1. Introduction
It is now widely accepted that a primary goal of language teaching programmes, informed by theoretical frameworks of communicative competence, is to develop students’ ability to communicate in the target language. This goal has largely been conceptualised linguistically (that is, the development of fluency, accuracy and appropriacy in the target language). The development of intercultural competence (or the ability to navigate interactions comfortably with others from different cultural backgrounds) has existed as an educational objective in second language (L2) education for well over two decades (Kramsch, Reference Kramsch1993), although its existence has not always found expression in language classrooms beyond a focus on facts about the target culture. However, Byram's model of intercultural communicative competence (1997) stands out as an example that has contributed greatly to raising awareness of the role of culture in the L2 classroom. Recent socio-political developments have also served to bring the importance of intercultural tolerance and awareness to the forefront of educational priorities in Western countries (European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2017). In Europe in particular, institutions such as the European Commission and the Council of Europe, as well as national governments, have responded to trends in society such as right-wing extremism, religious fanaticism and populist political movements by promoting models of global citizenship education which aim to develop active, informed and responsible citizens who are tolerant of difference and who are actively engaged in political and democratic processes (Council of Europe, 2016; European Commission, 2013). Universities have responded too by undertaking to internationalise their curricula and by introducing competence sets of intercultural competence and global citizenship in the descriptions of their graduate attributes (Leask, Reference Leask2015).
Over the past number of years many educators who are interested in developing the intercultural dimension of (FL) curricula have turned to virtual exchange in order to give students first-hand online learning experiences of interacting and collaborating with people from different cultural backgrounds and to thereby develop their intercultural competence. Virtual exchange is a pedagogical approach which involves the engagement of groups of learners in extended periods of online intercultural interaction and collaboration with partners from other cultural contexts or geographical locations as an integrated part of their educational programmes and under the guidance of educators and/or expert facilitators (O'Dowd, Reference O'Dowd2018; O'Dowd & Lewis, Reference O'Dowd, O'Dowd and Lewis2016). Differing interpretations of virtual exchange have emerged in different educational contexts. For example, the State University of New York group of universities in the US use the term ‘Collaborative Online International Learning’ (COIL) for their virtual exchange initiatives in different subject areas. Mentor-led virtual exchange networks such as Soliya have focused on bringing students from the West into dialogue with students from the Muslim and Arab world with the aim of developing a deeper understanding of the perspectives of others on important socio-political issues (Helm, Reference Helm, O'Dowd and Lewis2016). Meanwhile, initiatives from the field of Business Studies such as XCulture (Taras et al., Reference Taras, Caprar, Rottig, Sarala, Zakaria, Zhao and Huang2013) have striven to develop in students the necessary competences to work in what are commonly described as global virtual teams and to give them first-hand experience in online international collaboration in professional contexts.
In FL education, two main models of virtual exchange, e-tandem and telecollaboration, have been in use to develop language learners’ language and intercultural competences for over twenty years (see Dooly, Reference Dooly, Chapelle and Sauro2017 and O'Dowd, Reference O'Dowd, O'Dowd and Lewis2016 for recent overviews). During this time, virtual exchange has been employed principally as a tool for communicative language practice through interaction with native speakers (O'Rourke, Reference O'Rourke and O'Dowd2007) and also as an opportunity to explore different cultural perspectives through comparative and collaborative tasks based on cultural and socio-political themes (Furstenberg, Levet, English, & Maillet, Reference Furstenberg, Levet, English and Maillet2001).
However, in recent years, virtual exchange in FL contexts has often been criticised for a tendency to result in a superficial level of engagement with difference (Kramsch, Reference Kramsch2014) and for limited success in the development of intercultural awareness and understanding of other cultures (Kern, Reference Kern2014; O'Dowd, Reference O'Dowd and Lewis2006). The internet, it seems, has enabled educators to bring their learners into contact with members of other cultural and linguistic communities with relative ease, but it still remains unclear how this virtual contact should be structured and integrated into formal education in order to develop rich and productive learning experiences (Liddicoat & Scarino, Reference Liddicoat and Scarino2013). The challenge is therefore to improve the effectiveness of virtual exchange as an educational practice by attending to how its models and tasks are designed and the manner in which the virtual interactions are integrated into the formal learning process. Richardson observes: ‘Many [virtual exchange] activities reflect the face-to-face assumption that if students interact with those different to themselves they will somehow be transformed by the experience. We know that this is not the case, so a very careful design of online learning activities is essential’ (Reference Richardson2016, pp. 123–124).
With this in mind, in this article I review the two main approaches to virtual exchange in FL contexts, namely e-tandem and telecollaboration, and I use two representative case studies to illustrate some of the main strengths and limitations of these models which are generally based on the juxtaposition and comparison of two languacultures (Agar, Reference Agar1994). I then outline the key principles of global citizenship education which I propose can form the basis of a transnational model of virtual exchange which moves away from bilingual–bicultural approaches based on cultural comparison and language practice, and instead engages students with difference and alternative worldviews within a pedagogical structure of online collaboration, critical reflection and active contribution to global society (Leask, Reference Leask2015), which provides a more sustainable model of online intercultural exchange which can be applied across a wider range of FL scenarios.
