Dutch and Turkish Prospective Teachers’ Reflections on Cultural Diversity and Critical Cultural Awareness: Insights into Pedagogical Perspectives in a Telecollaborative Project

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Kaçar I. G.

FIRST INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE-FOR-ALL CONFERENCE '22 (LFAC '22), Adana, Türkiye, 21 - 22 Ekim 2022, ss.58

  • Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Özet Bildiri
  • Basıldığı Şehir: Adana
  • Basıldığı Ülke: Türkiye
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.58
  • Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Dutch and Turkish Prospective Teachers’ Reflections on Cultural Diversity and Critical Cultural Awareness: Insights into Pedagogical Perspectives in a Telecollaborative Project

This exploratory case study investigated the perspectives of Dutch and Turkish prospective teachers regarding cultural diversity and critical cultural awareness in an eight-week telecollaborative project in the fall semester of the 2018 and 2019 academic year. The project was integrated into the practicum course of the Turkish participants while it was integrated into a course on the teenagers’ moral development for the Dutch participants. The theoretical frameworks adopted in the study were the Intercultural Communicative Competence and the Positioning Theory. The participants were involved in a series of asynchronous videomediated exchanges related to cultural and critical issues throughout the study. The expectation papers, a reflective project evaluation journal, videotaped student interactions and online semi-structured interviews constituted the data collection sources. The study data were subject to content analysis. The findings revealed the positive impact of the telecollaboration regarding the prospective teachers’ pedagogical perspectives on cultural diversity and the development of critical cultural awareness. Although the study indicated enhanced awareness towards cultural diversity among student-teachers, it was not possible to gain an in-depth perspective into the participants’ critical cultural awareness development. The study has certain implications for pre-service teacher educators offering practicum courses as well as educators who are novice telecollaborators in terms of effective task design features.

Keywords telecollaboration, intercultural communicative competence, English as a Foreign Language (EFL) pre-service teacher education, cultural diversity, critical cultural awareness

* Dr., Middle East Technical University, Department of Foreign Language Education, Ankara/TURKEY, iseltmet304@gmail.com.