Fostering Intercultural Competence through Telecollaboration on SDGs: A Multinational Study With Student Teachers

Abstract

This study explores how a telecollaborative project involving student teachers from four countries fosters intercultural communicative competence (ICC) through collaborative tasks centered on the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The overarching goal is to nurture intercultural communicative competence and promote global awareness among learners. Telecollaboration emerges as a particularly apt vehicle for realizing this aim, given its capacity to unite learners from disparate geographical locations via online platforms, enabling collaborative engagement on shared tasks aimed at achieving collective objectives. The primary objective of this 8-week telecollaborative study was to examine the extent to which participation in a telecollaborative project focusing on the theme of global citizenship education contributes to the promotion of Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) among 42 student teachers of English from Turkey, Germany, Israel, and Brazil. The study contributes to the growing body of research on virtual exchange and SDG-based pedagogies and suggests practical implications for curriculum development in teacher training. Limitations include the reliance on self-reported data and a limited number of interview participants. Future research should examine long-term impacts of telecollaborative projects and explore mixed-methods approaches to enrich findings.