Teaching about Culture or Learning with and from Others?

Abstract

This article reports on the findings of a qualitative study conducted in Victoria, Australia. The study examined the perceptions and implementation of the intercultural dimension in the language classroom following recent curriculum changes. Data were collected from individual in-depth interviews with seven pre-service teachers with a migrant background enrolled in a graduate initial teacher education program who were undertaking the practicum component of this course in Victorian secondary schools. Findings from this study highlight discrepancies between interpretations of the intercultural capability in theory and the way it is taught. Remarkably, what emerged was the impact of personal experiences on pre-service teachers’ conceptualizations and implementation of intercultural pedagogies. This study suggests a new definition for intercultural capability that emphasizes the importance of not only teaching about cultural diversity, but also learning from and through it. The study also recognizes the need for critical and reflective discussions in teacher education so that teachers are supported to become agents of change.

1. Introduction

1.1. Intercultural Education Internationally, in Australia, and in Victoria

Australian education policy has recently incorporated concerns from supranational policies, which emphasize the importance of teaching young people how to interact effectively across cultures. Supranational educational institutions, such as the Council of Europe, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, promote the idea that public education systems should prepare their young citizens to thrive in an increasingly interconnected world [1,2,3,4,5] and prescribe that all teachers integrate what is labeled “intercultural understanding” in the National Curriculum [6]. The Australian Curriculum portrays intercultural understanding as a multidimensional concept, which involves “(1) recognizing cultures and developing respect; (2) interacting and empathizing with others; and (3) reflecting on intercultural experiences and taking responsibility” [6] and justifies its inclusion given its potential to “assists young people to become responsible local and global citizens, equipped through their education for living and working together in an interconnected world” [6]. The influence of supranational policies on Australian education is particularly evident in the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians, a foundational document for the National Curriculum. The declaration [7] gives a prominent role to employment opportunities young people will gain by developing intercultural understanding: “In the 21st century Australia’s capacity to provide a high quality of life for all will depend on the ability to compete in the global economy on knowledge and innovation. Education equips young people with the knowledge, understanding, skills and values to take advantage of opportunity and to face the challenges of this era with confidence” [7] (p. 4). The declaration also recognizes the role of education in creating a cohesive and culturally diverse nation in a way that reflects the historical origins of multicultural and intercultural education in Australia. This emerged in response to social movements advocating for recognition and educational justice for marginalized groups [8,9]. While intercultural education remains underpinned by the concern for social cohesion and social inclusion in principle, in practice, such concern is inserted in a framework that privileges individual competitiveness and is economically oriented. Gale and Molla [10] argue that, when the focus is on the individual and their interpersonal skills to serve the nation’s economic interests, structural change is unlikely to occur, and disadvantaged students will likely not benefit from this approach. Lingard et al. [11] (p. 717) analyzed this merging of social and economic imperatives, and they considered that the social agenda is secondary to the economic agenda. This phenomenon has led scholars to coin the term neo-social to describe Australian policymaking in the field of education [11] (p. 717), as equity becomes essential for “building human capital and productivity.” Specifically, the term neo-social describes “facilitating social well-being, but primarily for the sake of fostering greater economic productivity and economic competitiveness within the global economy” [11] (p. 715).

In this context, in 2010, the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority released the first National Curriculum, endorsed in 2015. According to the National Curriculum, the general capabilities, including intercultural understanding, are supposed to be integrated into the different learning areas, meaning their presence will vary depending on their relevance to the learning area, and the most-obvious learning area associated with intercultural understanding is the classroom of languages. Each state and territory in Australia is responsible for implementing the curriculum due to the country’s federal structure. In Victoria, the Victorian Curriculum absorbs four of its seven general capabilities, including intercultural understanding. Here, it takes the name of “intercultural capability”, and the rationale for its inclusion is:

“Intercultural interactions have become a part of everyday life in our increasingly multicultural and globalised world. Developing intercultural knowledge, skills and understandings is an essential part of living with others in the diverse world of the twenty-first century. The Intercultural capability curriculum assists young people to become responsible local and global citizens, equipped for living and working together in an interconnected world” [12].

From such statements, it is evident that the intercultural project in Australian education can be seen as an expression of the twofold intention of creating more-cohesive societies, on the one hand, and of equipping young people with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that are deemed to improve individuals’ opportunities, on the other. It can be argued that these two aspects are often in tension. In this context, all teachers are considered responsible for developing interculturally competent learners.