2. Common approaches to virtual exchange in FL education
FL educators have been employing the internet to engage their learners in authentic communicative collaboration with users of other languages since the medium first emerged in the 1990s (Warschauer, Reference Warschauer1995). A recent review of the literature confirms that the principal models of virtual exchange used in FL education are the e-tandem and intercultural telecollaboration approaches (O'Dowd, Reference O'Dowd, O'Dowd and Lewis2016). The design and structure of the first of these models has been mainly informed by interactionist theories of second language acquisition (SLA) (Van der Zwaard & Bannick, Reference Van der Zwaard and Bannink2016) while intercultural telecollaboration has evolved from sociocultural theories of SLA (Dooly, Reference Dooly and Meskill2013) as well as pedagogical models of intercultural communicative competence (Byram, Reference Byram1997).
In the e-tandem model (O'Rourke, Reference O'Rourke and O'Dowd2007), two native speakers of different languages communicate together in order to practise the other's language, and messages are typically written half in the target and half in the first language (L1), thereby offering each partner with an opportunity to use their target language and, at the same time, provide their partner with authentic input. These exchanges are generally based on the principles of autonomy and reciprocity. The responsibility for a successful exchange rests mainly with the learners, who are expected to provide feedback on their partners’ content and on their target language performance. E-tandem partners take on the role of peer tutors who correct their partners’ errors and propose alternative formulations in the target language. The role of the teacher in the e-tandem model is usually quite limited. Learners are often encouraged to take on responsibility for finding their own themes for discussion, correcting their partners’ errors, and keeping a learner portfolio to reflect on their own learning progress.
E-tandem has been in use in L2 education for almost 20 years now (Brammerts, Reference Brammerts and Warschauer1996); however, a more recent example of a successful offshoot of the e-tandem approach is the Teletandem Brasil Project (http://www.teletandembrasil.org/), which originated at the Universidade Estadual Paulista in Brazil. This network matches Brazilian university students who want to learn an FL with students who are learning Portuguese. The network began in 2006 and now connects students in structured, institutionalised online language exchanges with partner universities in more than 40 universities in the USA, Mexico, Columbia, Germany and Italy. Teletandem differs from traditional e-tandem approaches as it is focuses on synchronous desktop conferencing using tools such as Skype and Google Hangouts. It can also be formally integrated into the curricula in many institutions and students receive credit for their online collaboration (Leone & Telles, Reference Leone, Telles, O'Dowd and Lewis2016).
The second common model of virtual exchange is the telecollaboration model. Telecollaboration differs considerably to e-tandem due to the greater importance it attributes to classroom integration of the online interaction and also because of the shift of focus in learning outcomes from developing communicative competence to intercultural communicative competence (Byram, Reference Byram1997). Although many e-tandem initiatives have also supported the development of intercultural aspects of language learning, telecollaborative approaches clearly place the development of cultural awareness and intercultural communicative competence at the heart of virtual exchange. Telecollaboration also endeavours to integrate students’ online activities more comprehensively into the students’ classwork and involves international class-to-class partnerships in which projects and tasks are developed by the partner teachers in the collaborating institutions. Students’ contact classes are where online interaction and publications are authored, analysed, and reflected upon with the expert support of the teacher.
Similarly to e-tandem, telecollaboration has also traditionally been bicultural in nature, involving, for example, US students of Spanish working with Spanish students of English. For this reason, common activities include collaborative research projects comparing both cultures and the analysis of parallel cultural texts. For example, Furstenberg et al. (Reference Furstenberg, Levet, English and Maillet2001) had French and American students engage in comparative studies of the film Three men and a baby with the French original, while O'Dowd (Reference O'Dowd2006) had German students carry out ethnographic interviews on their partners in the United States via videoconference and then write reflective essays on the cultural differences which had emerged.
Recently, various commentators have highlighted the limitations of these bilingual, bicultural approaches to online interaction and exchange. First, from a practical standpoint, it is evident that bilingual–bicultural models of virtual exchange have little to offer to the many language educators working in countries where their national languages are less in demand for bilingual exchanges. English as a Second Language (ESL) and French educators in countries in Eastern Europe, for example, are likely to struggle to find partner classes learning their language in the US or in Western Europe. The reality is that, as virtual exchange continues to grow in popularity, there will simply not be enough classes of ‘native speakers’ in France, Germany and English-speaking countries to provide sufficient partnerships for classes based in countries of less widely spoken languages (Kohn & Hoffstaedter, Reference Kohn and Hoffstaedter2015).
Second, from an educational perspective, it is also important to consider that today's university graduates are increasingly likely to use a language such as English, not with native speakers, but rather with non-native speakers as a lingua franca in their future employment (Graddol, 2006). In the global workplace, engineers, computer scientists and other professionals will need intercultural and linguistic skills to use English for online collaborative work with other non-native speakers just as much, if not more, than with native speakers. Dooly observes that ‘research in this area appears to be moving away from the notion that “intercultural” is limited to one specific target language focus towards more studies that hold a “global” notion of the intercultural’ (Reference Dooly, O'Dowd and Lewis2016, p. 176). Similarly, Kramsch has argued that ‘[i]t is no longer appropriate to give students a tourist-like competence to exchange information with native speakers of national languages within well-defined national cultures. They need a much more sophisticated competence in the manipulation of symbolic systems’ (Reference Kramsch2006, p. 251).
