The contributors to this volume have collaborated to present their work on introducing competences in intercultural communication and citizenship into foreign language education. The book examines how learners and teachers think about citizenship and interculturality, and shows how teachers and researchers from primary to university education can work together across continents to develop new curricula and pedagogy. This involves the creation of a new theory of intercultural citizenship and a procedure for implementation. The book is written by teacher researchers who aim to help other teachers, and concludes with reflections on the lessons they have learnt which will help others to implement these ideas in their own practice. The book is essential reading for foreign language educators and researchers, students in pre-service teacher training and teachers in in-service training.
The contributors to this volume have collaborated to present their work on introducing competences in intercultural communication and citizenship into foreign language education. The book examines how learners and teachers think about citizenship and interculturality, and shows how teachers and researchers from primary to university education can work together across continents to develop new curricula and pedagogy. This involves the creation of a new theory of intercultural citizenship and a procedure for implementation. The book is written by teacher researchers who aim to help other teachers, and concludes with reflections on the lessons they have learnt which will help others to implement these ideas in their own practice. The book is essential reading for foreign language educators and researchers, students in pre-service teacher training and teachers in in-service training.
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Overview
The contributors to this volume have collaborated to present their work on introducing competences in intercultural communication and citizenship into foreign language education. The book examines how learners and teachers think about citizenship and interculturality, and shows how teachers and researchers from primary to university education can work together across continents to develop new curricula and pedagogy. This involves the creation of a new theory of intercultural citizenship and a procedure for implementation. The book is written by teacher researchers who aim to help other teachers, and concludes with reflections on the lessons they have learnt which will help others to implement these ideas in their own practice. The book is essential reading for foreign language educators and researchers, students in pre-service teacher training and teachers in in-service training.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783096572 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Multilingual Matters Ltd. |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2016 |
| Series: | Languages for Intercultural Communication and Education , #30 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 302 |
| File size: | 9 MB |
About the Author
Michael Byram is Professor Emeritus at the University of Durham, UK and Guest Professor at the University of Luxembourg.
Irina Golubeva is Head of the International Mobility Office at the University of Pannonia, Hungary.
Han Hui is Professor at the School of Foreign Languages at Zhejiang A&F University, China.
Manuela Wagner is Associate Professor of Foreign Language Education and Director of the German Language and Culture Program at the University of Connecticut, USA.
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.
Irina Golubeva is Associate Professor and Director of the Master’s Program in Intercultural Communication in the Department of Modern Languages, Linguistics and Intercultural Communication at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (USA). Her main research interests concern the development of intercultural competence and multilingual awareness, internationalization of Higher Education, and conceptualization of active intercultural citizenship. She is strongly committed to non-profit work and served for seven years as a Vice-President of the European Association of Teachers. Most recently, she was elected to serve on the Board of the International Academy of Intercultural Research.
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.
Read an Excerpt
From Principles to Practice in Education for Intercultural Citizenship
By Michael Byram, Irina Golubeva, Han Hui, Manuela Wagner
Multilingual Matters
Copyright © 2017 Michael Byram, Irina Golubeva, Han Hui, Manuela Wagner and the authors of individual chaptersAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78309-657-2
CHAPTER 1
Comparing Students' Perceptions of Global Citizenship in Hungary and the USA
Irina Golubeva, Manuela Wagner and Mary E. Yakimowski
Introduction
Throughout this book, the authors engage in transnational collaborations to teach intercultural citizenship in meaningful and systematic ways in a variety of educational contexts. More specifically, educators facilitate transnational communities collaborating on the development of intercultural competence (Byram, 1997). In addition, projects share a focus on action, combining 'critical cultural awareness' with 'internationalism' and 'acting in the here and now' (see the Introduction to this book). Gaining an understanding of what students believe it means to develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes that lead to intercultural citizenship can shed light on their perspectives before and during their engagement in such transnational projects. Of particular interest for us is whether students believe that foreign language plays an important role in their becoming an intercultural citizen.
The development of intercultural competence and foreign language education is important in both Hungary and the USA, despite the fact that these countries are significantly different in linguistic, economic and political matters, which could have an effect on learners' attitudes to foreign language education and global citizenship. For example, although in each country the school system endorses the learning of foreign languages, in Hungary the focus is having students learn more than one foreign language (see National Core Curriculum, 2012), whereas in the USA secondary students primarily learn one foreign language during their four years of high school. The increase in numbers of learners of English as a second language in the USA – nearly 60% between 1997 and 2007 (National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition, 2007) – has also led to an emphasis on pre-school to 12th grade (preK–12) 'emergent bilinguals' who will become approximately 40% of the school-aged population by 2030 (Thomas & Collier, 2002). In contrast to the situation in the USA, in Hungary the growing interest in learning foreign languages and especially English is also caused by an increasing tendency of emigration from the country to English-speaking countries like England, Ireland, the USA, Canada, Australia and outside the English-speaking world (see for updated statistics http://www.ksh.hu/ and also http://www.demografia.hu/).
