Developing Intercultural Language Learning

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Michelle Kohler

   Pages 1-12

3. Why a Developmental Perspective Matters for Intercultural Language Learning

   • Michelle Kohler

   Pages 13-51

4. Designing Programs for Developing Intercultural Language Learning

   • Michelle Kohler

   Pages 53-87

5. Enacting and Mediating the Development of Intercultural Language Learning

   • Michelle Kohler

   Pages 89-99

6. Assessing and Evidencing the Development of Intercultural Language Learning

   • Michelle Kohler

   Pages 101-130

7. Insights and Conclusion

   • Michelle Kohler

   Pages 131-138

8. Back Matter

   Pages 139-150

   PDF

This book presents a detailed account of a self-study in which the author considers why a developmental perspective matters in language learning within an intercultural orientation, and how teachers of languages might understand and attend to this notion in their work. The discussion is based on the author’s experience as a teacher-researcher and traces aspects of teachers’ work from planning, teaching and mediating, to assessing and judging evidence of student learning and development over time. This book is grounded in a praxis view of language teaching and learning and will be of interest to other language teachers, pre-service teachers, teacher trainers and applied linguists.

• Pedagogy
• Assessment
• ICLTL
• Foreign Language Teaching
• Language Learning
• Curriculum Design
• Teaching Methodology
• Teacher Preparation
• Teacher Education
• Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)

"Even in less tumultuous times than what we face in the third decade of the 21st century the task of integrating and respecting human differences within cohesive and united societies is a challenge.   At this historically significant juncture, characterised by pandemic, rising international tension and pervasive mobility, educators should be at the forefront not simply of building understanding but of forging the ability of future citizens to live well together, share resources equitably, resolve problems and flourish.   This important new volume from Dr Michelle Kohler is a practical and intellectual donation to the field of applied linguistics. Her exemplary study is a methodological guide to the needed work of building intercultural knowledge for more just, more integrated, more deeply communicating and more socially cohesive societies.  Kohler’s volume is brilliantly concise even as it shows masterful control of how language learning contributes to intercultural flourishing and how schools, teachers and classrooms enact it. In this it represents a rare and possibly unique guide to the principled knowledge of what is implicated in the task of intercultural encounters, and of pedagogies, texts, resources and assessments of how it is done."–Joseph Lo Bianco, University of Melbourne, Australia



"Drawing thoughtfully on an elaborated understanding of languages learning within an intercultural orientation and a commitment to praxis, in this book Michelle Kohler addresses the compelling question of how to engender the development of learners as language learners, language users and as persons capable of interpreting, creating and exchanging meanings across languages and cultures. With her voice both as researcher and teacher she considers, in a fundamental and authentic way, the role of teachers in promoting such learning. Through her account of a sustained self-study, she traces insightfully the processes of planning and designing, enacting and mediating, and assessing and evidencing students’ language learning, foregrounding concepts, experiences and reflective processes in designing learning, and students’ interpretations, reactions and reflections, in time and over time, in response. She explains and illustrates amply her own theorising and practice in a way that exemplifies the intellectually rich and ethical, ecological stance towards languages learning and development that she is advocating."
–Angela Scarino, Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics and Director of the Research Centre for Languages and Cultures, University of South Australia

• UniSA Justice and Society, University of South Australia, ADELAIDE, Australia

  Michelle Kohler

Michelle Kohler is Senior Research Fellow at the Research Centre for Languages and Cultures, University of South Australia.

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