But there are other limitations to bicultural models such as e-tandem and telecollaboration which have yet to be highlighted in the literature and which are related to the common learning outcomes of such approaches to virtual exchange. At the University of Léon, Spain we have been carrying out both e-tandem and telecollaborative models in classes in our institution for over 15 years (O'Dowd, Reference O'Dowd2003, Reference O'Dowd, O'Dowd and Lewis2016) and the ongoing evaluation of these exchanges repeatedly reveals the same strengths and weaknesses of these models. These exchanges have involved cohorts of students with Spanish as their L1 enrolled in ESL courses as part of their undergraduate degrees in Primary Education and Tourism. The model of virtual exchange and the themes of the task sequences have differed depending on the profile of the different classes and the academic requirements of their courses. However, all the exchanges have had bilingual Spanish–English set-ups and involved partner classes of students in the US who are studying Spanish as an L2.
Qualitative content analysis of the Spanish students’ reflective diaries and portfolios as well as of end-of-exchange interviews has allowed me to identify the main learning outcomes of each of the models. Each of these main outcomes will be illustrated in the following case studies which were considered to be representative of the main findings in the data.
2.1 Case Study 1: Alba and the E-Tandem Exchange
Alba is a 19-year-old Spanish student of Primary Education who takes part in an e-tandem style telecollaborative exchange with a partner at a north American university. The exchange is part of her coursework in her B2 (upper-intermediate) level English as a Foreign Language (EFL) course and she and her classmates are provided with a set of three tasks which they have to carry out with their partners over a ten-week period. The tasks are based on the theme of living and studying abroad. In Task 1 students introduce themselves and the university where they study, in Task 2 students have to compare aspects of university life at their two institutions and, in Task 3, they work together to create a document with advice and information for foreign students who will be spending a semester at one of their universities. At the end of the exchange the Spanish students are expected to submit a portfolio with evidence of their interactions and reflections on what they have learned both culturally and linguistically from their exchange.
Periodically during the exchange, Alba and her classmates in Spain report in class on the progress they are making with their international partners and discuss some instances of confusing or difficult messages which they have received. Alba and her American partner Kelly exchange approximately 20 emails during their exchange. They use both Spanish and English in their interactions, at times combining both languages in their messages. They also use Google Docs to create shared documents where they co-author their texts for Tasks 2 and 3. As they use Google Docs they correct each other's language errors and suggest improvements in each other's writing style in their respective target languages. They also use their mobile phones to exchange photos and videos of their families and campus residences.
Throughout the exchange the students interact with each other in a friendly, informal manner. Their messages are characterised by compliments about the other culture such as the following comment by Kelly: ‘My vision of Spain is beautiful of course, with very fashionable people in the streets, and tons of good food! I imagine spending a lot of time outside enjoying the scenery and exploring new territories.’ When students correct each other's linguistic errors, corrections are often preceded by praise for their use of the target language (‘You write really well. However, try to say “I would like for you to write me.” instead of “I would like that you write me.”’)
In written feedback provided at the end of the project, Alba reports satisfaction with the exchange as a way of practising and improving her English language skills. She concludes that ‘[t]hanks to this project I have realised that I can easily communicate with people from other countries and culture. Also, I have had the opportunity to practice English in a different context than I am used to, and I have enjoyed it. I think I have been lucky with my partner because she is a kind girl who told me interesting and new things, and she was really involved in the project.’
Alba goes on to explain the value of telecollaborative learning in countries where FL education continues in many cases to be based on traditional grammar-based approaches: ‘This activity has meant more to me than just correcting mistakes. It has been an activity to practise English in a friendly way, with confidence and freedom. There are many people in Spain who don't get on in English and they feel ashamed to talk, so they prefer not talking. But they're wrong! And that's why I also like this activity so much, because everyone in class could practise English as they wanted.’
However, Alba's case also reveals some of the limitations of e-tandem approaches to virtual exchange which often take place without the integration of the exchange into classroom learning. In these cases, the intercultural learning outcomes of the interaction are principally dependent on the students themselves and their ability to explore and analyse cultural differences with their partner. This can often lead to a rather superficial analysis and understanding of difference. Although the tasks in the exchange required students to compare aspects of their cultures and to collaborate closely together in the elaboration of documents, there is little evidence in the students’ online interactions or in Alba's final portfolio which would suggest that the students engaged in negotiation of difference (Kinginger, Reference Kinginger2009; Kramsch, Reference Kramsch2014) as opposed to merely exchanging information on an artificial level. The following comment by Alba illustrates the common conclusions from such exchanges and illustrate what Ware and Kramsch describe as ‘the illusion of commonality’ (Reference Ware and Kramsch2005, p. 200) which many students in this exchange were seen to take away from their online intercultural contact: ‘I have realized that my partner and I aren't so different, in fact, we have similar hobbies and ways to spend our free time. Like I have said, the main differences I see between her country and mine are the timetable and the weather.’
