Learning how to teach intercultural communicative competence via telecollaboration: A model for language teacher education

Abstract

Much of the research on Internet-mediated foreign language education to date has focused on how participation in telecollaborative partnerships facilitates the development of intercultural or linguistic competence in the foreign language learner. In contrast, this chapter focuses on the ways in which participation in such a partnership might facilitate the development of both intercultural communicative competence and critical media literacy in the foreign language teacher. Because Internet-mediated intercultural exchange is a highly complex social activity, teachers cannot be adequately prepared for their crucial role in such exchanges by simply reading the relevant academic literature in a typical pre-service teacher education seminar; instead, they must build their knowledge base via experiential learning and model teaching, two practices that will afford them the opportunity to become intercultural speakers themselves before they will be required to facilitate the processes of intercultural learning for their own future students.Within a reflective practice model of teacher education, this chapter explores how preservice teachers of English in Germany as well as in-service teachers of various foreign languages in the United States began to build their knowledge base with respect to Internet-mediated foreign language education, critical media literacy, and intercultural communicative competence via participation in a two-tiered, project-based telecollaborative exchange with international partners during their pre- and in-service education.