Intercultural Communicative Competences as Learning Goals in Secondary Education: Education Factors influencing ICC implementation: an exploratory research

Abstract

Intercultural communicative competences (ICC) are a set of knowledge, skills and attitudes which are considered important in inter- and cross-cultural interaction. They are valued at such a level that researchers, policy makers and teachers are looking for ways of implementing and evaluating ICC in secondary education. Moreover, European and Dutch educational policy are making ICC one of their policies’ leading goals in language education. The aim of this research is to learn to what extent ICC goals can be reached in secondary education. Answering this question utilises a literature study which looks at the different policies and research literature on ICC development. In addition, several case studies in the form of interviews with secondary school teachers have been done to investigate which concepts from the literature study can be traced back to the educational field. The results show that all three basic ICC dimensions of knowledge, know-how, and being from the research field can be traced back in both educational policy and the educational practice. However, the ICC conceptions found in educational policy and educational practice, do not structurally cover all dimensions at their different levels. Moreover, the ICC conceptions found in educational policy and educational practice are supportive of European citizenship as a learning goal instead of an independent set of competences that should explicitly be added as a learning goal to language learning curricula.