2. Common approaches to virtual exchange in FL education

FL educators have been employing the internet to engage their learners in authentic communicative collaboration with users of other languages since the medium first emerged in the 1990s (Warschauer, Reference Warschauer1995). A recent review of the literature confirms that the principal models of virtual exchange used in FL education are the e-tandem and intercultural telecollaboration approaches (O'Dowd, Reference O'Dowd, O'Dowd and Lewis2016). The design and structure of the first of these models has been mainly informed by interactionist theories of second language acquisition (SLA) (Van der Zwaard & Bannick, Reference Van der Zwaard and Bannink2016) while intercultural telecollaboration has evolved from sociocultural theories of SLA (Dooly, Reference Dooly and Meskill2013) as well as pedagogical models of intercultural communicative competence (Byram, Reference Byram1997).

In the e-tandem model (O'Rourke, Reference O'Rourke and O'Dowd2007), two native speakers of different languages communicate together in order to practise the other's language, and messages are typically written half in the target and half in the first language (L1), thereby offering each partner with an opportunity to use their target language and, at the same time, provide their partner with authentic input. These exchanges are generally based on the principles of autonomy and reciprocity. The responsibility for a successful exchange rests mainly with the learners, who are expected to provide feedback on their partners’ content and on their target language performance. E-tandem partners take on the role of peer tutors who correct their partners’ errors and propose alternative formulations in the target language. The role of the teacher in the e-tandem model is usually quite limited. Learners are often encouraged to take on responsibility for finding their own themes for discussion, correcting their partners’ errors, and keeping a learner portfolio to reflect on their own learning progress.

E-tandem has been in use in L2 education for almost 20 years now (Brammerts, Reference Brammerts and Warschauer1996); however, a more recent example of a successful offshoot of the e-tandem approach is the Teletandem Brasil Project (http://www.teletandembrasil.org/), which originated at the Universidade Estadual Paulista in Brazil. This network matches Brazilian university students who want to learn an FL with students who are learning Portuguese. The network began in 2006 and now connects students in structured, institutionalised online language exchanges with partner universities in more than 40 universities in the USA, Mexico, Columbia, Germany and Italy. Teletandem differs from traditional e-tandem approaches as it is focuses on synchronous desktop conferencing using tools such as Skype and Google Hangouts. It can also be formally integrated into the curricula in many institutions and students receive credit for their online collaboration (Leone & Telles, Reference Leone, Telles, O'Dowd and Lewis2016).

The second common model of virtual exchange is the telecollaboration model. Telecollaboration differs considerably to e-tandem due to the greater importance it attributes to classroom integration of the online interaction and also because of the shift of focus in learning outcomes from developing communicative competence to intercultural communicative competence (Byram, Reference Byram1997). Although many e-tandem initiatives have also supported the development of intercultural aspects of language learning, telecollaborative approaches clearly place the development of cultural awareness and intercultural communicative competence at the heart of virtual exchange. Telecollaboration also endeavours to integrate students’ online activities more comprehensively into the students’ classwork and involves international class-to-class partnerships in which projects and tasks are developed by the partner teachers in the collaborating institutions. Students’ contact classes are where online interaction and publications are authored, analysed, and reflected upon with the expert support of the teacher.

Similarly to e-tandem, telecollaboration has also traditionally been bicultural in nature, involving, for example, US students of Spanish working with Spanish students of English. For this reason, common activities include collaborative research projects comparing both cultures and the analysis of parallel cultural texts. For example, Furstenberg et al. (Reference Furstenberg, Levet, English and Maillet2001) had French and American students engage in comparative studies of the film Three men and a baby with the French original, while O'Dowd (Reference O'Dowd2006) had German students carry out ethnographic interviews on their partners in the United States via videoconference and then write reflective essays on the cultural differences which had emerged.

Recently, various commentators have highlighted the limitations of these bilingual, bicultural approaches to online interaction and exchange. First, from a practical standpoint, it is evident that bilingual–bicultural models of virtual exchange have little to offer to the many language educators working in countries where their national languages are less in demand for bilingual exchanges. English as a Second Language (ESL) and French educators in countries in Eastern Europe, for example, are likely to struggle to find partner classes learning their language in the US or in Western Europe. The reality is that, as virtual exchange continues to grow in popularity, there will simply not be enough classes of ‘native speakers’ in France, Germany and English-speaking countries to provide sufficient partnerships for classes based in countries of less widely spoken languages (Kohn & Hoffstaedter, Reference Kohn and Hoffstaedter2015).

