You Just Want to Be Like that Teacher: Modelling and Intercultural Competence in Young Language Learners.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ABSTRACT Language teachers are called upon to understand both the nature of students' intercultural competence and their own rote in its development. Limited research attention has been paid to the relationship between the types of behaviour that language teachers model and the intercultural competence their students acquire. This article reports on a case study in an Australian primary school that used qualitative research methods to investigate types of language teacher behaviour that facilitate the development of intercultural competence in students. Four teachers and 49 Year 6 students took part in interviews and focus group discussions and were observed in the classroom. Coding themes were developed to analyse the data. Teachers' understanding of interculturality in themselves and their students, their modelling of spoken interaction, their metalinguistic knowledge, and their priorities in task design all appear to actively facilitate particular aspects of students' intercultural competence. The findings of this study extend the understanding of the role of teacher behaviour in intercultural language learning. The article suggests that a diverse expression of teacher interculturality needs to be acknowledged and respected for its effectiveness in facilitating intercultural competence in students. KEY WORDS Intercultural competence, teacher education, primary language learning, modelling, teacher interculturality. INTRODUCTION This article reports on the results of a case study in an Australian primary school that investigated language teacher modelling and its facilitation of intercultural competence in students. The rapid development of intercultural language learning in Australia and abroad in the last decade has been remarkable. In less than a decade a number of writers have developed principles for intercultural language learning and elaborated their application in practice (Byram, Nichols, & Stevens, 2001; Corbett, 2003, Liddicoat, Papademetre, Scarino, & Kohler, 2003; Papademetre & Scarino, 2006). There have also been initiatives in teacher professional development and the production of resources that foreground intercultural comparison and reflection skills within language learning (Asia Education Foundation (AEF), 2004, Intercultural Language Teaching and Learning Project (ILTLP), 2007). Underlying these various initiatives has been a common understanding of the contested nature of culture. Prom an earlier classroom focus on teaching literature or the arts as culture, there has been a shift to an emphasis on what is shared in the waft of life of a speech community's members. Working in such a way involves critical reflection by both teacher and learner about the relationships that exist between their languages and cultures. WHILE LANGUAGE TEACHING CONTINUES TO help learners acquire the linguistic competence needed to communicate, it must now also develop intercultural competence, i.e. the ability to reach a shared understanding of meaning by people of different social identities. To achieve this, teachers need to understand both the nature of intercultural development in students and the facilitating role of their own behaviour. There are few examples of classroom practice to help teachers understand either the nature of intercultural competence or how to facilitate it (Harbon & Browett, 2006, p. 28). In particular, as Jokikokko (2005) among others has pointed out, limited research attention has been paid to the relationship between a language teacher's 'way of acting' (Ryan, 1998) and the development of intercultural competence by students. The study reported here is part of a larger study, in which qualitative research methods were used to investigate intercultural competence in students. The results will contribute to current initiatives in intercultural language teacher training and to helping teachers identify the types of behaviour that facilitate students' intercultural competence. …