1.2. Teachers’ Perceptions of Intercultural Education

Recently, Gilbert [13] reviewed the inception of the general capabilities in the Australian Curriculum and identified the challenges their implementation would face in state curricula. Despite these challenges, Gilbert [13] reported that the general capabilities in the Australian Curriculum obtained an 80% approval rating, pointing to the fact that most teachers appear to understand the importance of transmitting not only knowledge, but also values to their learners. However, the extent to which schools are committed to intercultural education remains unclear [14]. Research confirms that including such notions in the National Curriculum cannot guarantee that teachers can foster intercultural capability in their learners [15,16]. This gap between policy intentions and the pedagogy and practices of teachers has been attributed to a lack of clarity around the rationale, conceptualization, and nomenclature of intercultural education. In general, it is possible that “interculturality is too complex to be grasped entirely” [17] (p. 7) because, while “omnipresent”, it is still a “contested” notion [18] (p. 95).

These findings were further corroborated in other international studies. For example, a study in New Zealand [19] demonstrated that teachers have a limited understanding of intercultural education, which was often interpreted as cultural knowledge. In Hong Kong, Yuen [20] also found that teachers who lack confidence in developing interculturally competent learners prefer to avoid embedding intercultural pedagogies. According to Scarino [21] (p. 324), the main challenge for language teachers in implementing intercultural pedagogies is the need to develop a “renewed understanding of language, culture and learning.” Instead of rethinking the methods, Scarino [21] (p. 325) argues that what is needed is a reconceptualization of “the very nature of language learning and teaching and its assessment.” This position aligns with Gorksi [22], who contends that intercultural education requires a “shift of consciousness” to avoid reducing it to superficial aspects such as the “food, flags, and festivals” of different ethnic groups.

Byram and Risager [23] investigated the factors that promote or hinder teachers’ attention to the intercultural aspect. Their study highlighted the interplay between different elements, such as curricular documents, achievement objectives, and the students in the classroom. In addition, some practical obstacles might be scheduling and curriculum constraints [24] that limit teachers’ opportunity to engage with this aspect. Other issues hindering teachers’ attention to the intercultural dimension of language teaching include a lack of connections between philosophical and educational theory to pedagogical practice in teacher training programs [25]. There is also an absence of guidance on how to develop this approach and teachers’ cultural knowledge [26]. Furthermore, the way teachers have been positioned as mere “curriculum deliverers—as technicians implementing a set product—rather than as education professionals using the curriculum to design learning experiences for a particular group of students” [27] (p. 3) does not encourage teachers to take up the responsibility of fostering interculturality. This situation is compounded by a lack of an understanding of the content, pedagogies, and outcomes of intercultural language teaching [28] (p. 182).

Significantly, Santoro [29] highlighted the need for teachers’ commitment to the intercultural project, while Young and Sachdev [30] revealed that teachers tend to view education about racism and other social inequalities as problematic as it involves discussing potentially controversial topics, which they do not feel confident to address. An aspect that should not be ignored is teachers’ understanding of student body demographics. For example, Santoro [29] conducted a study among student teachers engaging with ethnically and socioeconomically diverse learners and found that teachers had “limited knowledge about their students’ cultural values, practices and traditions” [29] (p. 36). This hindered their ability to develop intercultural or multicultural pedagogical approaches [29]. Finally, initial teacher education (ITE) has been identified as an area where little research is performed regarding intercultural education, especially with regard to examining the values and ideals of this kind of education project [31]. A similar observation has been made concerning teacher cognition in intercultural pedagogies in language education, which, despite having become “the overall orientation”, is still under-researched [32] (p. 225). Given this situation, a research opportunity has emerged. Since the Victorian Curriculum includes intercultural capability and the specific Curriculum of Languages incorporates the intercultural dimension [12], it was deemed appropriate to evaluate the impact of these policy documents on teachers’ pedagogical attention to these aspects.

The learning area of languages has been considered for a few decades at least “the most complete and versatile tool to understand and to experience how language and culture shape one’s and other’s worldviews” [33] (p. 11). Much effort has been devoted to achieving a change in pedagogy, even before the intercultural dimension was formally introduced in the Victorian Curriculum [34,35]. However, scholars in the field of language pedagogy have noted that “the amount of activity at policy level belies fragility in practice” [27] (p. 5). The extent to which teachers of languages are invested in the intercultural project remains insufficiently investigated, according to a more-recent study by Cloonan et al. [36]. For these reasons, this study chose to focus on language teaching.

