History and future

Our mission

Language teachers in the 21st century require knowledge that goes beyond the language they teach. Current efforts in foreign and world language teacher education are pushing towards helping teachers in training/pre-service teachers become familiar with this body of critical knowledge through activities that promote critical conscience raising (conscientizaçao).

Since international encounters are crucial in language teaching and learning and since the development of critical awareness is an increasingly pressing necessity in education, we want to create a transnational space in which students (and lecturers) can become aware of cultural conceptions, understandings of language and of education. Bringing the conception of culture into virtual and physical transcultural spaces in an educational context can help to develop conscience raising/conscientizaçao in the form of critical cultural awareness.

Previous transcultural encounters

1. Pilot project “Transnational Spaces for Intercultural Encounters in Spanish Teacher Education”

We developed the pilot project “Transnational Spaces for Intercultural Encounters in Spanish Teacher Education”, funded by Innovative Lehr- und Lernformate of Universität Hamburg.

The aim of the project was to create a transnational space in which Spanish language students (and teachers) can become aware of cultural ideas, language and educational conceptions, promoting international encounters in language teaching and learning and the development of critical cultural awareness. We developed and implemented a course based on international collaboration, intercultural learning, learner awareness and mutual enrichment in teaching to encourage students to rethink their multilingualism from a globalisation and social justice perspective (conscientizaçao). For lecturers, too, the development of critical awareness is central, whereby we take equal account of plurality and socially just change.

This project brought together students from a heritage speaker course in Indianapolis and a master’s seminar in Hamburg who worked together on course topics and critical issues around cultural awareness and translanguaging. After three online meetings, the students from Hamburg traveled to Indianapolis, where they participated in a six-day programme on language diversity in the school (with classroom observations), the university (with experts) and the city of Indianapolis (with visits to intercultural centres). Students from both universities had the opportunity to interact with each other and reflect on the intercultural experiences that arise. The teachers support them in this by scaffolding reflection questions that are answered in student-designed e-portfolios.

The students reported benefits in diverse domains. The exchange with others enabled intercultural learning and understanding, i.e. the development of multiperspectivity on selected themes on both sides expressed through active engagement and investment in extracurricular activities (organised by the students).

The students who participated in the physical exchange mentioned that the project allowed personal development and growth thanks to the exchange with students and professors from other contexts, and due to being immersed in a critical pedagogical understructure.

Finally, the teacher students developed professional competences through theoretical input, best-practice examples, and shadowing and observations in a school.

2. Follow-up project “La escuela de mis sueños - A critical perspective on school systems through a German-Spanish university collaboration”

The project “La escuela de mis sueños: A critical perspective on school systems considering selected didactical aspects”, a collaboration between the Universität Hamburg and the Universidad de Navarra, aimed to critically examine didactical aspects such as multilingualism or inclusion within different school systems and propose alternatives to enhance linguistic equity – in other words, to develop one’s own “dream school” (= la escuela de mis sueños). The project included virtual collaboration phases and a physical exchange in May 2023.

In this project, the central aim targeted through reflections on the implementation of certain didactical aspects within school systems was (linguistic) equity, i.e. the equal status of (plurilingual) students’ cultures, languages and language practices. We assumed that this could be achieved through multilingualism, translanguaging and multiliteracies, inclusion, and teachers’ and students’ well-being in the classroom, presented as theoretical inputs or scaffolding measures.

The way to guide students’ critical reflection on different school systems was through transcultural encounters, i.e. matching students from Hamburg and Navarra to critically present, analyse, and optimise school systems, enabling them to develop their dream schools. All steps and experiences during the physical exchange were documented and reflected upon in a student-designed e-portfolio, structured through guiding questions and prompts. The dream schools were presented and commented on from a critical standpoint which allowed the student teachers to understand the cyclical nature of critical reflections and action-taking.

The students developed their critical reflection skills in the domain of school systems. They developed and applied competences (e.g. intercultural competences, translanguaging), advanced in their professionalisation (e.g. belief shifts, embodied future practices), developed a holistic perspective on language learning (e.g. an ecological perspective, the importance of emotions, interdisciplinary learning). The students who participated in the physical exchange mentioned that the project allowed personal growth and professional development thanks to the exchange with students and teachers from other contexts.

Conclusion

The transversal elements of our project line of “Transcultural encounters” are bringing students from different cultures together so that they exchange and work collaboratively on activities that promote (conscientizaçao). To integrate all students, a virtual component is the basis of the transcultural encounters that is complemented by an optional physical component. Two important ways of structuring the transcultural encounters are student-designed e-portfolios that guide their learnings and critical reflections and help them to identify the contents of a final project (visualisation/ modelling of the critical awakening, creation of the dream school, or digital collages), being the second important method of structuring the transcultural encounters.

Future transcultural encounters

We are applying for further funding to enable transcultural encounters between students in Europe and the world where language, as a transversal element of our thinking, doing, and reflecting, plays a crucial role. We seek to enlarge our focus through each transcultural encounter. After having focused on empowering (hybrid) identities, developing dream school systems, and now on experiencing multiculturalism, it turned out that the emotional underpinnings of identity, school systems, and multiculturalism can be understood as drivers of conscientizaçao and therefore, in the next project, we will focus on the affective dimension of plurilingualism.