Our objectives
From the perspective of transculturality, the project explores the importance, the characteristics and the impact of the cultural dimension of on-line intercontinental interactions over:
- the learning process, with its multiple cultures, ways, habits, conceptions of curriculum and procedures for learning and teaching foreign languages;
- students' representations of their (and their partners') language, country, culture and national identities;
- the education of the students who participate in the project, in regards to their competence in relating to other peoples in a foreign language; and
- our own actions, as educators, researchers and administrators of a project aimed at working with "the different Other" or "the Otherness". This last objective has an evaluative nature.
What we wish as results
First, we expect an in-depth description of the cultural dimension of online interactions in foreign languages through the voice and image resources of webcam instant messaging sofware. Second, once we know the characteristics of the cultural dimension of learning within the context of teletandem, we hope to create pedagogical strategies to make the knowledge gained through the research project accessible to classrooms and teachers of foreign languages. Finally, we hope that the project will contribute to the body of knowledge about the role of transculturality in the education and the lives of people who will increasingly engage in constant contact with differences among peoples and countries. Our research agenda is, thus, both educational and political: we wish to use technology to provide peoples' equity of access to critical understanding of differences and foreign language education for peace and world citizenship.