Melina Porto

Intercultural citizenship education in an EFL online project in Argentina

In this article, I describe an online intercultural citizenship experience in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom in Argentina. An action research project on the Malvinas/Falklands war fought between Argentina and the UK in 1982 was carried out in 2012. Through a comparative methodology involving Argentine and English foreign language classes, students develop a critical perspective on texts while they also create an international identification, different from their national/regional identifications. While the existing body of work on intercultural citizenship and criticality in the foreign language classroom is abundant in Europe, North America and Asia, empirical studies hardly exist in this region and one of the questions to be answered deals with the transferability of curriculum research across continents. After a description of the theoretical framework and the project itself, I present student samples and analysis that provide evidence that this intercultural citizenship project was fruitfully implemented for the first time in Argentinean Higher Education in the foreign language classroom. I then outline the significance of the project from the point of view of online intercultural communication and the theory of intercultural citizenship.

Ecological and intercultural citizenship in the primary English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom: an online project in Argentina

This article describes an online intercultural citizenship project concerning the environment in the primary English-language classroom carried out in 2013/2014 between Argentina and Denmark. It is part of a network of projects coordinated by Michael Byram that involves teachers and researchers in Europe, the US and East Asia. The project is framed within the theory of intercultural citizenship in the foreign-language classroom and it is the only study set in the primary school context. Furthermore, developments in Latin America in this field are scarce and the study intends to fill an empirical gap. Although the comparative perspective is ingrained in the project, the article describes mainly the Argentinian standpoint. At the same time, and more generally (beyond language education), it will be argued, and shown, that the project can also be framed within the notion of ecological citizenship, understood as a new form of citizenship that presents new challenges to educators. While the notion of citizenship in formal education usually assumes nationalist and patriotic mindsets, in this project ecological citizenship offers a new framework that introduces an international, transnational or global perspective. Furthermore, citizenship education tends to be reserved to secondary civics and social studies classrooms and in this sense the focus on the primary school context and on the foreign-language classroom is innovative in this project.

Language and intercultural education: an interview with Michael Byram

This article reports an interview with Michael Byram, Professor Emeritus, University of Durham in the United Kingdom, during his visit to Argentina in September 2011. Michael Byram is one of the main international referents in intercultural education. The interview addresses issues such as language education, intercultural and citizenship education, education in general, formal schooling, critical pedagogies, political and economic factors involved in education, teacher education and research in education, among others. Even though Byram specializes in foreign language education and focuses upon language education in particular at certain moments in the interview, the connection with other subjects in the school curriculum surfaces at all times, as does the connection with general aspects of education, which are relevant to all the actors involved in this field. This interview is framed within current understandings of the cultural dimension of language education and education in general. In order to introduce the reader to this framework, the article first addresses the connection between language and culture in a historical perspective, which makes Byrams work relevant to all educators (not only language educators). It goes on to provide an outline of Byrams model of intercultural competence for the description of cultural understanding. Topics of general interest emerge such as the role of emotion, affect and imagination in education as well as the interconnection among culture, language, imagination and literature – something that Byram and his colleagues have put forth. The discussion is permeated by identity issues which are involved in the learning and teaching of any language, and in the learning and teaching, in a given language, of any discipline. The centrality of language in education becomes manifest, and consequently the relevance of Byrams work to all the actors involved in education in one way or another. Throughout the political and ideological dimensions of education are touched upon, along with a discussion of the pedagogical implications of the various theoretical considerations addressed in the article.

A teaching narrative: my growth as a foreign language educator through teaching diaries

The aim of this paper is to share my perceptions and reflections on the experience of introducing elements of autonomy in a constrained educational setting in Argentina. I recorded these perceptions in teaching diaries written weekly after each class for the academic year 2005 (over 35 weeks). These teaching diaries are part of a larger, long-term, qualitative action-research study aimed at introducing some elements of autonomy in my University-based classroom for the first time, and diary writing as a vehicle for channelling my reactions to the innovation. The teaching diaries portray my feelings, emotions, values, and beliefs and offer testimony of my professional growth as I struggled to modify my classroom practices to make my teaching more responsive to my beliefs about good pedagogy within the constraints at my University.

'Yo antes No Reciclaba y Esto Me Cambio por Completo la Consiencia': Intercultural Citizenship Education in the English Classroom.

