State of the Art on Interculturality in the Training of English Teachers

Abstract

This article constitutes a state of the art on how intercultural skills are developed in future English language educators. Given the few studies specifically on this issue, the search was extended to articles on how intercultural skills have been developed in in-service university professors and foreign language students. The study focused on 11 research articles from education journals indexed in SCIELO, Researchgate, REDALYC, Dialnet, and LATINDEX. Results show that although there is a growing number of papers examining the development of intercultural competence in in-service language teachers, there are relatively few studies that delve into the curricular design, pedagogical approaches and institutional contexts of English teacher education programs.  This gap is particularly evident in the case of El Salvador, where no studies on the subject were found. Similarly, studies suggest that English teachers lack clarity about what interculturality means, intercultural dialogue and their relevance in the language classroom; therefore, the need to incorporate the development of these competencies in future and in-service educators was identified.