Many observers of telecollaborative exchange have already identified cases such as Alba's and have suggested that virtual exchange fails to produce the intended learning outcomes, not because the intercultural communication breaks down, but rather because of the nature of online communication per se and because the engagement between learners is often superficial and involves tasks which rarely lead to genuine negotiation of cultural meaning. Kramsch suggests that much of the intercultural communication which takes place in telecollaborative exchange is artificial in nature and based on phatic interaction between students who are ‘staying in touch by surfing diversity not engaging with difference’ (Reference Kramsch2014, p. 302). Hanna and de Nooy (Reference Hanna and de Nooy2009, p. 88) identify characteristics inherent to telecollaborative exchange which they believe lead to pen pal-like interactions which are unconducive to genuine interaction and learning. They suggest, for example, that telecollaboration is problematic due to the personal, friendly relationships which characterise much of online intercultural exchange: ‘[I]t is an exchange between a pair of individuals, already positioned as friends’ (Hannah & de Nooy, Reference Hanna and de Nooy2009, p. 92). The outcomes of such exchanges can be that students use their online interactions to sidestep difference and to focus instead on what cultures may have in common at a superficial level (O'Dowd, Reference O'Dowd, O'Dowd and Lewis2016) or simply to adopt a relativist view of cultural difference (Byram, Reference Byram2008, p. 175) where difference is observed but not engaged with in any critical form.
2.2 Case Study 2: Irene and the Telecollaboration Exchange
Irene is a 20-year-old Spanish student of Tourism who is taking part in an intercultural telecollaborative exchange with a partner class of students of Spanish at the University of Princeton, USA. The exchange in integrated into the course curricula in both universities and during class time both sets of students work on various tasks related to socio-political issues which were present in both countries at the time. These included the issue of symbols of regional nationalism in the southern states of the US and in Catalonia in Spain and the concepts of emigration and immigration and their impact on both countries. After carrying out a self-presentation task, students were asked to complete and analyse CULTURA-style questionnaires about themes such as the United States, Spain and The main problems facing my country. CULTURA is a popular intercultural approach to telecollaboration which allows students to compare and discuss the different cultural reactions to surveys which they themselves complete in theirL1s.
During one of the asynchronous discussions about the CULTURA survey, the following exchange takes place between Irene and some of her American partners:
Irene: Most of our words used to describe the United States are: fast food, Obama and patriotism. Are you surprised with our answers?
American student 1: Hi! I am particularly interested in the theme of fast food. This past summer I recognized how many fast food chains exist in Spain, such as Burger King and McDonald's. From my experiences with friends…, I had heard of students who eat fast food quite regularly that were not US citizens. It is intriguing for me to see how many people responded with the impression of fast food or junk food when hearing the word United States.
Irene: On the one hand I think that this is because your country is really big, but on the other hand, maybe your tastes are about this kind of food. This is one of the most important reasons that the USA has got more than the 50% of its citizens with obesity, and the obesity is a really big problem talking about the health. What do you think?
American student 2: ….I think that perhaps the most important factor contributing to the national problem of obesity and the proliferation of fast food is the steep cost of healthy food, which might not be immediately apparent. America's reputation of prosperity might hide the hundreds of millions of Americans that cannot afford fresh fruits and vegetables. For many, fast food is the only economically viable option, and a significant contributor to nationwide health problems.
This exchange illustrates some of the values of these exchanges. In the first American intervention Irene was challenged to reflect on whether eating too much fast food was exclusively an American problem. Then, in the second response, she receives insight into the reasons why fast food is consumed in the US, thereby giving her the opportunity to move away from oversimplified stereotypical explanations of American eating habits.
Feedback from Irene also highlights a trend which emerged repeatedly in the student feedback and reflective writing at the end of the intercultural telecollaborative exchanges. This is the sense of empowerment and agency which telecollaborative exchange can confer to language learners. In one of her reflective journal entries Irene writes: ‘I think that a lot of foreigners have a mistaken vision of Spain. They think our country is all “fiestas, bulls and alcohol”. For that reason I love teaching the American students that Spain is much more than these things and that we live in a country which has a lot to offer and a high standard of living.’ During the exchange, she responds to an American student where he mentions his image of Spain being associated with ‘parties and having a good time’. She writes: ‘Why do you think we drink wine and alcoholic drinks and we love party? I am not happy with this image of Spain. Bullfighting is more popular in the south of Spain than in the north. Spain is more than bulls, paella, alcohol and fiesta.’
This second case study illustrates many of the common benefits of intercultural telecollaborative exchanges. Such exchanges enable learners to engage with peers in structured dialogue and investigation on issues related to the languaculture (Agar, Reference Agar1994) under study. It also provides them with opportunities to explore how their own culture is viewed by others and it can drive students to be more aware and more critical of their own culture. However, both this and the former case study also highlight two limitations which underlie these bicultural bilingual models of virtual exchange.