ABSTRACT This article describes a telecollaboration project about the environment in the primary English as a foreign language classroom carried out in 2013/2014 between Argentina and Denmark. It combines English language teaching with intercultural citizenship education and forms part of a network of projects in Europe, the US and East Asia. This is the only one set in the primary school context and in Latin America. After some preparatory work, the Argentinian and Danish children met online through Skype, using English, Spanish and Danish, to design a collaborative poster to raise awareness of the importance of taking care of the environment. Conversational and documentary data were collected and analysed qualitatively, in this case focusing on the Argentinian perspective. With a critical literacy conceptualisation, the project demonstrates growth in self/intercultural awareness, criticality and social justice responsibility, and the emergence of a sense of community of transnational peers amongst the children involved.

The Role and Status of English in Spanish- Speaking Argentina and Its Education System: Nationalism or Imperialism?

There is a lot of controversy nowadays in the field of English Language Teaching (ELT) in the context of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) regarding the status and role of English in non-English speaking countries, in particular in developing countries, as well as in English-speaking countries with a history of colonialism. In these settings, the discourse of English as a form of imperialism requires a reconsideration of the role and status of English in the national school curriculum in primary and secondary school contexts. It also requires the exploration of the connections with nationalism and national identity, for within this discourse of imperialism, English tends to be seen as detrimental to the national identity, which education explicitly aims to form and develop through formal schooling.

Extending Reading Research with a Focus on Cultural Understanding and Research on Intercultural Communication: An Empirical Investigation in Argentina.

The work presented here is an empirical study of how advanced learners of English as a foreign language in Argentina access and understand the culture-specific dimensions of literary narrative texts. It has three purposes. First, to extend research into reading in a foreign language to take account of the culture-specific content of texts. Second, to extend the focus of research on intercultural communication to include the analysis of reading processes. Finally, to introduce an approach to the analysis of the cultural dimension of the reading process using a new model of levels of cultural understanding. It is argued that cultural understanding goes beyond the quantification of prior knowledge or background knowledge in the form of idea units as evidence of the comprehension process. In this sense, the proposed model succeeds in portraying a more detailed picture of cultural understanding in this setting.

Intercultural citizenship in the (foreign) language classroom

The purpose of this special issue is to bring the theory of intercultural citizenship education to readers’ attention and to offer teachers and researchers working with this or similar concepts the opportunity to make their work known in a context of a coherent presentation of theory and practice. In this introduction, we will explain the rationale and the concepts involved in intercultural citizenship education and present the articles in this special issue which arose from our call for papers.

Research on English language teaching and learning in Argentina (2007–2013)

In this article we review research on English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching and learning published in Argentina between 2007 and 2013. This is the first review of a Latin American country in this series. Argentina has a century-long tradition of training EFL teachers but a comparatively shorter though fruitful history of foreign language (FL) research. The article examines 88 articles that appeared in locally published peer-reviewed conference proceedings, academic journals and one edited collection. The contributions cover a wide spectrum of topics that illustrates prominent research interests in the country, such as the role of imagination, emotion and affect in language comprehension and production, intercultural dimensions, FL teacher education and development, content and language integrated learning (CLIL), computer-assisted language learning (CALL), the teaching of English for academic or specific purposes, testing, assessment and evaluation, and materials design and course development. The review includes work by specialists whose research may not be known outside the boundaries of Argentina but who produce high-quality situated research that accounts for the specificity of the local educational setting.

Cooperative Writing Response Groups: Revising Global Aspects of Second-Language Writing in a Constrained Educational Environment.

This article describes a cooperative writing response initiative designed to develop writing skills in foreign/second-language contexts (hereafter L2). The strategy originated from my desire to cater for my learners’ need to become better writers in English within a constrained educational environment in Argentina. In this article I describe this strategy and show how it has worked in my setting. First, I offer the rationale on which it rests, based on a sociocultural conception of reading and writing. This involves brief considerations about the notions of collaborative writing groups, social responses to texts and coherence in L2 writing. Second, I describe and explain the strategy in detail, and include one handout with specific written instructions (as my learners received them) for the cooperative writing response groups with a focus on coherence, i.e. global aspects of the composing process. Finally, I exemplify the strategy using one learner’s written text as a foundation (disclosed by permission).