perspective. Teachers are recommended to utilize information gaps to cause students to want to know more by encouraging them to clearly delineate information-gap boundaries and seek further information. Students need to develop meta-cognitive and meta-affective awareness and control to maintain open and inquiring minds as intrinsic aspects of criticality development. By foregrounding curiosity within the Intercultural Dialogue Model, this paper reveals active yet often missed connections between the attitudes, knowledge and critical cultural awareness components of Byram's model.

Critical cultural awareness: contributions to a globalizing psychology.

The number of psychologists whose work crosses cultural boundaries is increasing. Without a critical awareness of their own cultural grounding, they risk imposing the assumptions, concepts, practices, and values of U.S.-centered psychology on societies where they do not fit, as a brief example from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami shows. Hermeneutic thinkers offer theoretical resources for gaining cultural awareness. Culture, in the hermeneutic view, is the constellation of meanings that constitutes a way of life. Such cultural meanings-especially in the form of folk psychologies and moral visions-inevitably shape every psychology, including U.S. psychology. The insights of hermeneutics, as well as its conceptual resources and research approaches, open the way for psychological knowledge and practice that are more culturally situated.

Making the Familiar Strange: Creative Cultural Storytelling within the Communication Classroom

Courses: Public Speaking, Performance, or other communication classes, integrating performance and/or cultural studies Objectives: After completing this activity, students will be able to look critically at an everyday experience, creating a story that re-languages this practice performatively. Additionally, students will develop confidence in presentation skills, further enhancing critical thinking and cultural awareness, by learning to creatively engage voice, gesture, and performance through “making the familiar strange” within the communication classroom

The potential of CLIL for intercultural development: a case study of Andalusian bilingual schools

The most outstanding overhaul in educational policies in Spanish monolingual communities has been the widespread implementation of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programmes. This article delves into the supposedly indissoluble relationship between CLIL and intercultural communicative competence. Using as a basis a case study on CLIL primary and secondary school teachers' and students' perceptions, this study questions whether bilingual programmes in Andalusia provide learners with the necessary competences to cope efficiently with otherness. Findings show that CLIL presents an apparent potential for the development of crucial intercultural attitudes, the vital development of critical cultural awareness, and, finally, action-taking as a sophisticated outcome of both assessments.

Cultivating cosmopolitan, intercultural citizenship through critical reflection and international, experiential learning

This paper explores the notion of cosmopolitan, intercultural citizenship in relation to intercultural education and study abroad. As part of a larger investigation of the second language sojourn, the individual developmental trajectories of more than 100 Chinese university students were examined to better understand their language and intercultural learning and identity expansion. This paper presents an illustrative case study of a young woman who took significant steps toward a more sophisticated, cosmopolitan self through deep reflection and intercultural interaction in localized, global spaces. Critical cultural awareness and experiential learning (both at home and abroad) were key elements in her journey toward intercultural, global citizenship, intercultural communicative competence, and a broader, more balanced, sense of self.

An Intercultural Approach for Language Teaching: Developing Critical Cultural Awareness

This article presents the pedagogical experience of a teacher implementing an intercultural approach in an undergraduate foreign language teaching program. The students who participated in this experience were interviewed in order to demonstrate that an intercultural approach is an effective alternative to developing students’ critical cultural awareness, as well as to explore the critical relationship between language and culture. Analysis of the interviews revealed critical cultural awareness in students’ teaching practices and personal views. It also showed students becoming conscious of the essential role of culture in language teaching.
 How to reference thus article:
 Agudelo, J. J. (2007). An Intercultural Approach for Language Teaching: Developing Critical Cultural Awareness. Íkala. 12(1), pp. 185 – 217.

Literacy and citizenship: an intercultural perspective

In this paper I report on a small scale teaching project indicated by the general title above. The overall aim of the project has been to investigate and if possible enhance pupils' understanding and experience of two key areas of contemporary educational concern—literacy and citizenship—through a creative intercultural perspective. The teaching and research seek to suggest both connections and contrasts, starting from a critical cultural awareness of the ‘familiar’ and from there reaching outwards—although the movement is by no means in this direction only. The project has notions of literacy and citizenship at its very core: literacy as broadly covering our ways of appreciating ourselves and our world through language; citizenship as suggestive of the ways of thinking, feeling and behaving which may result from (and in turn determine) our understanding.

Critical Citizens for an Intercultural World. Foreign Language Education as Cultural Politics

Introduction 1. Critical Pedagogy as cultural politics 2. Philosophical foundations for critical cultural awareness 3. The critical dimension in foreign culture education 4. The teachers' voices: How they view critical cultural awareness in foreign language/culture classes 5. Preparing critical citizens and educators for an intercultural world Bibliography Appendices