One of the issues closely related to the question under discussion in this chapter – perceptions of global citizenship – is the issue of English as a language of international communication, especially with regard to the importance of English in a variety of contexts outside of English-speaking countries (see Kachru, 2005). There is a wealth of literature on English as an international language and as a lingua franca (e.g. Pennycook, 2004; Dewey, 2007; Blommaert, 2010; Seidlhofer, 2011; Cogo, 2012; House, 2011). Linguists and educators have also been studying the significance of globalization for the English language and its implications for language education (Kirkpatrick, 1991; Bauer, 1994; Crystal, 1997/2003, 2006; Jenkins, 2000, 2002, 2003; Holliday, 2005; Kachru, 2005; Gimenez & Sheehan, 2008; Saxena & Omoniyi, 2010; Schreier & Hundt, 2013). Less is written about perceptions of English as a global language (Maley, 1984; McKay, 2002; Georgieva, 2010; McKenzie, 2010). Finally, a growing interest in students' perceptions of global citizenship has emerged among researchers worldwide in recent years (Parmenter, 2011; Alazzi, 2012; Kilinc & Korkmaz, 2012; Morita, 2013; Han Hui, Song Li, Jing Hongtao & Zhao Yuqin's chapter in this book).
Another issue relevant here is the issue of terminology. While the authors are interested in a more complex view of intercultural competence or intercultural citizenship as outlined in the Introduction to this book, we also observe that a variety of terms is used to describe competences related to 'global' or 'intercultural' education. To understand what terms are currently used in the context of intercultural citizenship, we conducted a Google search (April 2014), which showed a number of related terms that might be difficult to differentiate. World citizen (978,000), global citizen (491,000) and international citizen (192,000) are the most frequent words, while planetary citizen (14,600), cosmopolitan citizen (8190), intercultural citizen (2300), multicultural citizen (1890) and supranational citizen (247) are seldom used. Although 'world citizen' resulted in the highest number of results in the search, the expression 'global citizen' has gained in importance (Olds, 2012; Abdi & Shultz, 2008; Bourn, 2010; Clark, 2010; Dower, 2003, 2008; Killick, 2011, 2012; Pike, 2008; Reid & Spencer-Oatey, 2012; to name just a few), and at universities (e.g. in academic institutional plans, in course and programme titles, and in curricular documents), 'global citizenship' has been used extensively (Olds, 2012). However, there are also many definitions used in the various contexts describing what it means to be a global citizen (Oxfam, 2006; Schattle, 2006; Israel, 2013; Olds, 2012; Reid & Spencer-Oatey, 2012). Some universities have formed committees to define in their contexts what students need to do in order to become 'global citizens' (e.g. Frazier et al., 2008).
Our decision to use 'global citizen' instead of the concept of 'intercultural citizen', 'world citizen' or any other of the above-mentioned terms is based on two considerations: first, the need to use a term with which our respondents (Hungary and USA university students) were likely to be most familiar; and, second, to make clear that the questions are linked to globalization and other related global issues. This led to the development of the overall research question, 'To what extent do university students' perceptions of global citizenship and the importance of languages differ in Hungary and in the USA?'
The Context
In Hungary, a small Central European country, intensive English as a foreign language education started in the early 1990s, after 40 years of compulsory learning of Russian (Enyedi & Medgyes, 1998; Terestyéni, 2000; Vágó, 2000). In the USA, although English is 'the language spoken by most people' (Ryan, 2013: 1), is not the official language throughout the country. According to Crawford (2012), 27 states in the USA have active Official English laws. Perceptions of English (and other foreign languages) in the context of globalization might therefore be quite different in these two countries. The majority of students in the USA sample are native speakers of this global language, while students in Hungary learn English mainly in school. That difference could impact students' views of relationships among languages, language learning and global citizenship.
In addition, it will be of interest to see what respondents consider to be the characteristics of and requirements for global citizenship and how far their conceptualizations differ from those of educators and researchers in the field. In particular, we will consider the conceptual framework for intercultural citizenship (Byram, 2008), which is applied to the various projects presented in this book, to understand which aspects of intercultural citizenship might be more intuitively understood by students and which might require more emphasis.
