Critical Intercultural Pedagogy for Intercultural Communication in the English Language Classroom: Third Spaces, Participatory Action, and Social Justice

Introduction

A major challenge in today’s contemporary education is, indisputably, the struggle against growing social inequity, as well as people’s inability to rethink education as a practice of freedom (Giroux 2020). Research suggests that higher education may reinforce societal inequity when pursuing traditional goals and practices that are perpetuated in neoliberal environments and where marginalised and underrepresented students may lack real egalitarian opportunities for learning and growth (Giroux, 2020). As a result, there is a call for “actionable approaches” to teaching and learning in higher education that promote social justice (Parson & Ozaki, 2020, p. 1). These considerations are further accentuated in the teaching-learning of English (in TESOL situation, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) in higher education settings as language represents symbolic and cultural capitals through which asymmetrical power relations can be established and strengthened. Research supports that, despite social and cultural benefits, the teaching-learning of English may also perpetuate inequality by furthering modes of domination and subordination between individuals of different status (Gonçalves & Schluter, 2020).

English has been widely recognized as an international language for communication. As such, access to the language has been massive as in most non-English speaking countries (Butler, 2015). This global spread of the language has been acknowledged for a number of positive aspects such as English as a social and economic (linguistic currency) mobilizer (Munandar, 2015) and career advancement and engagement in the global community (Canagarajah, 2012). On the other side of the coin, important concerns emerge from the lack of, limitations or quality access to English language learning (Sayer, 2018), and accordingly, how it may contribute to a socioeconomic divide in many societies, where this linguistic proficiency sometimes works as a polarising agent that refers to those individuals proficient in the language and those who are not. Besides this polarisation, processes of exclusion may be added: local cultures and languages are rarely acknowledged when debates around bilingualism and multilingualism take place, while English-Spanish bilingualism in Colombia, for example, seems to be the rule and a major concern in the national education arena.

English in Colombia has long been observed as the most important foreign language in the country that is mandatory in both public and private education (Vélez-Rendón, 2003). As such, language educational policies have been designed to shape the State’s goals and promote proficient English speakers as a part of the international economic strategy towards advanced globalisation (Fairclough, 2007). This has led to an important number of English language teacher education programmes in the country that incorporate a significant sector of English language teachers whose English language proficiency and language pedagogical knowledge may vary considerably due to the difference in quality between public and private education (Sánchez-Jabba, 2013).