Second, from an educational perspective, it is also important to consider that today's university graduates are increasingly likely to use a language such as English, not with native speakers, but rather with non-native speakers as a lingua franca in their future employment (Graddol, 2006). In the global workplace, engineers, computer scientists and other professionals will need intercultural and linguistic skills to use English for online collaborative work with other non-native speakers just as much, if not more, than with native speakers. Dooly observes that ‘research in this area appears to be moving away from the notion that “intercultural” is limited to one specific target language focus towards more studies that hold a “global” notion of the intercultural’ (Reference Dooly, O'Dowd and Lewis2016, p. 176). Similarly, Kramsch has argued that ‘[i]t is no longer appropriate to give students a tourist-like competence to exchange information with native speakers of national languages within well-defined national cultures. They need a much more sophisticated competence in the manipulation of symbolic systems’ (Reference Kramsch2006, p. 251).

But there are other limitations to bicultural models such as e-tandem and telecollaboration which have yet to be highlighted in the literature and which are related to the common learning outcomes of such approaches to virtual exchange. At the University of Léon, Spain we have been carrying out both e-tandem and telecollaborative models in classes in our institution for over 15 years (O'Dowd, Reference O'Dowd2003, Reference O'Dowd, O'Dowd and Lewis2016) and the ongoing evaluation of these exchanges repeatedly reveals the same strengths and weaknesses of these models. These exchanges have involved cohorts of students with Spanish as their L1 enrolled in ESL courses as part of their undergraduate degrees in Primary Education and Tourism. The model of virtual exchange and the themes of the task sequences have differed depending on the profile of the different classes and the academic requirements of their courses. However, all the exchanges have had bilingual Spanish–English set-ups and involved partner classes of students in the US who are studying Spanish as an L2.

Qualitative content analysis of the Spanish students’ reflective diaries and portfolios as well as of end-of-exchange interviews has allowed me to identify the main learning outcomes of each of the models. Each of these main outcomes will be illustrated in the following case studies which were considered to be representative of the main findings in the data.

3. From intercultural competence to global citizenship

Any practitioner or researcher investigating the goals or intended outcomes of international education may be taken aback by the variation and complexity in terminology currently in use in the field. While in the area of FL education the terms intercultural competence and intercultural awareness have now gained general acceptance (although their translation into classroom practices and learning materials has been quite superficial at times), the interdisciplinary nature of international education has meant that intercultural competence is now used interchangeably with global competence.

Probably the best-known model of intercultural competence is Byram's aforementioned model of intercultural communicative competence (Reference Byram1997). In this model, Byram outlines the attitudes, knowledge, skills and critical cultural awareness which people need to interact and collaborate successfully with members of other cultures. The model has been used extensively in FL education and has been one of the key tools used in FL telecollaboration research to identify learning outcomes in virtual exchange (O'Dowd, Reference O'Dowd2006).

However, in recent years, the concepts of intercultural and global competence have been supplemented by those of intercultural citizenship and global citizenship, which themselves carry separate, but related, connotations and objectives. Models of global competence now compete for attention with models of Competence for democratic culture (Council of Europe, 2016) and Frameworks for intercultural citizenship (Byram, Reference Byram2008). It appears that the term that is gaining dominance over the others in international education is ‘global citizenship’. De Wit explains that ‘the term “global citizenship” is being used increasingly to define the main outcome of international education: to educate graduates who will be able to live and work in the globalised world’ (Reference De Wit, O'Dowd and Lewis2016, p. 75) while Deardorff & Jones observe that ‘[t]he notion of global citizenship has become part of the internationalisation discourse in higher education around the world’ (Reference Deardorff, Jones, Deardorff, de Wit, Heyl and Adams2012, p. 295).