1.3. Learning Languages and Intercultural Understanding in Australian Schools

Both the Australian and Victorian Curricula place the key learning area of languages as one of the core disciplines of compulsory schooling. Related to this, the National Curriculum posits that “the major rationale for learning languages is that being able to communicate proficiently gives learners essential communication skills in the target language, an Intercultural capability and an understanding of the role of language and culture in human communication” [6]. This is also embedded into the Victorian Curriculum, with the key learning area of languages guiding teaching and assessing intercultural understanding [12].

In theory, all Australian students in compulsory education are taught at least one additional language. However, while the expectation is that this happens throughout primary and secondary school, the reality is that languages are not taught consistently. This happens because the decision on how the curriculum is implemented is left up to each individual school, and therefore, inconsistencies exist. In addition, enrollments in languages have been declining, in spite of many initiatives carried out by the Australian government over the last few decades [27]. There are multiple reasons for this situation. They include the monolingual mindset [27] (p. 253) that characterizes other English-speaking countries and the consequent fact that the curriculum “is internally structured, with some disciplines understood as central or necessary and others as peripheral or optional” [37] (p. 158). In addition, there is a tendency to instrumentalize the discipline of languages as part of the rhetoric around globalization [38]. This attitude devalues the humanistic endeavor of teaching and learning languages and creates competition among which languages should be taught in schools, thus weakening their already feeble position. Some languages are assigned more value over others in view of their potential to enhance employability and mobility.

One risk of the weak position of languages in schooling is that it ends up being implemented sporadically. When this happens, teachers of languages, even though well intentioned, might use bicultural understanding for simplicity’s sake and, therefore, associate certain cultural and linguistic practices with a specific nationality or country. This superficial approach to the intercultural capability will likely reinforce, rather than challenge, existing prejudice and bias toward cultural difference. However, it is evident that, to be valuable in the 21st Century, teaching languages requires teachers to move beyond the equation of language, culture, and nationality. That is, cultural and linguistic affiliations must reflect human nature’s complexity.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Theoretical Framework

Four main paradigms of intercultural communication were used as the theoretical framework of this study. These were identified by Martin and Nakayama [39,40] and are (1) the functionalist, (2) the interpretative, (3) the critical humanist, and (4) the critical structuralist. This categorization is particularly useful because it is coupled with a call for a “dialectical approach” to intercultural research [40] (p. 59).

The functionalist paradigm conceptualizes culture as a priori group membership and sees the relationship between culture and communication as “casual” and ”deterministic” [39], leading to a view of human communication behavior as predictable. If it is possible to predict “what a person from culture x is like”, then it is also possible to presume how communication should unfold. Consequently, this paradigm allows for tools and strategies to be created so that they can be used to anticipate and overcome the problems that might emerge during intercultural encounters. As Xu [41] (p. 380) notes, “these tools, while addressing questions of communication forms rather than substantive issues and understanding, inevitably involve simplification.” The need for neat solutions and clear answers, visible in the majority of models and definitions of intercultural communication and competence, is reflective of this functionalist understanding of culture and communication. Competence then becomes an important factor, which can be determined and described through a list of traits, skills, and knowledge that, once gained, allow communicating “appropriately” and “effectively” in intercultural situations [42].

When applied to the field of education, the risk of working within this paradigm is that, when such an image of culture is presented in the language classroom, it results in the teaching of a language as a communication system that belongs to a fixed territorial reality. Usually, this is coupled with teaching cultural practices, typically represented by the “4 Fs” of foods, festivals, fashion, and folklore [43]. The danger of this approach is that it might foster “stereotypes or even prejudice” [44] (p. 476), with the process of teaching and learning becoming ”merely a takeover, a possession of the Other” [44] (p. 477). When this happens, existing social and political hierarchies are accentuated rather than undermined [22] (p. 516) and the ”good intentions” of intercultural education remain unfulfilled [22] (p. 516). Gorski [45] (p. 164) is critical of this approach because it makes multicultural education “conservative” rather than “progressive”. Similarly, when the objectives of intercultural education are “presented as ‘a priori’—something that can be pre-determined, top down, on students, and measured and evaluated—and not something that should be agreed to in dialogue with the students”, the possibilities of fostering social justice in the classroom are precluded [46] (p. 558). Furthermore, a danger of adopting such a pedagogical approach is that it involves selecting the dominant group’s perspective as the norm, establishing what is considered appropriate and what is effective [46] (p. 387).

