Intercultural competence in EFL classroom : interacting factors among textbooks, teacher and learners

Abstract

As the importance of intercultural competence is increasingly recognized by educators all over the world, the need for assessing the various dimension of intercultural competence also grows. The current study, taking the three perpetual factors of education which are the learners, the teachers as well as the textbooks into consideration, aims to investigate and achieve a picture of the status and quality of intercultural competence in Iranian learners. The textbooks which are used in Iranian government high schools have been analyzed using a checklist with coding schemes developed based on the model of Cortazzi and Jin (1999) regarding the presentation of cultural material. Also various dimensions of intercultural competence, which are orientation to knowledge, empathy, respect for otherness, knowledge discovery, attitude and cultural affinity (identified by, among others, Ruben (1976), Byram (1997), and Kupka, Everett & Widermuth (2007)) were investigated among a group of Iranian students using focused group interview and Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS). Also a number of Iranian teachers were interviewed in order to find out their role in facilitating intercultural competence in learners. The study proves that the Iranian textbooks are very weak regarding the presentation of culture and cultural materials. Also this study indicates that most of the dimensions of intercultural competence do not exist in Iranian learners and the teachers cannot play the role of facilitator regarding the enhancement of intercultural competence.