The first failing is that many of the tasks involved in bicultural models tend to drive students to become representatives and often ‘guardians’ of their own culture. Constantly comparing cultural practices in two countries and exploring cultural stereotypes can often push learners towards an us versus them stance as the tasks and their partners’ stereotypical images and questions lead them to assume an ambassadorial-style role in defence of their local cultural practices. Irene's frustration at her American partners’ image of Spain reflects how she took on this role in her exchange.
This constant comparison of cultures can also lead to an accentuation of difference as students strive to provide their partners with colourful content about themselves and their homelands. Hanna and de Nooy (Reference Hanna and de Nooy2009) warn that the personalised content of telecollaborative exchange ‘…predisposes the student to launching conversations about the self that inevitably position him/her as the exotic little foreigner/the other’ (Reference Hanna and de Nooy2009, p. 195). Of course, this outcome is not exclusive to virtual exchange programmes. Kinginger reports on various studies involving physical mobility which suggest that study abroad experiences often lead to an enhanced sense of self identity rather than greater intercultural awareness. She also refers to her own research where students retreated into a sense of national superiority when encountering criticism of the United States (Kinginger, Reference Kinginger2009).
A further significant limitation of the e-tandem and telecollaborative approaches which becomes evident here is that they tend to situate learners as passive observers and collectors of cultural information in intercultural communicative contexts, rather than active contributors to their societies. Both Alba and Irene were exposed to cultural information by their partners and their tasks often required them to contrast that information with their local cultural realities, but at no stage did these models of virtual exchange offer learners the opportunity to use their online collaborations to undertake action or change in local or international contexts. In e-tandem and telecollaborative exchanges, students observe, compare and analyse but ‘there is no suggestion that criticality should lead to action in the learners’ world or communities’ (Byram, Golubeva, Hui, & Wagner, Reference Byram, Golubeva, Hui and Wagner2017). This is not necessarily something negative, but Leask challenges educators to go further and ‘focus on students as current and future contributors to global society, rather than passive observers or commentators with little or no responsibility for the creation or solution of world problems’ (Leask, Reference Leask2015, p. 17). This brings us to intercultural and global citizenship models of learning and how these could be used to lay the foundations of a transnational model of virtual exchange.
3. From intercultural competence to global citizenship
Any practitioner or researcher investigating the goals or intended outcomes of international education may be taken aback by the variation and complexity in terminology currently in use in the field. While in the area of FL education the terms intercultural competence and intercultural awareness have now gained general acceptance (although their translation into classroom practices and learning materials has been quite superficial at times), the interdisciplinary nature of international education has meant that intercultural competence is now used interchangeably with global competence.
Probably the best-known model of intercultural competence is Byram's aforementioned model of intercultural communicative competence (Reference Byram1997). In this model, Byram outlines the attitudes, knowledge, skills and critical cultural awareness which people need to interact and collaborate successfully with members of other cultures. The model has been used extensively in FL education and has been one of the key tools used in FL telecollaboration research to identify learning outcomes in virtual exchange (O'Dowd, Reference O'Dowd2006).
However, in recent years, the concepts of intercultural and global competence have been supplemented by those of intercultural citizenship and global citizenship, which themselves carry separate, but related, connotations and objectives. Models of global competence now compete for attention with models of Competence for democratic culture (Council of Europe, 2016) and Frameworks for intercultural citizenship (Byram, Reference Byram2008). It appears that the term that is gaining dominance over the others in international education is ‘global citizenship’. De Wit explains that ‘the term “global citizenship” is being used increasingly to define the main outcome of international education: to educate graduates who will be able to live and work in the globalised world’ (Reference De Wit, O'Dowd and Lewis2016, p. 75) while Deardorff & Jones observe that ‘[t]he notion of global citizenship has become part of the internationalisation discourse in higher education around the world’ (Reference Deardorff, Jones, Deardorff, de Wit, Heyl and Adams2012, p. 295).
The essential difference between global competence and global citizenship or intercultural competence and intercultural citizenship lies in the importance attributed to active engagement in society. Porto (Reference Porto2014) argues that intercultural citizenship integrates the intercultural communicative competence from FL education with a focus on civic action in the community from citizenship education. UNESCO defines Global Citizenship Education as aiming ‘to empower learners to engage and assume active roles, both locally and globally, to face and resolve global challenges and ultimately to become proactive contributors to a more just, peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable world’ (Reference Porto2014, p. 15, my emphasis). So, while intercultural or global competence refer to the development of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values to communicate and act effectively and appropriately in different cultural contexts, global or intercultural citizenship borrow from models of citizenship education to refer to the application of these competences to actively participating in, changing and improving society. Leask (Reference Leask2015) sees global citizenship as developing graduates who will be committed to acting in the interests of others across social, environmental, and political dimensions and Byram sees intercultural citizenship experience as being ‘focused on social and political engagement. This may include the promotion of change or improvement in the social and personal lives of the intercultural individuals or their fellows’ (Byram, Reference Byram2008, p. 187). Global competence can, therefore, be seen as a part of global citizenship.
