The potential of pedagogies of discomfort in intercultural virtual exchange

GOLUBEVA, IRINA; PORTO, MELINA; BYRAM, MICHAEL

Arizona

Conferencia; International Conference on the Development and Assessmentof Intercultural Competence; 2022

The current global crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped the landscape of higher education in general, and higher education mobility in particular. What is the pedagogical potential of virtual mobility for intercultural learning and citizenship education?In our presentation we argue - in the context of the current dominance of the performative and instrumental drives characterising the accountable university - that language and intercultural communication education in universities should also be humanistic, addressing ‘discomforting themes’ to sensitise students to issues of human suffering and engage them in constructive and creative responses to that suffering. We suggest that arts-based methods can be used and illustrate this with an international virtual exchange project created in response to the crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. In this way language and intercultural communication education can become a site of personal and social transformation, including the development of intercultural citizenship values, attitudes, skills, knowledge and critical understanding. Through arts-based methodologies and pedagogies of discomfort, Argentinian and US undergraduates explored how the theme of the Covid-19 crisis has been expressed artistically in their countries, and then communicated online, using English as their lingua franca, to design artistic multimodal creations collaboratively in mixed nationality groups to channel their suffering and trauma associated with the pandemic. We present the data that comprise the students’ artistic multimodal creations, their written statements describing their creations, and the results of pre and post online surveys. Our findings indicate that students transformed disturbing affective responses by creating artwork and engaging in therapeutic social and civic participation transnationally, sharing their artistic creations using social media. We highlight the powerful humanistic role of education involving artistic expression, movement, performativity, and community engagement in order to channel discomforting feelings productively at personal and social levels. We discuss the role of pedagogies of discomfort in intercultural citizenship education, and consider the challenges these may entail.