View Article

Volume 4, Issue 1  April 2021, pp. 22–38          

Special Issue Articles
Intercultural education in times of restricted travel: Lessons from the Gaza Strip

Maria Grazia Imperiale <sup>1

1</sup> University of Glasgow, UK

DOI: https://doi.org/10.29140/ice.v4n1.446

This article draws upon a research project on intercultural language education conducted online between 2014 and 2017 with people living in the Gaza Strip (Palestine). Because the Gaza Strip has been under blockade since 2007, people cannot travel in and out freely. This context thus prompts educators and scholars to reflect on intercultural competence from a context of protracted crisis and of forced immobility. This study considers pre-service and in-service English teachers’ understandings of intercultural competence and how these educators encourage intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in their classrooms in the Gaza Strip, where neither teachers, nor students, may have travelled abroad or experienced a face-to-face intercultural encounter. Based on this analysis, this article argues that frameworks for intercultural education and ICC need to capture non-movement and the lack of face-to-face intercultural encounters as agentic in definitions of interculturality. In other words, ICC should be conceptualised in terms of the actual freedoms and opportunities that individuals have to develop and nurture it. In order to propose such a model, this article connects ICC with the capabilities approach (Nussbaum, 2011; Sen, 1999), the capability of mobility (de Haas, 2010), and with the capacity to aspire (Appadurai, 2004).

© Maria Grazia Imperiale


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Imperiale, M. G. (2021). Intercultural education in times of restricted travel: Lessons from the Gaza Strip. Intercultural Communication Education, 4(1), 22–38. https://doi.org/10.29140/ice.v4n1.446

Related Articles:

Intercultural communicative competence and mobility: Perspectives on virtual, physical, and critical dimensions
Beatrice Dupuy, Chantelle Warner
Intercultural Communication Education Published: 19 April, 2021, Volume 4(1), 1–5.

Should Standard Arabic have “the lion’s share?”: Teacher ideologies in L2 Arabic through the lens of pedagogical translanguaging
Mahmoud Azaz, Yousra Abourehab
Intercultural Communication Education Published: 19 April, 2021, Volume 4(1), 90–105.

Shaping the teaching and learning of intercultural communication through virtual mobility
Theresa Catalano, Andrea Muñoz Barriga
Intercultural Communication Education Published: 19 April, 2021, Volume 4(1), 75–89.

Multiracial Chinese American women studying abroad in China: The intersectionality of gender, race, and language learning
Wenhao Diao, Yi Wang
Intercultural Communication Education Published: 19 April, 2021, Volume 4(1), 39–55.

Roadblocks to intercultural mobility: Indigenous students’ journeys in Colombian universities
José Aldemar Álvarez Valencia, Manuela Wagner
Intercultural Communication Education Published: 19 April, 2021, Volume 4(1), 6–21.

At the crossroads: Rethinking study abroad students’ social networking and intercultural communication in the age of globalization
Irwin Compiegne
Intercultural Communication Education Published: 19 April, 2021, Volume 4(1), 56–74.

Reframing and hospicing mobility in higher education: Challenges and possibilities
Adriana Raquel Diaz, Marisa Cordella, Samantha Dispray, Barbara E. Hanna, Anna Mikhaylova
Intercultural Communication Education Published: 19 April, 2021, Volume 4(1), 106–121.

Enrolled or engaged? Students’ perceptions of engagement and oral interaction in a blended learning language course
Kirsi Korkealehto, Minna Lakkala, Auli Toom
The JALT CALL Journal Published: 27 April, 2021, Volume 17(1), 1–22.

The impact of implementing augmented reality to enhance the vocabulary of young EFL learners
Kholoud Binhomran, Sultan Altalhab
The JALT CALL Journal Published: 27 April, 2021, Volume 17(1), 23–44.

In-service teachers’ perceptions of technology integration and practices in a Japanese university context
Yijen Wang
The JALT CALL Journal Published: 27 April, 2021, Volume 17(1), 45–71.