This ground-breaking book is the first to describe in detail how teachers, supported by university educators and education advisers, might plan and implement innovative ideas based on sound theoretical foundations. Focusing on the teaching and learning of intercultural communicative competence in foreign language classrooms in the USA, the authors describe a collaborative project in which graduate students and teachers planned, implemented and reported on units which integrated intercultural competence in a systematic way in classrooms ranging from elementary to university level. The authors are clear and honest about what worked and what didn’t, both in their classrooms and during the process of collaboration. This book will be required reading for both scholars and teachers interested in applying academic theory in the classroom, and in the teaching of intercultural competence.
This ground-breaking book is the first to describe in detail how teachers, supported by university educators and education advisers, might plan and implement innovative ideas based on sound theoretical foundations. Focusing on the teaching and learning of intercultural communicative competence in foreign language classrooms in the USA, the authors describe a collaborative project in which graduate students and teachers planned, implemented and reported on units which integrated intercultural competence in a systematic way in classrooms ranging from elementary to university level. The authors are clear and honest about what worked and what didn’t, both in their classrooms and during the process of collaboration. This book will be required reading for both scholars and teachers interested in applying academic theory in the classroom, and in the teaching of intercultural competence.
Teaching Intercultural Competence Across the Age Range: From Theory to Practice
200
Teaching Intercultural Competence Across the Age Range: From Theory to Practice
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Overview
This ground-breaking book is the first to describe in detail how teachers, supported by university educators and education advisers, might plan and implement innovative ideas based on sound theoretical foundations. Focusing on the teaching and learning of intercultural communicative competence in foreign language classrooms in the USA, the authors describe a collaborative project in which graduate students and teachers planned, implemented and reported on units which integrated intercultural competence in a systematic way in classrooms ranging from elementary to university level. The authors are clear and honest about what worked and what didn’t, both in their classrooms and during the process of collaboration. This book will be required reading for both scholars and teachers interested in applying academic theory in the classroom, and in the teaching of intercultural competence.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783098927 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Multilingual Matters Ltd. |
| Publication date: | 10/19/2017 |
| Series: | Languages for Intercultural Communication and Education , #32 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 200 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Manuela Wagner is Associate Professor of Foreign Language Education and Director of the German Language and Culture Program at the University of Connecticut, USA.
Dorie Conlon Perugini is a Spanish teacher at Naubuc Elementary School in Glastonbury Public Schools, USA.
Michael Byram is Professor Emeritus at the University of Durham, UK and Guest Professor at the University of Luxembourg.
Manuela Wagner holds a PhD in English Studies with a specialization in linguistics from Graz University, Austria. Her research focuses on the integration of Intercultural Competence and Intercultural Citizenship (Byram, 1997, 2008) in (language) education and across the curriculum from elementary school through post-secondary education. She is particularly interested in the interplay of theory and practice and has been part of and helped create communities of practice to implement theories of Intercultural Competence and Citizenship as well as related theoretical frameworks (theories of criticality, intercultural communication, social justice, intellectual humility) in practice. The resulting book projects include the co-edited volumes Teaching Intercultural Competence Across the Age Range: From Theory to Practice (2018) and Education for Intercultural Citizenship: Principles in Practice (2017), and the co-authored book Teaching Intercultural Citizenship Across the Curriculum: The Role of Language Education (2019). She also investigates the role of educators as advocates for all (language) learners.
Dorie Conlon Perugini is a doctoral student at the University of Connecticut in the department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages concentrating on Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies. She is also an elementary Spanish teacher in Glastonbury, Connecticut where she teaches grades 1-5 and conducts action research. Her research interests include intercultural competence, social justice, raciolinguistics, and culturally sustaining pedagogies. Dorie has co-edited Teaching Intercultural Competence Across the Age Range: Theory to Practice, which shares the journey of world language teachers partnering with graduate students from the University of Connecticut to help students develop intercultural competence.
Michael Byram is Professor Emeritus at Durham University, England. Having studied languages at Cambridge University, he taught French and German in school and adult education and then did teacher education at Durham. He was adviser to the Language Policy Division of the Council of Europe and then on the expert group which produced the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture. His research has included the education of minorities, foreign language teaching and intercultural competence, and more recently on how the PhD is experienced and assessed in a range of different countries.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Houses Around the World
Patty Silvey and Silke Gräfnitz
Introduction
In this first chapter we will describe our journey to creating and implementing a unit on 'The House' in a 4th grade Spanish lesson in a Glastonbury, CT school. In Glastonbury schools there is an agreed curriculum, including the topics taught. Our project fitted into the overall curriculum and was a modification of an existing unit of study.
