Attending to ‘culture’ in intercultural language learning: a study of Indonesian language teachers in Australia

ABSTRACT

In recent decades, the field of language teaching has been increasingly recognised as having an important role in developing not only linguistic proficiency, but also a kind of ‘interculturality’ among students. Despite this ‘intercultural turn’ being evident in academic and policy documents, language teachers are at varying stages in their adaptation to such an approach. This paper draws on empirical data from a small-scale study conducted with teachers of Indonesian in Australian schools, to elucidate teachers’ understandings of their role as ‘intercultural’ educators. In particular, the notion of ‘culture’ is examined, and the ways it is deployed around ideas of ‘intercultural understanding’ and language teaching pedagogy. This paper argues that despite the prevalence of ‘interculturality’ in educational policy, and a prevailing ‘intercultural ethos’ amongst teachers, confusion persists around the foundational idea of ‘culture’, which may affect teaching philosophy and practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Intercultural
• culture
• language
• Indonesian
• education
• multicultural
• teacher

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Greg Noble and Megan Watkins for their support and feedback, as well as the two anonymous reviewers, whose comments assisted me in refining this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Seven General Capabilities are included in the Australian Curriculum, to be addressed across subject areas: Literacy; Numeracy; Information and Communication Technology capability; Critical and creative thinking; Personal and social capability; Ethical understanding; and Intercultural understanding.

2 See, for example, Liddicoat (2009), and Noble and Watkins (2014).

3 See, for example, Kohler (2014), and Kohler and Mahnken (2010).

4 The number of ethnic groups in Indonesia is contested, with figures of 300 to over 1000 being cited. The definition and measurement of such ‘ethnic’ categories is deeply problematic, as noted by Ananta, Arifin, Hasbullah, Handayani, and Pramono (2015).

5 See, for example, Hoon’s (2006) discussion of the ethnic-Chinese in Indonesia.

6 Ethics clearance was obtained from the researcher’s university and participants were recruited via an online Indonesian teachers’ forum.

7 All participant names are pseudonyms.

8 The way ‘culture’ is used here is addressed later in the article.

9 English as a Second Language.

10 Language Background Other Than English.

11 English as an Additional Language or Dialect.