Meanwhile, the interpretative paradigm conceptualizes culture as “socially constructed and emergent, rather than defined a priori” [40] (p. 60), and the relationship between culture and communication is, therefore, seen as “more reciprocal than causal” [40] (p. 61). Within the interpretative paradigm, categories of language and culture are seen as blurred, fluid, and dynamic, and “interpretation and analysis of interactions” become the focus of researchers and educators [44] (p. 481). They operate on the individual level, on “culture in action” rather than on “culture as object” [44] (p. 481). In particular, when language teachers understand culture and communication through this more-subjective lens, they recognize that knowledge is coconstructed in a dialogic fashion and that the learning and teaching process outcomes cannot be predetermined because they emerge in the process. A possible pedagogical approach is to describe the ways in which human behavior influences communication and vice versa. Patterns are identified and compared against other languages and cultures, which overlap in smaller speech communities instead of national communities. Despite being more fluid and subjective, interpretative studies also tend to often link communication behavior to a cultural group membership in a deterministic fashion [39] (pp. 6–7). Another limitation of the emphasis on individual agency is that it empties culture and communication from societal structures [47] (p. 77).

The critical paradigms overcome such limitations. The critical humanist paradigm recognizes the role of “ideological superstructures and material conditions” in shaping intercultural communication [40] (p. 61). It moves away from an unproblematic view of culture to one that recognizes culture as a “site of struggle”, whose relationship with communication is contested [39] (p. 8). A further critical stance is found in the critical structuralist paradigm, which also advocates addressing uneven power relationships, but it does so from a more-objective standpoint. Critical structuralists focus on the macro context, conceiving of culture as “societal structures” [40] (p. 63). The final aim of researchers and educators operating within this framework is social justice [40] (p. 63). In this sense, both critical paradigms can be conflated as critical interculturality. Within the critical paradigm of intercultural communication, diversity is recognized as the norm, while any attempt to homogenize culture is seen as the result of oppressive power structures. Simultaneously, power is also seen as a positive force, able to transform inequalities and social injustice. Teachers who operate within a critical stance acknowledge that their work is not a neutral act, but that they share a responsibility in the ways cultures and speakers of languages are constructed and understood. Therefore, they challenge problematic representations such as negative stereotypes. This results in welcoming and discussing conflicting and controversial opinions in the classroom. Kramsch [48] (p. 89) claims that “a critical foreign language pedagogy […] has the potential both of revealing the codes under which speakers in cross-cultural encounters operate, and of constructing something different and hybrid from these cross-cultural encounters.” Critical interculturalists highlight “issues of inequality, asymmetries and power relations” [49] (p. 18) and alert against the assumption that acquiring intercultural competence is a way of solving conflict and misunderstanding [50] (p. 26). Importantly, they question the overly simplistic notion of tolerance and reconciliation as the final aims of intercultural dialogue [50] (p. 26). This is significant because any equation such as “knowledge + understanding = tolerance” is naïve and conceals the messiness of human relationships.

2.2. Hermeneutic Phenomenology

This study used a qualitative research approach to investigate teachers’ lived experiences of the phenomenon of intercultural pedagogies in the language classroom. Because of the complexity of the phenomenon under investigation, the choice was made to use a qualitative methodology exclusively. In particular, hermeneutic phenomenology [51,52] was selected as this approach allows for an in-depth analysis of the complex ways the participants perceive, conceive of, and experience the phenomenon of intercultural education. Hermeneutic phenomenology emphasizes understanding phenomena by interpreting participants’ unique meanings and experiences [53] (p. 80). When employed as a research methodology, Langdridge [54] affirms that hermeneutic phenomenology can be considered as such when it is concerned with obtaining meaning by analyzing participants’ language. Similarly, according to Sloan and Bowe [55] (p. 1292), this methodology provides the opportunity to elicit participants’ experiences and give them a voice. As the art of interpretation is an ongoing process, hermeneutic phenomenology recognizes that the research process is nonlinear, iterative, and tentative. As a result, a definitive version is elusive [56] (p. 25). Moreover, a hermeneutic phenomenological approach acknowledges the researcher’s active role in guiding and interpreting the inquiry to give voice to the participants and explore their experiences [57].

2.3. Participants

The study focused on a cohort of seven pre-service teachers with a migrant background, completing a graduate ITE program while undertaking the practicum component of this course in secondary government schools. All participants in the study were local or international students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds who were born overseas and had completed, at least partially, their prior education in their country of origin or a third country and who later migrated to Australia. The selection process of participants was not intended to be either objective or completely random. From the outset, it was expected that the cohort of teachers who would agree to participate in this study would consist of individuals with some sort of personal or professional interest or investment in intercultural education. When the “Information to Participants” form was distributed in ITE courses in Victorian universities, the researcher was contacted by a majority of pre-service teachers with a migrant background. The choice was then made to exclude any participants without experiences of migration. The sample also included non-Western participants, which might have led to obtaining data that demonstrate alternative models of conceptualizing the relationship between the Self and the Other in educational settings [58] compared to the predominant Western ones.

