Intercultural Language Education Language Teachers as Mediators HIGHER EDUCATION SPANISH TEACHERS’ MEDIATION PRACTICES Isabel Cobo Palacios, PhD Student, The Open University Mediation Intercultural Language Education Language Teachers as Mediators Intercultural competence has to do with the “circulation of values and identities across cultures, the inversions, even inventions of meaning, often hidden behind a common illusion of effective communication” (Kramsch, 2011). “There remains little investigation, however of the nature of intercultural language teaching and learning itself, and specifically the act of mediation” (Kohler, 20115, p. 3). The mediator acts as “a social agent who creates bridges and helps to construct meaning, within the same language, or from one language to another(s) (CEFR, 2018). Spanish Language and Culture Language teachers as mediators are “a facilitator intervening in the transmission of cultural information, an interpreter of cultures, an agent mediating intercultural communication” (Gohard-Radenkovic et al., 2004, p.219). Students’ Language(s) and Culture(s) One of the contributions of my research will be to provide a mediation taxonomy for language education. The aspiration is that such a theory will gather what has been suggested in previous studies and add to it from my own findings. Research Questions Methods Qualitative approach Participants Different types of UK HEIs Native Speakers and Non-Native Speakers Spanish Teachers Intermediate level of Spanish More than ten years of experience To what extent do HE Spanish teachers mediate between diverse languages and cultures in the classroom? How is mediation co-constructed in the HE Spanish classroom? Primary Data Classroom video observation recordings Secondary Data Stimulated Recall Protocol (SRP) Field notes Focus Group How do HE Spanish teachers see their role as mediators in the classroom? There is a gap in the understanding of how teachers are prepared to develop intercultural teaching for foreign languages (Sercu, 2005). “Mediation is essential for individuals in today´s multilingual societies to acquire the skills that will enable them to use two or more languages in a parallel fashion” (Stathopoulou, 2015, p.233). This study aims to consider how language teachers’ own linguistic and cultural identities may enhance and inhibit mediation (Kohler, 2015). References: Kramsch, C. 2011. The symbolic dimensions of the intercultural. Lang. Teach. Piccardo, E. and North, B., 2018 CEFR: Learning, teaching, assessment. Companion Volume. Council of Europe. Gohard-Radenkovic, A., Lussier, D., Penz, H. & Zarate, G. 2004. Cultural mediation in language learning and teaching as a process in Zarate et al. Cultural mediation in language and teaching. Council of Europe. Stathopoulou, M. 2015. Cross-language mediation in foreign language teaching and testing. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Kohler, M. 2015. Teachers as mediators in the foreign language classroom: Bristol, England Multilingual Matters. Sercu, L. 2005. Foreign language teachers and intercultural competence : an international investigation. In: Bandura, E. (ed.). Multilingual Matters. Language Acts and Worldmaking Project, Diasporic Identities Isabel.cobo-palacios@open.ac.uk