Language Teachers’ Intercultural Knowledge, Competencies, and Beliefs
摘要
As global societies grow increasingly mobile and interconnected, language teachers have a responsibility to develop students’ intercultural competence—the ability to engage meaningfully with individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds. Doing so requires teachers to be knowledgeable about culture, hold intercultural competence themselves, and believe that an intercultural approach will benefit their students. Therefore, this chapter evaluates the current status of intercultural language teaching through a systematic review of empirical research published between 2010 and 2020 on language teachers’ knowledge, competencies, and beliefs regarding culture, its role in the language classroom, and the development of students’ intercultural communicative competence. Patterns in the studies’ designs are discussed in terms of the primary focus of the research questions, theoretical frameworks, participants, and methodology. Next, overall themes and trends across the research studies are synthesized. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications of this systematic review, recommendations for further research, and identification of limitations.