We are Patty and Silke
Patty is a graduate of Assumption College in Worcester, MA, and holds a master's degree in educational technology from the University of Hartford, CT. Patty's love of languages was first fostered in meeting her childhood neighbor and friend whose parents were from Belgium and spoke only French to their children. She started her 'formal' language education in a nursery school where she learned to sing, recite and count in French. Language learning in earnest restarted in junior high school and continued in high school where she was (finally!) able to add her second language, Spanish. She is a close colleague of Dorie Conlon Perugini, one of the editors of this book who has been introduced in the Introduction, and has been teaching in the Glastonbury Foreign Language in the Elementary School (FLES) Department for the past 15 years. She was intrigued in what intercultural competence (IC) might look like at the elementary level and wanted to further explore this idea with both Manuela and Dorie.
Silke Gräfnitz is a PhD candidate at the University of Connecticut where she has also been teaching classes in German, German literature and human rights. Previously she studied literature, comparative studies and Japanese studies at the University of Tübingen, where she additionally interned and worked with the German as a Foreign Language Department. In addition to this she has been an intern and working student with Mercedes Benz's International Training Program and International Quality Management, and worked with Bosch's International Sales Department. Silke is passionate about foreign language acquisition and teaching, and how IC competence can positively affect us in our everyday lives. To her, fostering early IC is a key ingredient in raising a future generation of skilled leaders and conflict managers.
The existing unit in the Glastonbury syllabus
The Glastonbury syllabus provides a detailed approach to the content of the curriculum for Spanish lessons (see Table 1.1). It consists of statements about what students are expected to learn, 'enduring understandings', the use or application of the language learnt, 'essential questions', as well as the language content. With this as a starting point, and having discussed the theory and Byram's model in the classroom, we thought:
Houses around the world. Sounds like an easy enough topic from which to glean evidence of intercultural competence from our students. Everyone has to live somewhere and in some sort of dwelling. Houses tell a story and that story can be very personal. Houses reflect the culture of anything from an entire country to a neighborhood community to an individual family. We have all traveled, and read, and know houses can look quite different from one part of town to another, or from one part of the world to another. We know, too, that some of those differences are most certainly based on regional climate and weather patterns as well as personal architectural preferences. These differences may also rely quite heavily on the finances of the people. Hmmm. How far were we willing to tread into this subject matter? After all, I am their Spanish teacher, not a teacher of social anthropology nor of consumer economics and financial planning. What did our students know about houses in other parts of our state or country, much less the world? Would they be able to adjust or suspend their attitudes with the new information presented?
Classroom context
The students we chose for this lesson are all in grade 4, roughly aged nine to ten. They attend a public elementary school and, for the most part, have had Spanish instruction since 1st grade. The school itself has approximately 435 students, kindergarten to grade 5. In a January 2014 report to the Glastonbury, CT Board of Education, 28 of these students were reported to come from a home where a language other than English was spoken, with 13 different languages represented. Additionally, 5.4% of this school was eligible for free or reduced lunch services at the time when this project was conducted. Table 1.2 summarizes the situation.
Preparation
In the Glastonbury Spanish curriculum in 4th grade, the students 'travel through the Caribbean' via a year-long, overarching essential question: How are we connected to the Caribbean? It is felt that this question, along with the underlying unit essential questions, will, among other things and in the words of Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins (2013: 17), 'make it more likely that the unit will be intellectually engaging, provide transparency for students, and encourage and model metacognition for students'.
The overarching essential question is revisited over the course of the year, weaving in and out of various other unit themes. It is expected that, on completion of this particular unit on The House, students will have discovered the similarities and differences among various houses across the United States and the Caribbean. The unit as it is written allows for the reintroduction or spiraling of vocabulary from prior grades as well as embedding new vocabulary and grammar structures, through the lens of understanding aspects of life in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean.
The spiraling of vocabulary is done throughout the students' foreign language education in grades 1–12 and is based on Jerome Bruner's (1960: 33) theory that 'any subject can be taught in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development'. Bruner highlights three key features of the spiraled curriculum:
• The student revisits a topic, theme or subject several times throughout their school career.
• The complexity of the topic or theme increases with each revisit.
• New learning has a relationship with old learning and is put in context with the old information.
The unit in question re-introduces elements of a connected unit from grade 3 where students learn about various types of structures, both manmade and natural, albeit in a much broader sense than just housing. Grade 3 thus includes the vocabulary for such man-made edifices as market, church, airport and school as well as lake, beach, mountain and rainforest which represent the natural structures.
