An Intercultural Virtual Exchange Experience: Pre-service ELT teachers’ reflection on their involvement in collaborative and multicultural communication<strong> </strong>

Bilki, Z; Satar, M

An Intercultural Virtual Exchange Experience: Pre-service ELT teachers’ reflection on their involvement in collaborative and multicultural communication

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Müge Satar ORCiD

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This is the authors' accepted manuscript of a book chapter that has been published in its final definitive form by Bloomsbury, 2026.

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Abstract

The advancement of technology has strengthened global and intercultural communication and collaboration across cultures and people, yet brought changes to the learning habits, skills and competencies learners and teachers need to develop in this rapidly evolving global and digital world (Digital Education Action Plan 2021-2027, European Commission). English language teachers as the facilitators of global communication bridging different cultures in their classrooms need to be aware of the critical principles in engaging with digital technologies and using them to support their social inclusion and collaboration with others (Dudeney, Hockly & Pegrum, 2014). Given the goal of preparing teachers for global collaboration has not been met yet (Cherng & Davis, 2019; Romijn et al., 2021), Virtual Exchange (VE) can be an ideal context for language teachers to practice and prepare themselves for global collaboration and intercultural communication (Hauck, 2019; O’Dowd, 2020; O’Dowd & Dooly, 2022). This study focuses on the communication, connection, and collaboration experiences of pre-service ELT teachers in Turkey and the UK to explore their reflections on these experiences including their attempts at meaning-making and self-representation within the VE process. The data including participants’ reflection on online collaborative task-based dialogues was analyzed using grounded theory data coding methods (Strauss & Corbin, 2008). The analysis revealed that the factors including appropriate and comfortable expression of self, multidimensionality of digital content, and the sense of community and others played critical roles for teachers in conveying messages, comprehending others, and in shaping their decisions, choices and self-representations regarding their interactions in this VE. The findings reflecting pre-service ELT teachers’ recognition of a specific VE setting provide implications for language teachers and teacher educators in understanding the future pedagogical implementations of VE in language teacher education.