Qualitative studies require samples that are purposive and relatively homogeneous, and the fact that all participants shared similar life experiences was considered an advantage from a phenomenological point of view. Creswell [59] (p. 189) explains that the “idea behind qualitative research is to purposefully select participants that will best help the researcher understand the problem and the research questions.” Relatedly, this purposeful selection of student teachers with culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds meant that their experience of the phenomenon, both in terms of language pedagogy and in terms of intercultural capability, was somewhat similar.

2.4. Instruments

The primary data-collection method was the individual in-depth interview, which followed a semi-structured format using the questions outlined in the interview guide. The duration of the first interview ranged from 40 min to an hour. The second interview served as a follow-up to delve deeper into the findings and explore emerging issues. The audio of the interviews was recorded and transcribed in full for analysis, maintaining the qualitative nature of the study. Individual in-depth interviews allow participants to express their interpretations and experiences freely. However, the main limitation of this format is the difficulty in comparing responses. Hence, a guide was used to ensure coverage of all areas of interest. These areas were drawn from Korthagen’s onion model [60], which was designed to explore the different layers of change in teacher cognition. These areas are:

• Environment, which usually includes the school, the classroom, and the students. In this study, the subthemes identified under this theme concerned external influences, namely how the curriculum documents, the teacher education course, and the school environment impact pre-service teachers’ pedagogical choices.
• Behavior, which indicates teachers’ actions. In this study, this theme included the ways in which pre-service teachers teach, or intend to teach, languages adopting an intercultural approach.
• Competencies, which in this study included the level of confidence pre-service teachers reported about intercultural pedagogies.
• Beliefs, namely pre-service teachers’ attitudes, perceptions, and assumptions about culture, about language, and about the intercultural approach.
• Identity, usually conceived of as the perception of a teacher’s “role”. In this study, past personal experiences of engaging with different cultures and languages were grouped under this theme.
• Mission, namely the motivation for choosing teaching as a career.

2.5. Data Analysis

The transcripts of the interviews were then analyzed via thematic analysis (TA), which allowed for the exploration of the phenomenon in all its aspects and nuances. A deep body of work details TA as the preferred method for data analysis in phenomenological inquiry [61]. The advantage of TA is that it can be coupled with any theoretical framework [62] and is considered particularly suited for embedding critical perspectives [63]. Because adopting a phenomenological approach involves accessing the phenomenon “from inside or from within experience” [64] (p. 105), in this study, meaning was accessed through the texts that were created as a result of transcribing the interviews with the selected cohort of participants. These texts were written, thus fixing the interviewees’ speech rather than being texts autonomously prepared by the participants. This was chosen because the process of seeking meaning should emerge in the process and from the relationship established between the researcher and the participant, and understanding must occur in context. Specifically, meaning should be sought in human experience rather than in what is consciously known [64] (p. 167). The analysis followed the recommended procedures for TA as described in [52]. TA is the “process of recovering the theme or themes that are embodied and dramatized in the evolving meanings and imagery of the work” [52] (p. 78). Given the complexity of uncovering the factors that influence teachers’ behaviors and thoughts, the main themes were analyzed deductively, based on the areas of interest based on Korthagen’s onion model [60]. However, subthemes emerged from multiple readings of the texts, which resulted in the detection of codes. It is important to note that the analysis was a constant process of digging for themes and revising areas of interest as the data collection process proceeded, rather than being performed at the end of the data-gathering process.

3. Results

The results from the data analysis were explored following the different areas of teacher cognition [60]. These were (1) environment, (2) behavior, (3) competencies, (4) beliefs, (5) identity, and (5) mission [60]. When teachers display alignment among the layers of the onion model, they can impact the school and classroom environment [65]. This study confirmed this proposition, as the participants who had yet to reflect on these aspects before the interviews also showed a more-significant discrepancy between what they said they wanted to achieve and what they said they would do to achieve it.

