ABSTRACT
Comprender las dimensiones interculturales en la cotidianidad / Comprendre les dimensions interculturelles dans le quotidien / Comprender as dimensões interculturais na vida cotidiana / Understanding intercultural dimensions in everyday life is a plurilingual (Zarate et al., 2008) massive open online course (MOOC) resulting from an interinstitutional and international action-research project, conducted from 2016 to 2022, between Sorbonne Nouvelle and Los Andes universities. This experience gave me the opportunity to co-conduct teaching and research activities, with pre-service and in-service language teachers in Colombia (teaching Spanish as a native language or English as a foreign language) and France (teaching French as a foreign or second language); two different geographic, cultural, linguistic and educational settings. Besides crossing epistemological approaches regarding educational science, language science, sociolinguistics and didactics, my colleagues and I engaged in a constant process of negotiation. We had to negotiate, for example, from the use of notions such as interculturality (with different histories and socio-educational concerns), or plurilingualism as opposed to multilingualism (considered like synonyms, but actually describing dissimilar linguistic or societal realities). Interculturality in France is easily associated with foreign language learning and immigrants settling in France and Europe, whereas in Colombia, it is commonly associated with Indigenous languages, Indigenous bilingual education, Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities. Thus, by using multiple languages, comparing pedagogical practices (Beacco et al., 2005) and choosing common theoretical and methodological orientations, the first challenge for the MOOC creators as well as for the users is to move from a monocultural (Slaughter & Cross, 2021) to a pluricultural mindset. The second challenge, for me as teacher is to make my students aware of the epistemological choices I make, in order to help them understand that the knowledge we access is situated and inscribed in a socio-historical heritage, such as modernist rationality or pragmatism (Andreade Carreño, 1999).
Adopting a reflexive point of view (Bhabha, 1994), this chapter will initially present the results of the implementation of this plurilingual MOOC to enhance critical intercultural practices. Subsequently, I will analyze how the epistemological orientations resulting from international cooperation projects (research, academic event or scientific networks), can intentionally or unintentionally place the participants in monocultural and monolingual mindset, and thus, perpetuate colonial practices (Boutang & Vidal, 2007).
