TE Research Talk: Michele Back

“Cultural excavation for global competence: Implications for teacher education”

While study abroad is often cited as a quintessential experience for gaining intercultural competence (Brecht & Ingold, 2000), these experiences must include ample opportunity for reflection in order to have their desired impact (Byram, 2006). A reflective study abroad experience is particularly important for US K-12 teachers and teacher candidates, who, despite continued efforts at diversification, are still overwhelmingly white in stark contrast to the multicultural, multilingual students they teach.

Due to the often-unmarked status of white culture, Ladson-Billings (2017) noted the importance of “cultural excavation,” where white teacher candidates are guided toward recognizing and reflecting upon their own cultures in order to better appreciate those of others (p. 145). Cultural excavation is even more vital when white teacher candidates study in developing countries, as issues of race, class and social status can be even more pronounced.

In this study, Back discusses how 10 teacher candidates, seven of whom identified as white, developed increased intercultural understanding during and after a semester abroad in Lima and Cusco, Peru. Using data from the Intercultural Development Laboratory (IDI: Hammer, 2007-11) and global competence assignments collected during and after the candidates’ time abroad, Back describes how these assignments scaffolded cultural excavation among teacher candidates, enabling them to reflect on different aspects of diversity and the diversity inherent in their own lived experiences.

Findings show that all but one student moved toward a more ethnorelative, intercultural stance in post-study abroad developmental orientation, as shown by IDI results. However, significant gaps persisted between perceived and actual intercultural orientations. Thus, although study abroad and cultural excavation appeared to play a mostly positive role in developing further intercultural competence, some reversal was evident, requiring more extensive unpacking and analysis among the group. Back discusses cultural excavation as a helpful but not necessarily sufficient element of teacher candidate preparation for study abroad and the development of global and intercultural competence.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Michele Back (assistant professor, world languages education, University of Connecticut) works with preservice and inservice teachers of Spanish, French and Chinese. Her research interests include world language teacher development and professionalization, including target language use and acquisition; cultivating global citizenship; developing a pedagogy of symbolic competence; and the role of translanguaging and multilingual ecology in transforming schools and other communities of practice. She has published articles within the Modern Language Journal, Foreign Language Annals and L2, as well as the books Racismo y lenguaje (with Virginia Zavala, Fondo Editorital, PUCP, 2017) and Transcultural Performance: Negotiating Globalized Indigenous Identities (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2015).