Međukulturna kompetencija u predmetu Hrvatski jezik: teorijske pretpostavke, pripremljenost i stavovi učitelja

Intercultural competence in future teachers of Croatian as a heritage and as a second language

Teaching Croatian in schools abroad or to non-native speakers of Croatian pupils in Croatia requires teachers to have specific knowledge and competence (Češi, Barbaroša Šikić, Cvikić 2012). Besides knowing the language itself and knowing about the language, the core competence in such situations is intercultural competence (ICC) (Fantini 1995, Byram 1997). Teachers abroad have to develop ICC in order to live and work successfully away from home. For those teaching “at home” ICC is crucial for understanding their non-native pupils and in helping them get along in a new environment, including a new school system, new social norms and a new language (Novak Milić 2012).
In both cases a teacher must be able and work on developing his/hers pupils’ ICC. It is desirable for a teacher’s ICC to be highly developed in order to transfer it to his/hers pupils. It is questionable though how much attention is given to topics related to ICC in the current teacher education curricula.
The aim of this paper is to look into the intercultural readiness of future teachers from the Faculty of Education and from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, both from the University of Zagreb, for Croatian classes abroad and for teaching Croatian as L2 in Croatia. Two topics are covered: a) analysis of IC-topics in available curricula; b) a questionnaire targeting attitudes towards multilingualism, interculturalism, methods and practices desired for development of ICC in Croatian as a heritage/L2 language classroom. The attitudes of two groups of students (FE vs. FHSS) are compared and analysed. Based on the data collected, ICC of future teachers is discussed and some suggestions for changes in teacher education are given.