Primarily motivated by the practical question of whether it is feasible to identify the barriers that English instructors would face while cultivating students' intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in a ubiquitous learning (u-learning) environment, the study outlined in this chapter examined English instructors' online teaching experience in terms of their beliefs and pedagogical practice. A mixed-method research design was adopted to collect data from a survey among 110 English as a second language (ESL) instructors in Chinese universities and interviews with five of them. The findings indicated significant tension between Chinese ESL instructors' disposition towards effective intercultural education in a u-learning environment and their deeply held pedagogical conviction that teaching ICC requires face-to-face interactions. The authors, therefore, suggest that Chinese ESL instructors should be equipped with alternative teaching beliefs toward more innovative educational approaches.
TopIntroduction
Given the status of English, as a lingua franca in business and international political negotiation, a lot of countries have been carrying out K-12 English as a second language (ESL) education, cultivating interpersonal communication skills, cognitive academic language proficiency and intercultural communicative competence (ICC). Liddicoat and Scarino (2013) asserted that in language learning, we expect to develop ICC. However, due to the acquired nature of intercultural communications, some practical learning objectives are not always available, learnable, or assessable in the classroom. In the same vein, students are recommended to promote ICC also in fieldwork or international exchange programs, which unfortunately are far from enough in terms of geography and quantity. In this regard, innovative teaching approaches supported by information and communication technologies (ICTs) and electronic resources appear to be a potential answer to intercultural language education.
Labeled as U-learning, the ubiquitous approach is an innovative learning approach that employs mobile, wireless communication and sensing technologies to enable learners to interact with both the real-world and digital-world objects, providing constant sources of learning, practice, feedback, reflection, and access to virtual-realistic communicative contexts and immersive experiences required for meaningful foreign language education. In China, the government equips cloud-based online learning environments, in universities and schools across the country, making it feasible to provide education in a ubiquitous setting. Teachers, on the other hand, have been encouraged to welcome the reformation of English education, such as the “Classroom Revolution” and the “Golden Classes”, shifting from the traditional chalk and blackboard teaching to massive digital teaching sources and approaches (Meng, Fan & Lin, 2021). However, the process of innovation in English teaching is tough, whereas Chinese teachers are reluctant to employ online applications and students lack independent learning abilities (Shen, 2019; Zhao, Wang & Cao, 2022). The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the abrupt commencement of the online teaching modality in late 2019, have aggravated these issues. Of particular concern is what are the barriers that English teachers face to adapting to a U-learning educational setting. This issue coupled with the lack of research on teachers’ beliefs in teaching ICC in a Chinese context, justify the need for further study. Therefore, the study outlined in this chapter intended to understand the barriers that English instructors would face while building ICC in a U-learning environment. Accordingly, the aim of the study reported herein was to answer two overarching questions:
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RQ1: What are the beliefs and practices of English instructors towards cultivating ICC in a U-learning environment?
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RQ2: What are the barriers that English instructors face while implementing ICC beliefs in a U-learning environment?
To these purposes, the instructors’ beliefs on instilling ICC in a U-learning environment were examined and compared to their reported pedagogical practice to identify contradiction, if any. In addition, factors that could contribute to the instructors’ beliefs and practice were explored. Finally, attempts were also made to identify impediments to ICC education in a U-learning environment.
TopBackground
Shifting the focus from communicative competence (CC) to building students’ intercultural ICC has been a common trend in ESL teaching. Scholars presented a variety of ICC models based on their study goals and perspectives. One of the most well-known ICC models is Byram’s (1997, 2020), which lays out the fundamental notions that should guide teachers in supporting individual language learners in acquiring a set of talents or a complex competence to communicate successfully in intercultural circumstances. The concept has gained so much momentum among educators that it now serves as a foreign language teaching paradigm for ICC-related instruction and evaluation. More crucially, Byram’s model explicitly shows language teaching objectives, which has practical significance for international language education and research.