The essential difference between global competence and global citizenship or intercultural competence and intercultural citizenship lies in the importance attributed to active engagement in society. Porto (Reference Porto2014) argues that intercultural citizenship integrates the intercultural communicative competence from FL education with a focus on civic action in the community from citizenship education. UNESCO defines Global Citizenship Education as aiming ‘to empower learners to engage and assume active roles, both locally and globally, to face and resolve global challenges and ultimately to become proactive contributors to a more just, peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable world’ (Reference Porto2014, p. 15, my emphasis). So, while intercultural or global competence refer to the development of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values to communicate and act effectively and appropriately in different cultural contexts, global or intercultural citizenship borrow from models of citizenship education to refer to the application of these competences to actively participating in, changing and improving society. Leask (Reference Leask2015) sees global citizenship as developing graduates who will be committed to acting in the interests of others across social, environmental, and political dimensions and Byram sees intercultural citizenship experience as being ‘focused on social and political engagement. This may include the promotion of change or improvement in the social and personal lives of the intercultural individuals or their fellows’ (Byram, Reference Byram2008, p. 187). Global competence can, therefore, be seen as a part of global citizenship.

Although there are various studies and discussions of what global citizenship should involve (Leask, Reference Leask2015; UNESCO, 2014), there are currently two models or interpretations of global citizenship education which stand out as they provide detailed, comprehensive frameworks of competences which can be used for developing virtual exchange initiatives and because they pay particular competence to the role of FL competences. These are the Council of Europe's Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (2016) and Byram's Framework for Intercultural Citizenship (Reference Byram2008).

The Council of Europe's Model of Competences for Democratic Citizenship and Intercultural Dialogue sets out to describe the competences which learners need to acquire ‘if they are to participate effectively in a culture of democracy and live peacefully together with others in culturally diverse democratic societies’ (2016, p. 5). The model was developed through a systematic analysis of 101 existing models of democratic competence and intercultural competence and therefore reflects a comprehensive overview of what is generally understood in the literature to be the key elements of global citizenship. Indeed, Barrett (Reference Barrett2015) states that the model reflects inherently a global citizenship perspective. The model contains twenty competences organised into three sets of values, six attitudes, eight skills and three bodies of knowledge and critical understanding which are considered necessary for the preparation of learners as competent democratic citizens.

The model is comprehensive and identifies many of the skills and areas of knowledge which university graduates are likely to need to live and work as active global citizens. These include, for example, analytical and critical thinking skills, cooperation skills and knowledge and critical understanding of the world. Significantly, the model also pays special attention to linguistic skills and knowledge, thereby taking into account the important role of FL competence in facilitating intercultural contact and communication. In this regard, the model contains linguistic, communicative and plurilingual skills as well as knowledge and critical understanding of language and communication.

However, any practitioner who considers using this model must keep in mind the political principles and educational and political objectives upon which the model is based. The model, as its name clearly suggests, is aimed at developing citizens so they can ‘participate effectively in a culture of democracy’ (Council of Europe, 2016, p. 16) and, as such, is based on values which are common in Western societies. These include ‘the general belief that societies ought to operate and be governed through democratic processes’ (Council of Europe, 2016, p. 8), and the belief that ‘cultural variability and diversity, and pluralism of perspectives, views and practices ought to be positively regarded, appreciated and cherished’ (Council of Europe, 2016, p. 8). The document should therefore be understood in the current context of European society where European institutions such as the European Commission and the Council of Europe are striving to promote democratic values and practices among young people in response to the rise of anti-democratic movements such as right-wing extremism and radical Islamism. Against the background of recent terror attacks in European cities, this document is clearly an attempt to locate intercultural dialogue and the principles of democratic citizenship to the centre of educational curricula in Europe.

Undoubtedly, for virtual exchange initiatives between European countries, this model provides a comprehensive set of competences which educators can use to shape and give direction to their telecollaborative activities. But it is necessary to question whether such a model would be acceptable as the basis for virtual exchange projects which bring European or other Western students into online collaboration with classrooms in countries where democracy is not the accepted form of government or where democracy is, perhaps, understood in very different ways. One of the key goals of intercultural education and virtual exchange is to give students opportunities to come into contact and engage in dialogue with worldviews and cultural perspectives which can be radically different to their own. Using a framework such as this one, which has democracy as its basis, may be seen by educators and students in non-democratic countries as an attempt to impose Western values and as a form of educational imperialism. Needless to say, this is not to suggest that virtual exchange should involve a relativist approach where every opinion and practice is accepted in the name of cultural diversity. Respect for difference in cultural beliefs and practices will always need to have limits – but these limits may have to be drawn along the line of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights rather than on Western definitions and interpretations of democracy (see Byram, Reference Byram2008, p. 175). That said, the Council of Europe has developed a comprehensive set of descriptors (2018) which will enable educators to operationalise the competences and develop activities and assessment criteria for different levels of learners. There is no reason why descriptors from some of the competence clusters could be used, while avoiding those of the more context-specific values set.

