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The Responsibilities of Language Teachers when Teaching Intercultural Competence and Citizenship - An Essay

Byram, M.

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Abstract

All teachers have responsibilities towards their learners, especially if their learners are children. They make decisions about what to teach, how to teach and what kind of person they expect their learners to become as a result. Language teachers are no exception as they decide such matters as whether learners should attempt to imitate native speakers. The decisions have become more complex as language teaching has embraced intercultural competence and citizenship education as a major focus, together with linguistic competences such as syntactic and semantic competence. Teaching intercultural competence includes encouraging learners to critique social norms and beliefs in one’s own and other societies, and this raises major moral issues for language teachers. When language teaching also contributes to education for citizenship, as is increasingly expected in curricular documents, then the moral issues become even more acute. One response is to hide behind a relativist stance but it is argued here that ‘values pluralism’ (Isaiah Berlin) offers a better position, and one which is especially appropriate to language teaching. Language teachers do not need to become moral philosophers but dealing with moral issues should be included in teacher education.

Citation

Byram, M. (2020). The Responsibilities of Language Teachers when Teaching Intercultural Competence and Citizenship - An Essay. China media research, 16(2), 77-84

Journal Article Type Article
Online Publication Date Apr 1, 2020
Publication Date 2020
Deposit Date May 29, 2020
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal China media research.
Print ISSN 1556-889X
Publisher American Chinese Media Research Association and Communication Studies Institute of Zhejiang University
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 16
Issue 2
Pages 77-84
Publisher URL http://www.chinamediaresearch.net/

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© China media research 2020.




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