Since there were different unit themes from which we could have chosen in the grade 4 curriculum, how did we come to decide on this one? Discussions ensued between us as well as among other colleagues. The outcome was that it all had to do with the timing within the school year for the implementation of the lesson. In our district, and within our elementary foreign language department, we have determined certain units of study to be for mastery and others as supplemental. Mastery units are taught in greater depth over a longer period of time and include more and varied assessments. Supplemental units are shorter, include fewer assessments and support the content and grammar goals of the mastery units. The two aspects of the housing unit, 'Outside of the House' and 'Inside of the House', are both deemed mastery lessons for students in this grade and are taught in the second half of the school year beginning in February and concluding in June.
Patty wanted to bring the modified IC curriculum to all four classes of students in grade 4 to ensure the widest possible sampling of evidence and, additionally, she wanted it to supplement the learning they already receive during their regularly scheduled Spanish class. Patty decided, therefore, to do the entire new unit in one additional 75-minute class on Wednesday afternoons, one class at a time, over four Wednesdays. This was possible because the Glastonbury district has built in time on Wednesday afternoons during the months of December through February for special area teachers (art, physical education, Spanish, etc.) to collaborate with classroom teachers and design lessons to supplement the curriculum of both the classroom teacher and the special area teacher, in this case the Spanish teacher. This allowed Patty the flexibility to adjust and to fine-tune each subsequent lesson as needed. You will read later in this chapter about her personal reflections on how this all happened. Although this project was meant to be part of an existing unit and not a new creation, we know, from being experienced teachers, that these things can take on a life of their own and can grow into something much bigger than expected.
In order to accomplish the objectives we had set for ourselves, we worked together to create an outline for the lesson in which we used materials already available for the unit as well as purchasing and making new instructional materials. Ambitious though it was, pieces of the first lesson plan were scrapped before the first class of students even walked into the room. Over-planning was indeed an understatement!
The book usually used in this unit by Lucy Floyd, Casas en todo el mundo (Ada & Campoy, 2003), was still used for the modified lesson because it contains vocabulary students already know and introduces new vocabulary at an 'i + 1' model, where students will acquire the new language (input) if it is given at one step beyond their current linguistic competence (Krashen, 1992). Next, because we wanted to use visuals of houses around the world, we needed clear photographs with an explanation of where they are located, i.e. the photos of houses from around the world and the accompanying descriptions should be factual. Furthermore, our plan was to have enough photos for each child to have their own to work with. We were able to purchase from a website (www.shop.montessoriprintshop. com/Homes-Around-the-World-GeoF-51.htm) for a small fee the download rights of high-quality photos of 26 unique homes with their accompanying locations as well as what they are called in their specific locale.
The initial plan was for each student to try to identify the country in which they thought the house might be located, but we decided that it would be better for students to work in groups to determine the continent on which they felt the house could be found. Given the varied countries and the number of students in the class, this activity alone might take too much time if done individually. The group activity would, we hoped, bring forth a deeper discussion on their decisions. Additionally, Patty was concerned as to whether these nine and ten year olds would be able to find on a world map the actual country or have any idea that such a country even existed. Without hesitation, students would have been able to locate China, the United States, Canada and France. Other countries such as Iraq, Kenya, Turkey and New Caledonia would have been much more difficult as the teaching of these geographic locations is neither part of the classroom curriculum nor the Spanish curriculum. It was for these reasons that we decided that the house placement and discussion activity would center on the continent, and not the country, of each house.
Patty's next quandary was that only five of the seven continents were represented in the photographs we had purchased. We were missing Antarctica and Australia and there are homes there too, although some may not be as permanent as others, especially in Antarctica. A much smaller internet search ensued and proved quite fruitful, so that finally all continents would be represented. Since we felt it was important for Patty to be able to show the students on a world map the actual location with the name of the house, she created a presentation inserting the photos into a Prezi®, a cloud-based storytelling and presentation tool, using a world map as the background. In the presentation, she included the name of the country and the region-specific word used for the house.
We also needed something that would demonstrate a growth in 'critical cultural awareness' with respect to the phenomenon of houses and housing and a means for the students to use their new knowledge to create additional knowledge outside the school setting. Our intent was for the lesson to be carried out as much as possible in Spanish without creating anxiety among the students or losing the complexity of the intercultural aspect due to limited or lack of higher order vocabulary. Patty felt, though, that the richness of the new learning and their explanations would be best revealed if they wrote their reflections in English. The reflection sheet became a very personal document where students were asked to 'read the following statements and give personal examples. Your examples can be from this lesson or from any other lesson here in school.'
