Short-term study abroad: Designing an intercultural induction program to prepare prospective language teachers

ABSTRACT

Short-term study abroad programmes can help prospective language teachers develop intercultural competences, vital when working with socially and linguistically diverse language learners. However, participating in such programmes does not necessarily lead to a more advanced level of interculturality. Induction programmes before mobility periods can help prospective language teachers develop a more advanced intercultural mindset. This article focuses on a curriculum design project for an intercultural induction programme that aims to prepare short-term study abroad candidates from Turkey. The programme’s primary goal, which was informed by three in-depth qualitative studies, was to help candidates reflect on cultural essentialism, ethnocentrism, multiplicity and intersectionality of identities, English as a lingua franca communication, and native/non-native English speaker binary/hierarchy. Guided by a systematic and contextualised curriculum design process and suggestions based in (critical) interculturality literature, this induction programme attempts to offer a critical, reflexive, and experiential preparation period. Such systematic and contextualised preparation efforts can contribute to the growing literature on intercultural preparation and the design of other intercultural induction programmes or refinements of existing programmes.

KEYWORDS:

• Short-term study abroad
• interculturality
• critical interculturality
• intercultural induction programme
• language teacher education
• language curriculum design

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

No funding was received for this study.

Notes on contributors

Emrullah Yasin Çiftçi

Emrullah Yasin Çiftçi is a research assistant at Middle East Technical University, where he is also working on a PhD in the English Language Teaching programme. He is currently working on his dissertation that focuses on neoliberal common sense, international student mobility, and language teacher education. His research interests include language teacher education, critical interculturality, political economy in language education, critical discourse studies, and qualitative inquiry. His work related to interculturality and/or language teacher education has been published in several journals including Australian Journal of Teacher Education, Educational Technology & Society, Language and Intercultural Communication, ReCALL, The Language Learning Journal, and The Qualitative Report.

Ayşegül Daloğlu

Ayşegül Daloğlu (Ph.D., Middle East Technical University) is a professor in the Department of Foreign Language Education at Middle East Technical University. Her areas of professional interest include language teaching methodology, curriculum design, testing and assessment, language teacher education and professional development, classroom research, and technology in language education. Her work has been published in various scholarly journals.