Progress on Embedding an Intercultural Orientation to Teaching Languages and Cultures: An Update from Australia

Abstract

An intercultural orientation, providing opportunities for developing comparative and relational understandings of two or more languages and cultures through learners' experiential engagement and reflection on their learning, has been a major international focus in languages education over the past several decades. Australian education systems adopted an intercultural approach to languages education in the 1980s and 1990s, and this orientation underpins the national curriculum, the Australian Curriculum: Languages, which has now been implemented across Australia from the first year of schooling to Year 10. Australian researchers and languages teacher professional associations are international leaders in developing the theoretical literature around an intercultural orientation to languages education, in providing professional learning for teachers, and in articulating and exemplifying intercultural classroom practice. This paper provides an update on the Australian approach to and practice of intercultural languages teaching and learning, with particular regard to the work of the national languages teacher umbrella association, the Australian Federation of Modern Languages Teachers Associations (AFMLTA).