Following the recommendations of the Council of Europe’s Language Learning for European Citizenship project, particular attention should be paid to “developing students’ independence of thought and action combined with social responsibility” (Council of Europe, 1997) in language classes. Osler and Starkey (2005) reported on “growing interest” (p. xiii) among language teachers in the ways they could nurture effective citizens in their classrooms, which has been emphasised in such publications as Global Citizenship in the English classroom, published by the British Council (2008) and more recently in Global Skills: Creating empowered 21st-century learners by Oxford University Press (2019). Oxfam’s Educating for global citizenship – A guide for schools (2015a) also makes explicit connections between teaching citizenship and teaching modern foreign languages. According to the guide, in the language class, teachers can provide students with opportunities to develop their global citizenship skills by

 

In many of his publications (1997, 2003, 2005), Starkey has been advocating for using the language class as terrain for educating democratic, active, cosmopolitan, thus global citizens. He suggests incorporating this dimension into classes in two ways: through activities that promote the development of social skills and through topics that have a citizenship angle. He sees communicative language teaching methodology as inherently democratic and believes that “skills developed in language classes are […] transferable to citizenship education” (Starkey, 2005, p. 32). Such skills include listening to each other, developing ideas, expressing one’s own ideas, working together, conflict resolution, which are all components of global citizenship education frameworks. In his view, when the students develop the guide rules in the classroom which they have to observe during discussions, it can also create an atmosphere that encourages a human rights stance. “It is in the interest of the language teacher to promote controversy in the classroom” (p. 34), Starkey claims, as, during the debates, differences in opinions may arise, and students will have the opportunity to develop the above-mentioned skills without focusing predominantly on speaking or writing accuracy. He also finds that the topics prescribed for examinations are not engaging as they only focus on the students’ private life (e.g., home life, free time, holidays) and “lack intellectual stimulation for young minds” (p. 35). He suggests giving a citizenship dimension to these topics and encourages treating them through a critical lens to engage students.

 

Byram distinguishes between intercultural competence and intercultural communicative competence. A person with Intercultural Competence (IC) has “the ability to communicate in their own language with people from another country and culture, drawing upon their knowledge about IC, their attitudes of interest in otherness and their skills in interpreting, relating and discovering” (Byram, 1997, p. 71) or interpreting a translated text from another culture. However, a person with Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) “can interact with people from another country and culture in a foreign language”, “they are able to negotiate the mode of communication and interaction which is satisfactory to themselves and the other” and are able to “act as a mediator between people of different cultural origins” (Byram, 1997, p. 71).

 

The above characteristics of a person with critical cultural awareness largely correspond to those of a globally competent person, as they also need to be able to analyse and interpret different perspectives and values critically and they need to be able to interact effectively and appropriately in intercultural exchanges. Even though Byram added this dimension to his framework, he criticized CCA for not being active enough, for not having an “explicit reference [in the definition] to taking action in the world” (Byram, 2009, p. 69). As a result, combining his framework with citizenship education and the German tradition of political education (Politische Bildung), he took his Intercultural Communicative Competence model further and created his Intercultural Citizenship framework. Based on this framework, the main premises of Intercultural citizenship education are:

 

These three aims of intercultural citizenship education, all concerned with social and political change, assume a more active role for learners than previous models: Byram asserts that change in the individual is a prerequisite for social change, and to affect change on a wider scale, one needs to act locally. Byram’s ideas are closely related to global citizenship education, as both models build on the individual’s active participation in change through self-reflection, perspective-taking, critical thinking, and cooperation. Porto (2018) describes the similarities in the following way:

 

Developing students’ cosmopolitan citizenship (Osler & Starkey, 2005), intercultural citizenship (Byram, 2008) or global citizenship (British Council, 2008) can be effectively achieved through task-based, project-based, or content-based instruction (Byram, 2009; Porto, 2018). On this basis, it is fair to say that the English language classroom is a suitable ground for educating global citizens.