Assessing Intercultural Competence in Middle School Teachers Formation

Abstract

To Byran (1997), Intercultural Competence entails savoirs, savoir comprendre, savoir apprendre/faire, savoir être and savoir s’engager. However, this bundle of cognitive, affective, ethnic, and behavioural levels is monitored by teachers' curiosity, openness, and interest in knowing and reflecting about the “other culture.” This paper aims at investigating how middle school teachers at Mascara conceptualize intercultural competence to infer their daily cultural teaching practice. To this objective, a questionnaire was implemented to elicit information about the practitioners' formation so that adequate implications would be proposed. The results demonstrate that the practitioners did not receive any formation on how to teach the native culture, let alone the target culture