Anastasia Khanukaeva – University of Stavanger, Norway
Keywords
EFL, intercultural competence, cultural self-awareness, identity, eportfolios
Abstract
This paper reports on findings from a PhD study that focuses on cognitive manifestations of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) among EFL students in Norway. Using an eportfolio approach, the study aimed to stimulate learners’ reflective processes through a number of intercultural activities, explore their cultural self-awareness and develop the formation of self-image. The EPIC (the Eportfolio of Intercultural Competence) employed during the intervention is a series of tasks and individual reflection questions which were designed by the researcher and the teachers and included into the curriculum with reference to the objectives associated with ICC. The EPIC is a digital collection of artifacts of learning (through various forms of media such as audio, video, graphics, comic strips, excerpts from picture books etc.), that demonstrates growth, acquisition of knowledge or skills, and student creativity over time.This paper argues for the significance of critical and reflexive thinking in intercultural education (Dervin, 2011; Holliday, 2010) and applies it within the context of EFL among young learners (the 9th grade). Pupils are exposed to various forms of knowledge and information, relationships with peers and a variety of other social (often multicultural) groups. Therefore, schooling, particularly during adolescence, has been considered a crucial context for identity constructions and self-development (Rivers & Houghton, 2013). As argued, ‘ELF users do not meet cultures, but [they are] complex subjects who ‘do’ identity and culture with each other’ (Holmes & Dervin, 2016, p. 9). For this study, ICC is viewed as comprising a set of various skills and dispositions that support effective and appropriate interaction in a variety of cultural contexts (Fantini & Tirmizi, 2006). The ICC dimensions, operationalized for the study, are cognitive skills and knowledge, with particular attention to (inter)cultural awareness and skills of multiperspectivity, as the ability to decentre from one’s own perspective (Barrett, 2013). Cultural self-awareness referring to knowledge of self as it relates to cultural identity is the essential starting point for the development of ICC (Dervin, 2011, etc). Kramsch (1993) argues that students need to be confronted with many cultures and multiple perspectives, so that they can more easily reflect on their own cultural identity as only one among many possible identities. Orientating to multiple cultural identities and multiple perspectives is thus an important facet of the current study and is addressed in the eportfolios. In order to help students to enhance self-awareness it is necessary to adopt ready-made activities or design new ones, therefore, one of the aims of the paper will be to describe the affordances of the selected eportfolio tasks.In a 9- week intervention case study, the pupils from 5 classes (N = 56; mean age 14) were asked to complete various in-class activities and self-reflective open-ended questions, prompted by eportfolio tasks. They included in-class activity in which the students were asked to describe themselves, their native culture, and the foreign culture through metaphors; games on identity (Berardo & Deardorff, 2012; Gardner, 1983; Rigamonti & Scott-Monkhouse, 2016). The materials produced by the students in response to eportfolio tasks, including 192 texts and 6 minutes of audio-recorded material, were one source of data. Additionally, 5 focus group interviews, lasting approximately 40 minutes each were conducted following the intervention in order to display individual thoughts, feelings and experiences, and set them in relation to those of other pupils. The pre-project questionnaire was used in order to contextualize the data collected through the above-mentioned data sets. Pupils’ texts and focus group interviews are analysed by means of qualitative content analysis. Based on these data sources, the paper explores the following research questions: 1) How do pupils represent their identities through the eportfolios? What particular identities (or layers of identity) do they construct for themselves? 2) To what extent does participation in the eportfolio project influence the students’ cultural self-awareness and how is this demonstrated? What core themes identified in pupils’ texts indicate a development of cultural self-awareness?
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