(1) I am curious and open and understanding to different cultures. Example.
(2) I am interested in other people's way of life, and what other people do on a daily basis. Example.
(3) I have realized that I can understand other cultures by seeing things from a different point of view. Example.
(4) I know some important facts about the dwellings of other cultures. Example.
(5) I can explain and understand why some houses are built in a certain way. Example.
And lastly, we wanted to extend the learning outside the school setting and, after conferring with Manuela, we decided on a final project where students would submit a visual representation of their 'Family Tree/House', as we shall see below.
Implementation
First iteration
In the first presentation of this lesson in mid-January, Patty started the discussion by showing students books in Spanish with photos of houses. We used and distinguished between the two words casas (houses) and hogares (homes) and said that typically people –or as some students said, familia (family) – are needed to make a house a home. In Spanish, Patty asked them questions such as: Are all homes equal? Is an apartment a home? Are homes here in Connecticut different from homes in other regions of the US? Continuing in the target language, they were then told they would work in their pre-assigned groups with a photo of a house. Their job was two-fold: they had to decide on which continent they thought one might find that house and explain what evidence they used to make their decision. They also had to decide if one might find this house on another continent and why. They had three minutes in their group with their house.
After the three minutes, each group presented and substantiated their conclusions. Although they wanted and tried to explain in the target language, they found they were lacking crucial vocabulary for this piece of the task. They could repeat the continents in Spanish, but they wanted to expand on their discussion. Therefore, much of what followed was in English. Given that this session was an enhancement and in addition to their regular Spanish class and included many new cultural concepts and vocabulary, Patty was fine with proceeding in English. She can, of course, return to some of these elements using Spanish in future Spanish classes.
Their supporting ideas revolved around the landscape depicted in the photo and their perception or prior knowledge of the continent. For example, the group that had the troglodyte house (Tunisia, Africa) correctly identified the continent. Their reason was 'it looks like sandstone and it looks hot, like in a desert'. They thought you might also be able to find a house like that in either Australia or South America. They also brought up whether people had money for a house. After the six groups placed their respective house on a large, projected map of the continents, and gave their explanation, they received a second more challenging house. It was not until the discussion of the igloo that the idea of weather or climate being a factor in the construction of a house became prominent. It was evident that the students felt that, for the most part, many of the homes could be found somewhere on most continents. It was very interesting that the placement of a castle in the United Kingdom was supported by their statement, 'because a monarchy is still there today'. After this exercise, Patty and the students all sat on a carpet, which was their usual gathering place for reading, and Patty read excerpts from the book Casas por todo el mundo. The plan was to read the entire book, but there was also the Prezi to show and we wanted them to complete the reflection sheet too. The book supported two objectives: give them more vocabulary on which to build, and supply them with photos of additional different types of houses. The last activity, viewing the Prezi, allowed us to globe-hop and see in greater detail the houses that were presented for discussion as well as others they had not seen in their groups. Some of the homes elicited 'ooohs' and 'aaahs', and comments like 'I want a house like that one'.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Teaching Intercultural Competence Across the Age Range"
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Copyright © 2018 Manuela Wagner, Dorie Conlon Perugini, Michael Byram and the authors of individual chapters.
Excerpted by permission of Multilingual Matters.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
1. Manuela Wagner, Dorie Conlon Perugini and Michael Byram: Introduction
2. Patty Silvey and Silke Gräfnitz: Houses Around the World (4th grade)
3. Dorie Conlon Perugini: Discovering Modes of Transportation (4th grade)
4. Philip Rohrer and Lauren Kagan: Using the Five Senses to Explore Cities (6th grade)
5. Jean Despoteris and Komo Ananda: Intercultural Competence: Reflecting on Daily Routines (8th grade)
6. Deanne Wallace and Jocelyn Tamborello-Noble: Diverse Perspectives of the Immigrant Experience (10th and 11th grade)
7. Chelsea Connery and Sarah Lindstrom: Beauty and Aesthetics (11th and 12th grade)
8. Manuela Wagner and Niko Tracksdorf: IC Online: Fostering the Development of Intercultural Competence in Virtual Language Classrooms (University students)
9. Lauren Rommal and Michael Byram: Becoming Interculturally Competent Through Study and Experience Abroad (Teachers)
10. Rita Oleksak, Manuela Wagner, Dorie Conlon Perugini and Michael Byram: Conclusion
Appendix