فهرست مطالب michael byram

This introduction to the Special Issue explains the geo-political context in which the contributions have been solicited and written and the policy response of the Council of Europe with which the contributions engage. The presence of war in Europe between Ukraine and Russia, both of which were members of the Council of Europe, is just one element of the threat to democracy. The Council of Europe had already begun work on a framework of reference for teaching democratic and intercultural competences in response to extremist violence in the 2010s and the model produced is all the more important in the current situation. The model – called ‘the butterfly model – lists the values, attitudes, skills and knowledge needed in a pluricultural and democratic Europe as a basis for work in education. In response, the articles introduced here demonstrate how the model can be used in the foreign language classroom and, in two further articles, this work is located in approaches to global education and to the education of teachers.

In the ‘cultural turn’ which has taken place in recent decades – in theory if not yet in practice – the crucial question is ‘What should a language teacher’s aims be?’ This will be the main focus of this paper. There are however other questions which are frequently raised in the new context, questions about the relationships among ‘language’, ‘identity’ and ‘culture’. If language learning influences identity or even creates new identities, should this be one of the aims of teaching? At the same time it is important to place foreign language teaching in the wider context of all language teaching: national languages, heritage languages, and minority languages. I will attempt to take these other factors into account while addressing the main issue of teaching aims. Teachers’ aims should be both functional and educational. Language teaching of all kinds – but my main concern will be foreign language teaching as practiced in general education – should develop competence for communication and interaction whilst stimulating critical thinking and action in the world. In order to illustrate this, I will turn to some recent work which realises new theory in practice and combines the aims of language education and education for citizenship in the concept of intercultural citizenship.

The title of this new journal provides opportunity to review the many contexts which need to be taken into account in reflecting upon foreign language teaching. These contexts include the educational, the fact that much language teaching takes place within general educational and often compulsory educational settings and institutions. Learners thus encounter foreign languages alongside other languages – their language of the home, the official language of the country, languages of minorities and others – and this needs to be part of the thinking about learning and teaching. Furthermore, since language is the tool for learning throughout life and especially in educational institutions, where the languages of other subjects are languages in themselves which learners have to learn if they are to be successful in education, teachers of all subjects need to be aware of language as the tool of learning. Yet another issue is the relationship of language teaching with citizenship education and the development of ‘intercultural citizenship’. The title of the journal also refers to ‘research’ and here too there is potential for reflection on the modes and paradigms of research which are relevant to investigating language teaching and learning. Distinctions of quantitative and qualitative research are misleading and need to be reviewed. The higher order distinctions are between research which seeks explanation, that which seeks understanding and that which involves advocacy.