Although there are various studies and discussions of what global citizenship should involve (Leask, Reference Leask2015; UNESCO, 2014), there are currently two models or interpretations of global citizenship education which stand out as they provide detailed, comprehensive frameworks of competences which can be used for developing virtual exchange initiatives and because they pay particular competence to the role of FL competences. These are the Council of Europe's Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (2016) and Byram's Framework for Intercultural Citizenship (Reference Byram2008).
The Council of Europe's Model of Competences for Democratic Citizenship and Intercultural Dialogue sets out to describe the competences which learners need to acquire ‘if they are to participate effectively in a culture of democracy and live peacefully together with others in culturally diverse democratic societies’ (2016, p. 5). The model was developed through a systematic analysis of 101 existing models of democratic competence and intercultural competence and therefore reflects a comprehensive overview of what is generally understood in the literature to be the key elements of global citizenship. Indeed, Barrett (Reference Barrett2015) states that the model reflects inherently a global citizenship perspective. The model contains twenty competences organised into three sets of values, six attitudes, eight skills and three bodies of knowledge and critical understanding which are considered necessary for the preparation of learners as competent democratic citizens.
The model is comprehensive and identifies many of the skills and areas of knowledge which university graduates are likely to need to live and work as active global citizens. These include, for example, analytical and critical thinking skills, cooperation skills and knowledge and critical understanding of the world. Significantly, the model also pays special attention to linguistic skills and knowledge, thereby taking into account the important role of FL competence in facilitating intercultural contact and communication. In this regard, the model contains linguistic, communicative and plurilingual skills as well as knowledge and critical understanding of language and communication.
However, any practitioner who considers using this model must keep in mind the political principles and educational and political objectives upon which the model is based. The model, as its name clearly suggests, is aimed at developing citizens so they can ‘participate effectively in a culture of democracy’ (Council of Europe, 2016, p. 16) and, as such, is based on values which are common in Western societies. These include ‘the general belief that societies ought to operate and be governed through democratic processes’ (Council of Europe, 2016, p. 8), and the belief that ‘cultural variability and diversity, and pluralism of perspectives, views and practices ought to be positively regarded, appreciated and cherished’ (Council of Europe, 2016, p. 8). The document should therefore be understood in the current context of European society where European institutions such as the European Commission and the Council of Europe are striving to promote democratic values and practices among young people in response to the rise of anti-democratic movements such as right-wing extremism and radical Islamism. Against the background of recent terror attacks in European cities, this document is clearly an attempt to locate intercultural dialogue and the principles of democratic citizenship to the centre of educational curricula in Europe.
Undoubtedly, for virtual exchange initiatives between European countries, this model provides a comprehensive set of competences which educators can use to shape and give direction to their telecollaborative activities. But it is necessary to question whether such a model would be acceptable as the basis for virtual exchange projects which bring European or other Western students into online collaboration with classrooms in countries where democracy is not the accepted form of government or where democracy is, perhaps, understood in very different ways. One of the key goals of intercultural education and virtual exchange is to give students opportunities to come into contact and engage in dialogue with worldviews and cultural perspectives which can be radically different to their own. Using a framework such as this one, which has democracy as its basis, may be seen by educators and students in non-democratic countries as an attempt to impose Western values and as a form of educational imperialism. Needless to say, this is not to suggest that virtual exchange should involve a relativist approach where every opinion and practice is accepted in the name of cultural diversity. Respect for difference in cultural beliefs and practices will always need to have limits – but these limits may have to be drawn along the line of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights rather than on Western definitions and interpretations of democracy (see Byram, Reference Byram2008, p. 175). That said, the Council of Europe has developed a comprehensive set of descriptors (2018) which will enable educators to operationalise the competences and develop activities and assessment criteria for different levels of learners. There is no reason why descriptors from some of the competence clusters could be used, while avoiding those of the more context-specific values set.
An alternative model which may be more suited to virtual exchange initiatives which bring Western classrooms into contact with partners in countries, for example, from the Muslin/Arab world or China is Byram's Framework of Intercultural Citizenship (Reference Byram2008, Reference Byram2011). This model combines elements of FL competence, critical cultural awareness and intercultural communication skills adapted from his earlier model of intercultural communicative competence (Byram, Reference Byram1997) with the principles and content of citizenship education which involve learning leading to activity and ‘service to the community’. While the elements of citizenship education are adapted from Himmelmann's Model of Democracy Learning (Reference Himmelmann2006), the model deliberately avoids an over-emphasis on Western interpretation of democratic principles and understands democracy and political education as the development of ‘transnational communities’ and critical thinkers who engage in social and political activity together to improve their own personal lives or the societies they live in.