An alternative model which may be more suited to virtual exchange initiatives which bring Western classrooms into contact with partners in countries, for example, from the Muslin/Arab world or China is Byram's Framework of Intercultural Citizenship (Reference Byram2008, Reference Byram2011). This model combines elements of FL competence, critical cultural awareness and intercultural communication skills adapted from his earlier model of intercultural communicative competence (Byram, Reference Byram1997) with the principles and content of citizenship education which involve learning leading to activity and ‘service to the community’. While the elements of citizenship education are adapted from Himmelmann's Model of Democracy Learning (Reference Himmelmann2006), the model deliberately avoids an over-emphasis on Western interpretation of democratic principles and understands democracy and political education as the development of ‘transnational communities’ and critical thinkers who engage in social and political activity together to improve their own personal lives or the societies they live in.

Byram clearly illustrates the progression from intercultural competence models to global citizenship models of education when he outlines ‘pre-political’ and ‘political’ levels of acting interculturally (Reference Byram2008). Pre-political approaches involve engaging students in intercultural interaction and then reflecting critically on these encounters. The case studies of Alba and Irene seen above can be seen to reflect these pre-political stages. However, global or intercultural citizenship approaches go further and involve learners either instigating change in their own societies based on their collaborations with members of other cultures or actually working with members of other cultures as a transnational group in order to take action about an issue or problem which is common to both societies. Byram's five levels of ‘acting interculturally’ are:

Over the past few years, I have been exploring at the University of León, Spain how some of the competence clusters outlined in the Council of Europe's Democratic Citizenship and Intercultural Dialogue model (2016), and Byram's differentiation between pre-political and political levels of acting interculturally, can provide a basis for a model of virtual exchange which goes beyond current bicultural bilingual approaches and which leads instead to more transnational (Risager, Reference Risager2007) online collaborative initiatives where learners from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds collaborate and undertake action together to solve problems and engage in issues of relevance to them in their globalised societies.

4. Towards a transnational model of virtual exchange

In comparison to common telecollaborative practices in FL education, a transnational approach to virtual exchange proposes that it is not sufficient to merely engage second language learners in reflective interaction with members of other cultures. Instead, it is necessary to move from what Byram (Reference Byram2008) describes as ‘pre-political’ to ‘political’ levels of acting interculturally. As seen above, pre-political approaches (which reflect more traditional approaches such as e-tandem and telecollaborative exchange) involve engaging students in intercultural interaction and then reflecting critically on these encounters. However, global or intercultural citizenship approaches go further and involve learners either instigating change in their own societies based on their collaborations with members of other cultures or actually working with members of other cultures as a transnational group in order to take action about an issue or problem which is common to both societies.

The competences outlined in a model such as the Council of Europe's Democratic Citizenship and Intercultural Dialogue model (2016), and Byram's differentiation between pre-political and political levels of acting interculturally can provide the basis for a model of virtual exchange which goes beyond traditional bicultural bilingual approaches and which brings learners to collaborate together and undertake action in order to solve problems and engage in issues in their local and global communities. During such transnational collaborations, students learn about their partners’ cultural practices and also have opportunities to compare cultural perspectives but this is not seen as the ultimate goal of such collaborations. Such a transnational model of virtual exchange for global citizenship education is based on the following characteristics:

• • Creating opportunities for rich intercultural interaction which can include but is not limited to bicultural/bilingual comparison

• • Establishing partnerships across a wide range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds and using lingua franca for communication with these partners

• • Encouraging learners to engage with themes which are of social and political relevance in both partners’ societies

• • Enabling students to work with their international partners to undertake action and change in their respective local and global communities

• • Including ample opportunities for guided reflection of the intercultural encounters in the classroom

• • Being integrated and recognised part of course work and institutional academic activity

• • Increasing awareness of how intercultural communication is mediated by online technologies and how social media can shape the creation and interpretation of messages

Some of these latter characteristics are, of course, not exclusive to transnational approaches which focus on the development of global citizenship, but they are key principles of good practice which all virtual exchange initiatives should take into account.