3.1. Teaching Culture or Teaching Interculture?

In the research data, intercultural capability is envisioned as the understanding of differences and the display of sensitivity and respect. Most participants wished to continue learning from their students and strived for an interpretative understanding of intercultural communication. In general, data collated from the interviews showed a movement toward a more-processual and -relational understanding of intercultural capability. Remarkably, all participants expressed, more or less explicitly, the intention to show learners how interconnected and mutually influential different cultures are. However, while all participants agreed that cultures mutually influence each other, there was also a tendency to envision language teaching as transmitting knowledge about cultural practices that perpetuate the myth of the nation-state as homogeneous. The approach to analyzing differences and similarities between the host culture and the culture(s) associated with the language taught was common among participants’ practical approaches to teaching. However, one participant considered teaching about cultural traditions as simplistic and counterproductive. Another participant distinguished between ever-changing social practices and more-stable cultural elements, which can be studied to increase students’ motivation and to broaden their general knowledge of facts and artifacts. One participant stated that “knowledge leads to understanding, understanding leads to acceptance”, proposing a theory that exists in models for intercultural competence [66]. Because she reflected on, and even theorized about, intercultural capability in the classroom, she displayed alignment between her aspirations and her application of an intercultural pedagogy.

According to two pre-service teachers, intercultural capability includes making young people aware of social and cultural issues that are not necessarily reflected in the language. In fact, in some cases, it was conceptualized as entirely separate from language. For example, one participant claimed that a plurilingual speaker could not be automatically considered as someone who is free from prejudice toward linguistically and culturally different people. For this pre-service teacher, all teachers committed to the intercultural agenda should work against inequalities and social injustice in the world, regardless of their subjects. When teachers show what needs to change in society, they give their learners opportunities to become aware of issues and gain the tools to address them. All participants agreed that this involves the idea of living well with other people as they consider that intercultural relationships form part of our world. Most pre-service teachers mentioned that they view intercultural capability as crucial for future work opportunities. Some stressed that it will improve personal opportunities in general.

This shows that the concerns for social cohesion and social inclusion coexist with the individual advantage gained by becoming interculturally competent. In principle, most participants in this study also aspire to a critical and ethical reading of intercultural capability, especially in light of being victims of bias and stereotyping as migrants in a new country. However, envisioning language teaching in practice often involves analyzing similarities and differences between the target and the host cultures. For this purpose, both the target and host cultures are conceived of as homogeneous and fixed. A common approach involves teaching about the traditions, lifestyles, institutions, history, and geography of the country. A participant argued that such popular national representations of a linguistic group are often beneficial to attract students’ interest in the Australian context, where languages are not a compulsory subject for the whole duration of secondary schooling and teachers need to attract their students’ interest to ensure enrolments. Simultaneously, this participant was also aware that it is essential to challenge, rather than reify such cultural stereotypes. For this purpose, she envisaged using teaching materials that question existing representations of cultural and linguistic groups. Some pre-service teachers recognized that teaching culture as corresponding to a national ideal conflicted with their willingness to show that cultures are multifaceted and that they change over time and place and are also based on who is observing them.

As a solution to this impasse, some participants proposed integrating language and culture via teaching about idiomatic expressions and etymology to make learners more aware of the changing nature of both language and culture. Even the more-socially engaged participants did not initially discuss the controversial aspects of the cultures associated with the languages they teach. Still, the conclusion was reached during the interview that such topics should be discussed.

In general, it can be concluded that, while there is a theoretical understanding of intercultural capability as a critical and ethical endeavor, the way pre-service teachers intend to put it into practice is not necessarily aligned with such an aspiration.

3.2. Influences from the Teaching Environment

Under the theme of “environment”, three main areas were identified as subthemes contributing to pre-service teachers’ pedagogical attention to the intercultural capability, namely (1) the Victorian Curriculum, (2) the study units of the university course undertaken for their undergraduate or postgraduate teacher education course, and (3) the supervised teaching practice at mainstream secondary schools, undertaken as part of their degree.

Significantly, during their practicum experiences, pre-service teachers stated that they were not relying on the curriculum in order to be guided in the teaching of intercultural capability. Participants reported that they had to adapt to the school and their mentors’ expectations when on placement. Therefore, the practicum component of their ITE can be considered a factor that significantly intrudes on and reinforces traditional language-teaching methodologies, such as focusing on grammatical and lexical components. This comes at the detriment of creating innovative opportunities for change, such as focusing on the social aspects of language use and teaching culture through language [67].

On the other hand, participants reported that the academic components of ITE were influential in developing better pedagogical approaches. When pre-service teachers were undertaking the theoretical units of their degree, they examined aspects of multicultural and inclusive education in tutorial discussions at the university, which was recognized as a positive factor influencing their formation as teachers. This is a key finding as it shows that the most-substantial impact on teachers’ beliefs in relation to a curriculum component is derived from a course that allows the opportunity to examine current personal beliefs and societal issues critically. This finding was corroborated by the fact that most student teachers stated that participating in this study was a helpful way to start examining their own teaching practice.