Byram clearly illustrates the progression from intercultural competence models to global citizenship models of education when he outlines ‘pre-political’ and ‘political’ levels of acting interculturally (Reference Byram2008). Pre-political approaches involve engaging students in intercultural interaction and then reflecting critically on these encounters. The case studies of Alba and Irene seen above can be seen to reflect these pre-political stages. However, global or intercultural citizenship approaches go further and involve learners either instigating change in their own societies based on their collaborations with members of other cultures or actually working with members of other cultures as a transnational group in order to take action about an issue or problem which is common to both societies. Byram's five levels of ‘acting interculturally’ are:
(Pre-political)
1. learners engage with others (through documents and artefacts or ‘in person’, which might be face-to-face or virtual) and reflect critically on their own assumptions, and those of the other;
2. learners engage with others, reflect critically and propose/imagine possible alternatives and changes;
(Political)
3. learners engage with others seeking their perspective/advice, reflect critically, propose change and take action to instigate change in their own society;
4. learners create with others a transnational community, reflect together, propose and instigate change in their respective societies;
5. in a transnational community, learners from two or more societies identify an issue that they act upon as a transnational group (Reference Byram2008, pp. 212–213).
Over the past few years, I have been exploring at the University of León, Spain how some of the competence clusters outlined in the Council of Europe's Democratic Citizenship and Intercultural Dialogue model (2016), and Byram's differentiation between pre-political and political levels of acting interculturally, can provide a basis for a model of virtual exchange which goes beyond current bicultural bilingual approaches and which leads instead to more transnational (Risager, Reference Risager2007) online collaborative initiatives where learners from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds collaborate and undertake action together to solve problems and engage in issues of relevance to them in their globalised societies.
4. Towards a transnational model of virtual exchange
In comparison to common telecollaborative practices in FL education, a transnational approach to virtual exchange proposes that it is not sufficient to merely engage second language learners in reflective interaction with members of other cultures. Instead, it is necessary to move from what Byram (Reference Byram2008) describes as ‘pre-political’ to ‘political’ levels of acting interculturally. As seen above, pre-political approaches (which reflect more traditional approaches such as e-tandem and telecollaborative exchange) involve engaging students in intercultural interaction and then reflecting critically on these encounters. However, global or intercultural citizenship approaches go further and involve learners either instigating change in their own societies based on their collaborations with members of other cultures or actually working with members of other cultures as a transnational group in order to take action about an issue or problem which is common to both societies.
The competences outlined in a model such as the Council of Europe's Democratic Citizenship and Intercultural Dialogue model (2016), and Byram's differentiation between pre-political and political levels of acting interculturally can provide the basis for a model of virtual exchange which goes beyond traditional bicultural bilingual approaches and which brings learners to collaborate together and undertake action in order to solve problems and engage in issues in their local and global communities. During such transnational collaborations, students learn about their partners’ cultural practices and also have opportunities to compare cultural perspectives but this is not seen as the ultimate goal of such collaborations. Such a transnational model of virtual exchange for global citizenship education is based on the following characteristics:
• Creating opportunities for rich intercultural interaction which can include but is not limited to bicultural/bilingual comparison
• Establishing partnerships across a wide range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds and using lingua franca for communication with these partners
• Encouraging learners to engage with themes which are of social and political relevance in both partners’ societies
• Enabling students to work with their international partners to undertake action and change in their respective local and global communities
• Including ample opportunities for guided reflection of the intercultural encounters in the classroom
• Being integrated and recognised part of course work and institutional academic activity
• Increasing awareness of how intercultural communication is mediated by online technologies and how social media can shape the creation and interpretation of messages
Some of these latter characteristics are, of course, not exclusive to transnational approaches which focus on the development of global citizenship, but they are key principles of good practice which all virtual exchange initiatives should take into account.
Various examples can be found in the literature of virtual exchange initiatives which reflect some if not all of these principles. Helm (Reference Helm2015) describes ‘critical telecollaboration’ as online exchange experiences which seek to foster greater understanding of different worldviews and to address social and political issues in an increasingly polarised world that seems to be characterised by conflicts, inequalities, and injustices. Helm outlines four assumptions of traditional approaches to telecollaboration which critical approaches challenge. These are that online intercultural contact will lead to understanding and foster equality, the native speaker is the ideal interlocutor, the main aim of telecollaboration is simply to foster communicative and sociocultural competence, and, finally, that technology is a neutral medium (Helm, Reference Helm2015).
Examples of virtual exchange initiatives which reflect global citizenship principles include the Soliya exchange format (Helm, Reference Helm, O'Dowd and Lewis2016), which brings together students from the US and Arab/Muslim countries to engage in open yet guided dialogue on cultural and political issues which affect their countries’ relationships. A further example, reported by Porto (Reference Porto2014), shows British and Argentinean students engaging in collaborative project work related to the Falklands War and producing documents and activities in their local communities aimed at supporting reconciliation between the two communities. Projects such as these offer students the opportunity to engage in intercultural dialogue on themes that form part of their countries’ historical memory and to become more aware of alternative perspectives on themes which have been viewed until now through one particular cultural prism. But they go further and reflect a global citizenship approach in that they actually provide learners with the opportunity to play a role in promoting understanding in both societies about the impact of the war. Finally, the project ‘Perspectives on the Euro(pean) Crisis’ (Sharing Perspectives Foundation, 2018) involved students from different participating universities following lectures on the theme of the European crisis which were recorded and broadcast online. These lectures were then followed by synchronous discussions among the participants as well as research on the impact of immigration carried out by the students in their local areas. At the end of the project, two students from each university were selected to go to Brussels to present the results of their research to members of the European Commission.
