Racial literacy development in online intercultural education in the EFL classroom

ABSTRACT

Intercultural competence refers to people’s ability to understand and respect each other across all types of cultural barriers, and racial literacy stands out as a fundamental component of this competency. Particularly, in Korea, which has recently rapidly become a multicultural society, understanding diversity and cultivating racial literacy are important competencies. To achieve this goal, the teacher's role is important in developing and operating English classes using various teaching materials. This study introduces the development and application of an innovative online intercultural exchange programme conducted in a middle school using multiple technology resources. Going beyond dealing with superficial textbook coverage of multiculturalism, this programme encourages students to reflect on their own prejudices and share cultural experiences through engaging in technology-based open discussions and critical thinking about sensitive issues. In this paper, we first introduce the online intercultural exchange programme and teaching materials that we designed and operated for one semester and then carefully examine each class activity aimed at improving students’ intercultural competence and racial literacy. Finally, we report the presiding teacher’s reflections on the impact of this programme on the students in the class and suggest points for further discussion.

KEYWORDS:

• online intercultural exchange
• critical racial literacy
• EFL context
• intercultural competence
• intercultural education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Research Grant of Andong National University.