Long-term impact of four intercultural citizenship projects in the higher education foreign language classroom

PORTO, MELINA

Language Learning Journal

Routledge

Año: 2021 vol. 49 p. 648 - 667

0957-1736

This study reports on the evaluation of long-term impact of four intercultural citizenship projects undertaken in university foreign language classrooms. Curricular developments based on Byram´s intercultural citizenship theory have demonstrated the immediate impact including the development of self and intercultural awareness, criticality, social justice responsibility and language learning as well as the emergence of a sense of community and bonding among transnational peers. However, the long-term effects have not been investigated. This study sets out to analyse Argentinian students´ recollections (between two and four years after the event ) of experiences in four intercultural citizenship projects undertaken over several years with students in the UK and in Italy. These one-year projects combined language teaching and citizenship/human rights education. Students´ retrospective reflection logs were analysed using content analysis, and findings show that the students remembered and valued their emotional engagement with critical content and with their transnational peers; they had varied and conflicting views about how the projects had contributed to their language learning; and mid- and long-term civic engagement occurred mostly at what Michael Byram refers to as the pre-political level, involving thought, awareness and personal development, rather than action at the political level.