Methods and Data
To address our question, 'To what extent do university students' perception of global citizenship and the importance of languages differ in Hungary and in the USA?', we used a questionnaire with one section to gather background information about respondents, and four sections about global citizenship: respondents' definition of global citizenship; their belief about whether 'all' or 'some' are global citizens; their perceptions of themselves as global citizens; and their beliefs about languages.
The questionnaire (see Appendix A) included both qualitative and quantitative questions and was developed based on ideas from theoretical works on English in the global world (see references listed above in the Introduction to this chapter), and also on Dower's (2003, 2008) dilemma of 'all or some' people being global citizens and the list of characteristics of global citizen based on Logsdon and Wood (2002, 2005). The data were collected during the spring semester of the 2012–2013 academic year. In Hungary, students were given ample time to complete the survey, but some students might have felt limited by answering in a foreign language (English). To compensate for this challenge, they were given the option to answer in Hungarian. In the USA, students had about 15–20 minutes to complete the survey. In some cases, that might have prevented students from giving longer answers to open-ended questions.
We obtained a convenience sample of 127 university students in Hungary and 81 in the USA, a total of 208. Of the 208, 137 (66.2%) were female and 177 (85.5%) were born between 1990 and 1994, i.e. 22–26 years old.
Language competence
Of the 127 (60.87%) students from Hungary, 96 were female (76.2%) and of the 81 (39.1%) students from the USA about half were female (41, 50.6%). While 124 of the students in Hungary (97.6%) grew up speaking Hungarian in Hungary, the remaining three were English, German and Lithuanian native speakers. Among the students in Hungary, 63 (74.0%) indicated that they had at least an intermediate understanding of English. In contrast, 71 (87.7%) of the students from the USA grew up speaking English and seven (8.6%) Mandarin, and three students spoke Dutch, Korean or Thai as their first language. Of the USA students, 23 (28.4%) reported at least an intermediate level of understanding Spanish, a reflection of the fact that in the USA Spanish is the most frequently spoken language after English.
In terms of disciplines, the students in the sample from Hungary were mainly from Tourism Management, International Relations, International Business and Environment Engineering programmes. A substantial majority (111, 87.4%) had already been to another country, 42 (33.1%) for less than one month, 49 (38.6%) for a period of one to three months, and 15 (11.8%) for up to six months. A total of 95.3% reported that they spoke one or more foreign languages, the majority speaking either English (113, 89%) or German (81, 63.8%). Some 26.0% reported speaking three foreign languages, 18.1% reported speaking four foreign languages, and one person claimed to be able to speak 10 foreign languages. In addition to Hungarian, 11 languages were mentioned by students, namely: Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Latin, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian and Spanish.
In the USA, the students were undergraduates in a general education humanities course. 50 (61.7%) respondents had been outside the States compared with 111 (87.4%) of their Hungarian peers. 15 (18.5%) had spent less than a month abroad, 13 (16%) between one and three months, and 13.6% (11) up to six months. 67 (82.7%) reported that they spoke a foreign language with the majority, 48 (59.3%), speaking Spanish at the elementary (25; 30.9%), intermediate (22; 27.2%) or advanced level (1; 1.2%). The range of languages mentioned by respondents in the USA was broader than in Hungary. Students reported 16 languages in addition to English, namely Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Ebonics, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Mandarin, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Urdu and Vietnamese.
Definitions of Global Citizenship
One hundred and forty of the total of 208 students (74 (52.9%) from Hungary, 66 (47.1%) from the USA) provided a definition of what is meant by a 'global citizen'. A thematic analysis yielded six themes, coded as: living/travel excursions; cultural awareness; equality; right of abode; inclusive philosophy; and multidimensional constructs.
