This ground-breaking book is the first to describe in detail how teachers, supported by university educators and education advisers, might plan and implement innovative ideas based on sound theoretical foundations. Focusing on the teaching and learning of intercultural communicative competence in foreign language classrooms in the USA, the authors describe a collaborative project in which graduate students and teachers planned, implemented and reported on units which integrated intercultural competence in a systematic way in classrooms ranging from elementary to university level. The authors are clear and honest about what worked and what didn’t, both in their classrooms and during the process of collaboration. This book will be required reading for both scholars and teachers interested in applying academic theory in the classroom, and in the teaching of intercultural competence.
Manuela Wagner is Professor of Language Education at the University of Connecticut. Her research focuses on the integration of intercultural dialogue and intercultural citizenship education (Byram, 2008) and across the curriculum from elementary school through post-secondary education. She is particularly interested in the interplay of theory and practice and has been part of and helped create communities of practice to implement theories of Intercultural Competence and Citizenship as well as related conceptual frameworks (theories of criticality, intercultural communication, social justice, intellectual humility, the Glocademia matrix (Guilherme, 2022)) in practice. The resulting book projects include the co-edited volumes Teaching Intercultural Competence Across the Age Range: From Theory to Practice (2018) and Education for Intercultural Citizenship: Principles in Practice (2017), and the co-authored book Teaching Intercultural Citizenship Across the Curriculum: The Role of Language Education (2019).
Dorie Conlon Perugini is a doctoral student at the University of Connecticut in the department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages concentrating on Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies. She is also an elementary Spanish teacher in Glastonbury, Connecticut where she teaches grades 1-5 and conducts action research. Her research interests include intercultural competence, social justice, raciolinguistics, and culturally sustaining pedagogies. Dorie has co-edited Teaching Intercultural Competence Across the Age Range: Theory to Practice, which shares the journey of world language teachers partnering with graduate students from the University of Connecticut to help students develop intercultural competence.
Michael Byram is Professor Emeritus at Durham University, England. Having studied languages at Cambridge University, he taught French and German in school and adult education and then did teacher education at Durham. He was adviser to the Language Policy Division of the Council of Europe and then on the expert group which produced the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture. His research has included the education of minorities, foreign language teaching and intercultural competence, and more recently on how the PhD is experienced and assessed in a range of different countries.
