Ethical Challenges in Intercultural Citizenship Education with ‘Difficult Topics’ in the World Language Classroom and Beyond

Melina Porto, Irina Golubeva () and Michael Byram
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Melina Porto: National Research Council, Universidad Nacional de La Plata and Conicet, La Plata 1900, Argentina
Irina Golubeva: College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, University of Maryland Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250, USA
Michael Byram: Faculty of Classical and Modern Philology, Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski, 1504 Sofia, Bulgaria

Social Sciences, 2025, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-18

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to examine the ethical challenges that arise in the world language classroom and beyond from using intercultural citizenship pedagogy. Intercultural citizenship is, in general, seen as a recent and positive development in intercultural language education for helping students engage with topics of social significance in the classroom. However, there are ethical challenges involved, for instance, related to the political or sensitive nature of such topics. We define and illustrate some of these ethical concerns and their implications for education by drawing on an intercultural citizenship project about COVID-19 carried out in two higher education contexts in 2020. The analysis of this example shows that these ethical concerns are unavoidable but can be minimised with an action research perspective and a combination of pedagogies of intercultural citizenship, discomfort, and the arts. We conclude with a discussion of the transferability of the example and its consequences for any language and intercultural communication teaching which deals with controversial and sensitive matters.

Keywords: intercultural citizenship; COVID-19; difficult topics; teacher roles; ethics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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