Teaching comments: intercultural communication skills in the digital age

Abstract

This paper explores the pedagogical and conceptual issues that accompany the integration of intercultural communication skills into the secondary curriculum by analyzing the interactions of 102 adolescents in Spain and the USA during a 15-week, classroom-based, international online exchange. Focusing on the skills of discovery and interaction within a model of intercultural communicative competence, I examined the ways in which adolescent students displayed these skills through their online comments as well as the extent to which participants themselves perceived that their partnerships were successful. The findings from this study demonstrate that the adolescents displayed a range of interactional features that have been previously documented as interculturally strategic in research with post-secondary students engaged in similar online exchange projects. Such skills form part of a larger construct of intercultural communicative competence that, in turn, folds into the types of new literacy skills needed to write, read, communicate, produce, consume, and critique in a digital age. This kind of critical engagement with literacy fosters contexts in which students can grapple with authentic intercultural interactions and better understand how the words and symbols they send and receive position them as their own representatives and as representatives of their immediate communities and larger cultural groups.

Keywords:

• online
• international
• adolescent
• secondary
• pedagogy

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by a National Academy of Education/Spencer Post-Doctoral Research Grant. I would also like to give special thanks to one of my collaborating teachers, Angela Newby, whose enthusiasm and organization come together to spark innovative instruction for her students.