At the University of León, I am trying to introduce a global citizenship approach to our virtual exchanges across different subject areas which take into account but also go beyond pure L2 learning. For example, in a project called ‘Europe in crisis’, students coming from classes of Tourism Studies and Journalism in Spain, the UK and France worked together using English as a lingua franca to develop and carry out a survey on their local classmates and friends on the issue of what being European meant to young people in their countries and what problems they felt young people were facing around Europe. The results of the survey were compared and discussed in their online international working groups. In their transnational teams, students then created a document together called ‘Making the European Union relevant for young people’ and these documents were submitted online to the students’ representatives in the European Parliament in their local languages.
A second global citizenship virtual exchange stems from the ‘EVALUATE’ (Evaluating And Upscaling Telecollaborative Teacher Education) project (O'Dowd, Reference O'Dowd2018) where transnational groups of student teachers from Spain, Israel and Sweden collaborated together online (again, using English as a lingua franca) to create lessons and projects based on themes which were relevant in the education systems in all their countries such as racism, the use of online technologies in the classroom and the role of religion in schools. They were then able to use these lesson plans in their teaching practicums in their respective countries.
Exchanges such as ‘Europe in Crisis’ and ‘EVALUATE’ challenge learners to work together not simply to exchange and reflect on information but also to take action together as transnational groups and to overcome the hurdles of online intercultural collaboration in order to reach consensus on common outcomes. In both exchanges, the largest share of intercultural negotiation (and intercultural communication breakdown) took place, not over cultural facts or issues per se, but rather as they worked together online to create and agree on their common documents, i.e. their letters to political representatives or their joint lesson plans. Initial analysis of student feedback and reflections to date has revealed that these exchanges still allow students to learn about different national perspectives on, for example, educational systems or political issues. However, more importantly, these tasks shift the focus away from an over-emphasis on ‘national’ cultural differences and instead raise students’ awareness of how culture and language and technology are intertwined in online intercultural communication per se. One student, for example, told us the following in her final reflections:
I have not learned new language but I have learned to express my ideas about communicating more accurately so there is not any miscommunication. I have also learned to be careful with the way I present my viewpoints and communicate with people from other cultures, because there can be cases when what I say may be misunderstood. So it is necessary to select appropriate language.
Another student provides insight into the online communication strategies she learned in order to overcome intercultural misunderstanding. And she also demonstrates a growing awareness of the influence of the choice of online communication tool on the outcome of interactions:
The main problem in our team was communication. There were some misunderstandings that lead us to not trust one another. We solved it by reading again carefully all the messages and asking and answering politely. At the end, we manage to finish our task properly and even enjoy it. Maybe the online tools for communication were not the best, and I believe that was the origin of our communication problems.
5. Conclusion
This paper began by reviewing e-tandem and telecollaborative approaches to virtual exchange which are currently being used extensively in university classrooms. Following that, I presented two case studies which illustrated the common learning outcomes and some of the main limitations of such approaches. I then went on to propose an alternative approach to virtual exchange which maintains many of the key characteristics of earlier approaches but which incorporates the principles of global citizenship education and which moves away from bilingual–bicultural approaches. The intention is not to dismiss the many valuable outcomes of bilingual/bicultural exchanges, but to argue for alternative models which avoid students positioning their virtual partners as oversimplified representatives of monolithic cultures (Kern, Reference Kern2014). Leask argues that we should seek to develop students who have ‘the capacity to critique the world they live in, see problems and issues from a range of perspectives, and take action to address them’ (Reference Leask2015, p. 17). Virtual exchange needs to be explored further as a tool which will achieve just such aims and language educators have an important role to play exploring the role than L2 learning has to play in such initiatives.
Acknowledgements
Part of the research reported in this paper was supported by the project Evaluating and Upscaling Telecollaborative Teacher Education (EVALUATE) (582934-EPP-1-2016-2-ES-EPPKA3-PI-POLICY). This project is funded by Erasmus+ Key Action 3 (EACEA No 34/2015): European policy experimentations in the fields of Education, Training and Youth led by high-level public authorities. The views reflected in this presentation are the authors’ alone and the commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Robert O'Dowd is Associate Professor (professor titular) of Applied Linguistics at the University of León, Spain. He has taught at universities in Ireland, Germany and Spain and has published widely on the application of virtual exchange and telecollaboration in university education. His most recent publication is the co-edited volume Online intercultural exchange: Policy, pedagogy, practice for Routledge. He recently coordinated INTENT – an award-winning project financed by the European Commission aimed at promoting virtual exchange in European higher education and is lead researcher on the European Commission's Erasmus+ KA3 project Evaluating and Upscaling Telecollaborative Teacher Education (EVALUATE) (http://www.evaluateproject.eu/). He was the founding president of UNICollaboration – the academic organisation for telecollaboration and virtual exchange (www.unicollaboration.org).
