Intercultural competence and secondary efl teachers in castelló. A diachronic approach regarding the latest european notion of democratic culture

Abstract

Intercultural Communicative Competence (henceforth, ICC) is of key importance to train European citizenry for a world which is becoming more and more interconnected and, hence, more intercultural. Thus, ICC is paramount to ascertain whether the teaching of English as a Foreign Language (henceforth, EFL) or, better, as a lingua franca, can meet secondary students’ needs not only to participate in a globalized professional market but also, and most importantly, to enjoy an education as whole human beings living and participating in democratic communities. Therefore, this master thesis was inspired by Castro et al.’s (2004) contribution, a piece of research which was, in the authors’ own words, an “investigation amongst Spanish secondary school EFL teachers focusing on the extent to which teachers support the new culture-and-language teaching objectives”. Since then, the very same notion of ICC has evolved and, last year, 2016, the Council of Europe provided a revised and enriched ICC framework thought and developed around the notion of Democratic Culture. The aim of this pilot study, then, is twofold. On the one hand, my objective was partially replicate the original Castro et al.’s (2004) study in Castelló and its province, an area within the Valencian Community in which the effective teaching of ICC is a must, inasmuch its economy is highly oriented to both tourism and to exports of goods, such as ceramic tiles or oranges. On the other hand, I tried to find out whether the teaching of ICC in the province where I live and plan to find a job as an EFL secondary teacher has progressed in line with (i) the Spanish educational laws and (ii) according to the new aims of ICC designed by the Council of Europe, in order to work towards the construction of the so called Democratic Culture Competence. Results have shown that the time devoted to ICC among EFL teachers in Castelló has increased and that some of the objectives guiding their teaching practice are in tune with the new ICC competence framework of the Council of Europe built around the notion of Democratic Culture.