Despite recognizing the contribution of ITE, all pre-service teachers reported low-to-moderate confidence levels regarding both the theoretical and the practical aspects of the intercultural capability. This might be because they are student teachers, so they are still questioning their expertise. This finding also suggests that general capabilities receive little attention and that, even though they appear in policy documents, they end up being disregarded, to some extent in ITE courses and predominantly in the realities of schools.

In relation to their classroom of languages, participants agreed that the presence of the intercultural dimension in the Victorian Curriculum for Languages is a useful way to remind teachers that they should tie cultural and linguistic elements together when delivering their lessons. At the same time, they felt that this understanding was already obvious to them and justified this by recounting their prior language learning experiences. All pre-service teachers expressed the belief that language teaching inevitably involves addressing cultural aspects. However, these were often seen as fixed elements (traditions and institutions), and only some participants formulated them as culture embedded in the language (e.g., registers of formality, idiomatic expressions, etymology) or as language embedded in the culture (e.g., acceptable content, structure of a text). This could potentially explain why participants do not regard the Victorian Curriculum as enriching their understanding of teaching languages, namely because they already know that teaching another language involves teaching about another culture.

The Australian context was also considered as influential in determining participants’ pedagogical approach. Remarkably, the interview data show awareness of the marginal role of languages in the Australian educational system, as teachers felt compelled to use stereotypical representations of their culture to attract students’ interest in selecting to study languages beyond the compulsory limit decided by schools.

3.3. Self-Discovery of Intercultural Capability

Most participants shared the aspiration to teach languages in order to develop a stronger sense of both local and global identity and belonging in their students. The subject area of languages was seen as potentially beneficial for their well-being, with some participants feeling that it was their responsibility to assist their young learners, especially those of cultural and linguistic backgrounds that differ from the Anglo-Australian norm, in finding a place in the social and educational context. The justification for these beliefs was closely connected to the inner layers of the onion model, namely identity and mission [60].

The data clearly show that research participants’ conceptualizations and practical application of the intercultural capability are derived from their life experiences. Most participants spontaneously recounted their personal intercultural journeys, that is to say what, in their opinion, had made them more intercultural. These experiences include living and working in a different country, learning other languages while growing up, and studying in a different country, as well as raising bilingual children. Participants claimed that they shared the aspiration to teach languages so that they could create academic and personal opportunities for their students. This aspiration mirrored the benefits the participants experienced from being able to speak other languages, which they wanted to pass on to their students.

In conclusion, the most-significant finding of this study is that the intercultural capability is conceptualized by these pre-service teachers as personal and social responsibility toward the Other; however, this understanding appears as weak and uncertain, especially when it comes to translating ascribed meanings of the intercultural capability into the practice of teaching.

4. Discussion

The most-significant finding from this study is that incongruences exist between participants’ theoretical interpretation and practical application of intercultural capability.

Theoretically, intercultural capability is envisioned as the understanding of differences and the display of sensitivity and respect. This aligns with other definitions, such as those of intercultural understanding, intercultural sensitivity, and respectful and appropriate communication [42,66]. Most participants wished to continue learning from their students and strived for an interpretative understanding of intercultural communication. Some seemed inclined to adopt what Lanas [67] refers to as “thoughtfulness”. Lanas [67] defines this as “approaching each situation simultaneously with the ethicality of a teacher and the humbleness of a learner.” In a similar study, Syarizanet al. [58] found that, among Malaysian students, it was common to consider intercultural capability as a relational process including both the Self and the Other in communication. Data also show that participants share a mission to empower young people and that, in a few cases, participants felt that, as teachers, they have a “social and political responsibility” [67] (p. 91).

However, how this can be implemented in the classroom remains uncertain. The most-immediate pedagogical approach is related to transmitting knowledge of cultural practices and traditions by prioritizing teaching via a functionalist paradigm [40]. Envisioning language teaching in practice often involves analyzing similarities and differences between the target and the host cultures. For this purpose, both the target and host cultures are conceived of as homogeneous and fixed. A common approach involves teaching about the traditions, lifestyles, institutions, history, and geography of the country. This resorting to a functionalist paradigm of culture [40] is possibly considered a more-straightforward approach to embedding culture in their lessons. All participants in this study considered, at least to some degree, culture as corresponding to the nation. This aligns with the functional paradigm of Martin and Nakayama [40] and is justified by the necessity “to identify relatively permanent features of an entity that make it similar to and different from other entities” [48] (p. 79) when illustrating and discussing, in this case, a language and its speakers. Another participant argued that popular national representations of a linguistic group are often beneficial to attract students’ interest in the Australian context, where languages are not a compulsory subject throughout secondary schooling.