Tied to the theme of living/travel excursions, there were 46 responses, 33 (71.7%) from Hungary (of 127, 26%) and 13 (28.2%) from students in the USA (of 81, 16%). Illustrations of definitions of 'global citizenship' in this theme are:
A world traveller. Someone who belongs to more than one country across different continents. (USA)
Someone who resides in or is travelling to a country other than their own. (USA)
People who have experienced living in other countries. (USA; Hungary)
A person who travelled a lot to different countries. (Hungary)
Cultural awareness linked to travel or to experiences from living in other countries with some reference to knowledge of foreign languages was mentioned in 26 (18.9%) responses. Of these, 17 (65.4%) were from students in Hungary and 9 (34.6%) from students in the USA. These responses typically went beyond merely travel. Some of the responses were:
One who has a background in more than one culture, more than one citizenship of a country. (USA)
The one who can travel without borders and is keen to know other countries and culture. (Hungary)
A person who travelled/travels a lot, has been to many countries, knows about different cultures and their traditions. (USA)
Speaks different foreign languages, lived in other countries, learned about other cultures and their traditions. (Hungary)
Another 18 (13.1%) students focused on right of abode. This theme had substantially different numbers of responses from students according to country as four (22.2%) were from Hungary and 14 (77.8%) were from the USA. According to these students, a 'global citizen' is:
Someone who may either have multiple citizenships or visas to work and live in multiple different countries. That or having knowledge about the world around you. ... (USA)
A citizen that lives in or has citizenship in many countries. (USA) Cross-country nationality (sic) – especially in EU. (Hungary)
Issues of equality were mentioned by nine (6.6%) students, three from Hungary and six from the USA. There was contrast of equality with nationalism: Someone who recognizes humans as equal regardless of national origin. Global citizens do not consider citizenship a meaningful characteristic when making choices. Global citizens do not subscribe to nationalism. (Hungary)
There was also emphasis on ethics and responsibilities beyond one's own country:
People across the globe whom (sic) respect ethical standards among the world. (USA)
Someone who [has] responsibility to world as well as their country. (USA) (Word in square brackets added by authors.)
Another 35 (25.5%) students (14 (40%) from Hungary and 21 (60%) from the USA) had a broader concept which we labelled an 'inclusive philosophy'. They felt a 'global citizen' was:
Citizen of the world, traveller of many places, person on Earth (USA)
A citizen who is developing and who is open to the world (Hungary)
I think the way to define this is a ... hard thing to do. Being a global citizen means to me that the person is aware of the ongoing things around the world and knowing something about every culture, history, language. (Hungary)
That person who is a global citizen often or always travels a lot, open to the world, he/she is interested in other cultures and also speaks different foreign languages. (Hungary)
In most of these it is noticeable that 'open to the world' recurs and seems to imply an interest again beyond the national. Of special note was that three students (two from Hungary and one from the USA, proposed a definition for 'global citizenship' that included responsibilities of the global citizen:
A person who feels their societal responsibilities are more to all people on Earth than to just those in their home country (USA)
The concept of an overarching one world government system in which all humans are joined as citizens of the earth such as to not replace but supersede current nation based government citizenships. This is the global citizenship. (Hungary)
Again, it is evident that there is a contrast between national and global citizenship where the latter is not 'replaced' but is of less significance, and responsibilities are to 'the world' or 'the Earth'.
A further group of questions had seven statements listed as possible contributors to global citizenship (Table 1.1). In Table 1.2, these results are provided in terms of the mean and standard deviation for the overall results, and for the disaggregated results by country. Using a five-point Likert scale examination of these seven characteristics, the item, 'Learn about other cultures' (mean = 4.14), was rated the highest overall.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
Foreword by Martyn Barrett
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Introduction
Section 1. The Baseline: Learners’ and Teachers’ Perceptions of Intercultural Citizenship
1. Irina Golubeva, Mary Yakimowski and Manuela Wagner: Comparing Students’ Perceptions of Language Learning and Global Citizenship in Hungary and the United States
2. Han Hui, Song Li, Jing Hongtao and Zhao Yuqin: Exploring Perceptions of Intercultural Citizenship among English Learners in Chinese Universities
3. Ulla Lundgren: Intercultural encounters in Teacher Education: Collaboration Towards Intercultural Citizenship
Section 2. Teachers Cooperating
4. Etsuko Yamada and Jessie Hsieh: Beyond Language Barriers: Approaches to Developing Citizenship for Lower Level Language Classes
5. Stephanie Ann Houghton and Mei Lan Huang: Incorporating Environmental Action into Intercultural Dialogue: Personal and Environmental Transformation and the Development of Intercultural Communicative Competence
Section 3. Learners Cooperating
6. Melina Porto, Petra Daryai-Hansen, María Emilia Arcuri and Kira Schifler: Green Kidz: Young Learners Engage in Intercultural Environmental Citizenship in English Language Classroom In Argentina and Denmark.
7. Catherine Peck and Manuela Wagner: Understanding Intercultural Citizenship in Korea and the USA
8. Melina Porto: Mural Art and Graffiti: Developing Intercultural Citizenship in Higher Education Classes in English as a Foreign Language in Argentina and Italy
9. Melina Porto and Leticia Yulita: Language and Intercultural Citizenship Education for a Culture of Peace. The Malvinas/Falklands Project
10. Leticia Yulita and Melina Porto: Human Rights Education in Language Teaching
Reflections: Learning From the Challenges and Seeking Ways Forward