Intercultural telecollaboration for teacher education across three continents: Insights from experience journals

Abstract

This chapter deals with a virtual intercultural exchange aiming at co-constructing a learning/teaching/researching environment that has been designed through three continents to mainly support the learning and collaborative activities of students from Brazil, Spain, France, and Taiwan. The objectives of this unusual environment are presented within the broad context of globalisation and mondialité as groups of students in education from four different languages and cultures work together through the medium of English. Their four teachers and researchers also work together to sustain the environment and do research from the learning data collected. These objectives are also discussed from the micro perspectives of students' relations engaged in three different common tasks: introducing themselves and reporting as a group, discussing together about education, and writing an experience journal as an individual reflective task. An in-depth content analysis of the experience journals of the students is presented that was designed collaboratively to guide the analysis. This environment also helps build emerging core educative cultures among future professionals in education. The challenges of such an exchange are also addressed, as this is part of iterative work in progress in new educational practices across cultures.