It is considered a significant finding that intercultural capability was never exclusively conceptualized following a functionalist paradigm, demonstrating that culture is no longer considered only in terms of national culture. The interpretative paradigm was not wholly absent from participants’ pedagogical practice as some expressed the intent to include in their teaching material their learners’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The fact that participants’ aspirations coexist with functionalist approaches aligns with the findings from Tupas [68] (p. 247), who reported that “conflicted trajectories” prevail in conceptualizations of intercultural communication. Tupas [68] (p. 247) concludes that there are “attempts of students to be critical but, in practice, their criticality is enmeshed in reifying tendencies.” Generally, students in the classes did not exemplify traits of highly critical communicators. Instead, their engagement with interculturalism was conflicted. Thus, “criticality” as it is envisioned remained incomplete and in need of further development.”

When Skourdoumbis [69] analyzed how secondary school teachers embed the seven general capabilities present in the Australian National Curriculum, he found that participants asserted their agency over the curriculum and implemented it based on their unique interpretations of the capabilities. In this study, pre-service teachers’ identities became prominent in their recounts of intercultural pedagogies. While defining identity proves to be a challenge, it is linked to agency and it is influenced by the context [70] (p. 176). This finding aligns with existing research on pre-service teachers’ identity, showing an ”inextricable link” between the personal and the professional [70] (p. 180).

At the core of teacher cognition is what Nieto [71] (p. 464) refers to as “an elusive something”, that “sense of mission” that leads individuals to choose to embark on this profession. Closely related to the Self was also the justification for choosing this profession as participants used words such as “love”, “passion”, “inspire”, and “enthusiasm” to describe why they became teachers of languages. Lanas [46] (p. 557) argues for rethinking intercultural education in ITE in terms of love, which is seen as an alternative to “instrumentalism, performance orientation, emotionlessness.”

In Rowe and Skourdoumbis’ [72] analysis of the Australian Government’s reform agenda to improve teacher quality via teacher training, the conclusion was reached that the attempts to standardize teaching practice and increase teacher accountability are detrimental to teacher agency. If, what is needed is a better alignment between the layers of the onion [60,65], it might be more effective to provide opportunities for pre-service, as well as in-service teachers, to reflect on these layers in order to realize how the most-inner layers affect the outer ones. Since studies have found that teachers’ “self-efficacy beliefs” are one of the main factors guiding teachers’ behavior [73], teachers might feel more competent in translating such beliefs into behavior once these are brought to light.

The main limitation of this study is its qualitative nature, as the findings are not generalizable. Because the cohort of participants in this study included only pre-service teachers with a migrant background, it would be necessary to conduct a similar study with pre-service teachers with no experience of migration to understand whether it was a mere coincidence or whether those who have experience of being the Other are more sensitive to the topic of intercultural education. Due to time constraints, it was not possible to conduct a longitudinal study. A longitudinal study would have provided richer data and highlighted changes in teachers’ attitudes over time. Research [74] shows that all aspects of teacher cognition are constantly re-negotiated based on what they experience in their personal and professional lives.

5. Conclusions

The findings from this study contribute to knowledge in the fields of language pedagogy and teacher education by providing insights into how migrant pre-service teachers perceive and plan to adopt an intercultural approach in their language classrooms. First, this study provides valuable insights into how a group of migrant Victorian pre-service teachers understand and intend to adopt an intercultural approach to their language classroom. This is an area that requires further exploration since little is known about how the personal experiences of migrant teachers affect their conceptualization and practical application of intercultural education. Second, this study identified areas of teacher cognition that influence their ability to teach effectively. Finally, this study highlighted the intrinsic incongruences between participants’ practical application of the intercultural dimension and their multiple theoretical interpretations of this concept. This gap presents challenges for pre-service teachers’ ability to understand and implement education policy and curriculum documents, which has consequences for policymakers and teacher education programs. Recommendations include that curriculum documents redefine the concept of intercultural capability to highlight that not only learning about cultural diversity is necessary, but also learning from and through cultural diversity. This study also recommends assigning intercultural capability a more prominent role in the curriculum so that it is not treated as an addition, but as central to promoting social cohesion and fostering social justice. Finally, regarding both ITE and teachers’ professional development, the need for promoting critical and reflective discussions was identified. This is expected to support teachers in becoming agents of change.