Language Teachers’ Intercultural Learning: A Sociocultural Perspective

Responding to the call to build teacher interculturality in more dynamic ways, this paper analyzes developmental trajectories of three pre‐service teachers enrolled in a course on language and culture in a master’s in second language teaching program at a U.S. university. From a sociocultural theory perspective, the article illustrates the various ways in which the pre‐service teachers incorporated (or not) the mediational means available to them. The article findings support the claim about the sociocultural nature of human learning, while the analysis informed by a sociocultural perspective on learning explicates why intercultural learning can be more enriching for some participating pre‐service teachers than for others. In line with the sociocultural perspective on human learning, the article highlights the importance of the affective dimension and activity for promoting teacher learning and argues for the need to better understand the process of teachers’ application of new understandings into their practice. Besides, the article demonstrates the value of teacher educators’ reflection on their work. It ends with pedagogical implications for language teacher educators. In line with the recent call by Smolcic and Arends (2017) to build teacher interculturality in more dynamic ways, this article analyzes developmental paths of three pre‐service teachers participating in a project introduced into a course on language and culture in a master’s for second language teaching program at a U.S. university. Recent inquiries into teacher intercultural learning highlight the necessity to expose future language teachers to the fluid nature of culture rather than to learn about cultural differences and facts in the context of promoting culturally responsive pedagogy (Black & Bernades, 2014; Dervin, 2015; Hoyt, 2015; Jokikokko, 2010; Smolcic & Arends, 2017). Besides, we witness a shift away from the word intercultural competence since it pre‐supposes an endpoint in the learning process about cultures and a preference for the term intercultural learning (Smolcic & Arends, 2017). A project reflecting these developments in the field was integrated into the course on language and culture offered to prospective language teachers in the master’s program at a U.S. university with the following goals in mind: 1. to increase prospective teachers’ self‐ awareness in terms of culture; 2. to promote re‐thinking and re‐design of one’s teaching practices in the classroom given new understandings. The study’s unique contributions lie in: 1. proposing a way to engage prospective language teachers in conceptualizing culture in more dynamic ways; 2. investigating the unique developmental trajectories of participating pre‐service teachers from a sociocultural perspective. In particular, while teachers’ engagement in ethnographic interviews has been examined in the context of foreign language education (Allen, 2000), the research on English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ experiences with interviews is only emerging (Nelson, 2018; Smolcic & Arends, 2017). This study aims to add to this emergent body