Intercultural Learning in Language Teaching workshop

This workshop is co-hosted by the departments of Asian Studies, French, Hispanic & Italian Studies, and Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies. 

In language education, intercultural learning has been understood as navigating cultural differences or mélanges, as involving specific kinds of knowledge or savoirs, as developing the capacity for empathy, perspective taking, and adaptability, or as actively engaging in the process of making and interpreting meaning. This workshop provides an opportunity to explore how language teachers can approach intercultural learning with their students, how conceptions of culture and language can impact course instruction and content, and will include teaching activities and texts that offer a means of learning culture through language.

The workshop will guide participants through a discussion of key concepts and definitions with a focus on the role of stereotypes and notions of cultural grouping, belonging and identity. The activities will allow participants to explore intercultural understanding from their own perspectives and to model the use of authentic texts and resources for their own teaching. The final part of the workshop will offer an overview of an assessment model that has been developed for intercultural language teaching and learning.

Speaker: Meike Wernicke is Assistant Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia. She has an extensive background in Modern language teaching (German and French), French Linguistics, as well as German heritage language education. Her research in FSL teacher education has focused on study abroad and teacher identity and extends to research interests in intercultural education, bi-/multilingual language policy and pedagogies, and discourse analytic research methodologies.

Her international research includes projects associated with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages at the Centre for Modern Language in Graz, Austria, as well as an International Project on Multilingualism and Teacher Education at the Universität Hamburg, Germany.

Within the Canadian context, her projects include initiatives supporting the integration of Indigenous perspectives and content in K-12 and postsecondary education. Her current research examines teacher professional development in French language curriculum implementation in British Columbia and in association with the development of a professional language portfolio.

Since 2016 she has coordinated the French Master of Education in Modern Languages (pdce.educ.ubc.ca/frm) as well as the Institut de Français – UBC à Québec, a summer professional development program for in-service French language teachers (pdce.educ.ubc.ca/QuebecCity).