Various examples can be found in the literature of virtual exchange initiatives which reflect some if not all of these principles. Helm (Reference Helm2015) describes ‘critical telecollaboration’ as online exchange experiences which seek to foster greater understanding of different worldviews and to address social and political issues in an increasingly polarised world that seems to be characterised by conflicts, inequalities, and injustices. Helm outlines four assumptions of traditional approaches to telecollaboration which critical approaches challenge. These are that online intercultural contact will lead to understanding and foster equality, the native speaker is the ideal interlocutor, the main aim of telecollaboration is simply to foster communicative and sociocultural competence, and, finally, that technology is a neutral medium (Helm, Reference Helm2015).

Examples of virtual exchange initiatives which reflect global citizenship principles include the Soliya exchange format (Helm, Reference Helm, O'Dowd and Lewis2016), which brings together students from the US and Arab/Muslim countries to engage in open yet guided dialogue on cultural and political issues which affect their countries’ relationships. A further example, reported by Porto (Reference Porto2014), shows British and Argentinean students engaging in collaborative project work related to the Falklands War and producing documents and activities in their local communities aimed at supporting reconciliation between the two communities. Projects such as these offer students the opportunity to engage in intercultural dialogue on themes that form part of their countries’ historical memory and to become more aware of alternative perspectives on themes which have been viewed until now through one particular cultural prism. But they go further and reflect a global citizenship approach in that they actually provide learners with the opportunity to play a role in promoting understanding in both societies about the impact of the war. Finally, the project ‘Perspectives on the Euro(pean) Crisis’ (Sharing Perspectives Foundation, 2018) involved students from different participating universities following lectures on the theme of the European crisis which were recorded and broadcast online. These lectures were then followed by synchronous discussions among the participants as well as research on the impact of immigration carried out by the students in their local areas. At the end of the project, two students from each university were selected to go to Brussels to present the results of their research to members of the European Commission.

At the University of León, I am trying to introduce a global citizenship approach to our virtual exchanges across different subject areas which take into account but also go beyond pure L2 learning. For example, in a project called ‘Europe in crisis’, students coming from classes of Tourism Studies and Journalism in Spain, the UK and France worked together using English as a lingua franca to develop and carry out a survey on their local classmates and friends on the issue of what being European meant to young people in their countries and what problems they felt young people were facing around Europe. The results of the survey were compared and discussed in their online international working groups. In their transnational teams, students then created a document together called ‘Making the European Union relevant for young people’ and these documents were submitted online to the students’ representatives in the European Parliament in their local languages.

A second global citizenship virtual exchange stems from the ‘EVALUATE’ (Evaluating And Upscaling Telecollaborative Teacher Education) project (O'Dowd, Reference O'Dowd2018) where transnational groups of student teachers from Spain, Israel and Sweden collaborated together online (again, using English as a lingua franca) to create lessons and projects based on themes which were relevant in the education systems in all their countries such as racism, the use of online technologies in the classroom and the role of religion in schools. They were then able to use these lesson plans in their teaching practicums in their respective countries.

Exchanges such as ‘Europe in Crisis’ and ‘EVALUATE’ challenge learners to work together not simply to exchange and reflect on information but also to take action together as transnational groups and to overcome the hurdles of online intercultural collaboration in order to reach consensus on common outcomes. In both exchanges, the largest share of intercultural negotiation (and intercultural communication breakdown) took place, not over cultural facts or issues per se, but rather as they worked together online to create and agree on their common documents, i.e. their letters to political representatives or their joint lesson plans. Initial analysis of student feedback and reflections to date has revealed that these exchanges still allow students to learn about different national perspectives on, for example, educational systems or political issues. However, more importantly, these tasks shift the focus away from an over-emphasis on ‘national’ cultural differences and instead raise students’ awareness of how culture and language and technology are intertwined in online intercultural communication per se. One student, for example, told us the following in her final reflections:

Another student provides insight into the online communication strategies she learned in order to overcome intercultural misunderstanding. And she also demonstrates a growing awareness of the influence of the choice of online communication tool on the outcome of interactions: