Intercultural citizenship as an opportunity for bottom-up intercultural dialogue internationalisation in South America

Abstract

This chapter argues that intercultural citizenship pedagogy (Byram, 2014; Byram et.al., 2017) can be considered an example of internationalisation in Higher Education from an educational and intercultural dialogue perspective. The educational rationale that supports this view of internationalisation converges with the philosophical framework that intercultural citizenship theory provides for foreign language education, focused on values (not only instrumental purposes) and a meaningful contribution to society through student engagement with the community. The argument is that intercultural citizenship pedagogy constitutes an instance of practice-based, practitioner-oriented, bottom up form of intercultural dialogue internationalisation. The point is illustrated with a case study of intercultural citizenship as a transnational telecollaboration experience between Argentina and Britain in Higher Education. After an initial general description of internationalisation policies in this Argentinean setting (from available official documents and small scale interview data), the case study illustrates an intercultural dialogue internationalisation initiative as a pedagogic position, intended to provide opportunities for intercultural learning on campus -not just to mobile students- through collaborative project work on a theme of social significance with civic student engagement with the local, regional and global communities. Implications for policies of internationalisation and for practitioners are explored. Finally, the point is made that this Argentinean case is innovative because it is a bottom up form of intercultural dialogue internationalisation with a decolonising orientation.