| A line has become blurred between intercultural interactions and daily personal interactions. The once long distance for trade, travel and communication is at its' smallest gap. However, "American graduates have been cited as being culturally deprived and linguistically illiterate, compared to students from other countries" (2013 Kentucky Standard for World Language Proficiency). For educational leaders to improve this current educational inadequacy, it is important to understand teachers' intercultural beliefs and how they impact their classroom practices. What is not known is the present state of world language teachers' global competence understanding and what they perceive to be best practices to transmit intercultural competencies to students. Not knowing the best practices is problematic for the school administrators since they are responsible for setting foreign language skills policies for the school districts. In addition, the administrator who oversees the teaching must be aware of how best to guide teacher toward for providing best practices. Teachers of foreign languages also must know the best practices to be able to follow the district best practice requirements and have a capable way of teaching their students. The findings in this dissertation can begin to help form a base of experiences currently in the Commonwealth by those working with world language and global competence. |
