Identity, as presented by Yoshikawa and Hoffman in their accounts of intercultural competence, can be taken to be a hybrid, multilayered, dynamic, and polyphonic narrative construct that is mediated and maintained by socioculturally generated semiotic systems and by patterns of action. The intercultural dimension adds new possibilities for construing one’s identity, and these are typically experienced by the subject as liberating and empowering, as Yoshikawa describes in summing up his intercultural experience: “I feel I am much freer than ever before, not only in the cognitive domain (perception, thoughts, etc.), but also in the affective (feeling, attitudes, etc.) and behavioral domains” (Yoshikawa 1978: 220, cited in Kim 2009: 59). The cognitive, affective, and behavioral freedom is a liberation from the constraints of a monolingual and monocultural perspective; however, it has to be re-culturalized for concrete moments of social (inter-)action in order to facilitate successful intersubjective exchange. These moments of re-culturalization are fleeting and transient moments, and they are executed from the somewhat detached position of the interculturally competent subject who is conscious of the range of options available for actions. The internalization of intercultural competence, however, means that the selection of concrete action is applied without deliberate effort; it is done in a subconscious and automated fashion, according to the immediate understanding of relevant contextual factors (similar to the unreflected acts of communication and behavior in the native culture), as Hoffman (cited above) seems to indicate. Interculturally hybrid identities are not smoothly negotiated identities between cultures; they have to rely on an understanding of the conflictual relationship between subjective and collective identities, based on the internalized skill of empathy and the ability to judge and cooperate with (cultural) others.

It also has to be acknowledged that the two witnesses cited here, Yoshikawa and Hoffman, are both highly regarded academics in the field of intercultural communication; thus they are fluent in the academic Discourse and aware of the research in this field. Consequently, they are able to strategically verbalize the indicators of their highly developed intercultural competence in a manner that is very persuasive, detailed, refined, and in tune with the requirements of the academic Discourse (which includes an awareness of what not to include in the autobiographical narrative). Most L2 learners cannot compete with these professionals in their characterization of their achieved level of intercultural competence in terms of register and depth of observation (e.g., the L2 learners interviewed by Coffey [2010], cf. Section 6.6. & Chapter 11); they are also largely unskilled in terms of emphasizing certain aspects of identity-transformation, while at the same time omitting others. This discrepancy between professional and ordinary L2 learners’ reflections may lead to frustration on the part of the latter, but it is more likely that the professional accounts of developing (and developed) intercultural competence in all its refined aspects can have a stimulating effect on L2 learners in terms of trying to reflect on their subjective intercultural experiences more deeply, guided by the quality of detail presented by the more knowledgeable others.

Although characterized here as the final pedagogic principle of fostering intercultural competence, the effortless integration and application of intercultural competence to all acts of everyday behavior, emotion, and construction does not mean that the interculturally competent individual can now sit back complacently and rest on the laurels of his or her achievements. As mentioned before, fostering intercultural competence is an ongoing lifelong process without a precisely definable outcome (which also has implications for attempts to assess intercultural competence in an institutional setting; cf. Section 10.3). Consequently, in institutional L2 learning, the process of fostering intercultural competence guided by broad pedagogic principles is the primary objective of teaching and learning efforts, without necessarily achieving the advanced levels of challenging internalized cultural patterns of construal or developing subjective intercultural places which serve as the natural subjective basis for (inter-)action. Whatever level of intercultural competence has been reached by the end of formal schooling, the engagement in linguistic, social, and cultural activities, even at a very early stage of L2 learning, can have a significant effect on subjective acts of construal, once the assumed universality of the native cultural norms has been questioned. Rather than focusing on seemingly stable and fixed elements of culture, mediating culture in the L2 classroom has to center on these permanently shifting and emerging subjective third spaces within and between the two or more cultures involved which the learners construct in their ZPD. Thus, learning a L2 and its cultural context in a formalized institutional framework will lay the foundations for a lifelong continuation of developing intercultural hybrid places and their productive, rewarding, and pleasurable use in everyday life.

10.3 The challenge of assessing intercultural competence

The pedagogic principles of fostering intercultural competence, as presented in the previous section, operate with concepts such as intercultural third spaces, inner speech, identity, genre, D/discourse, subject positionings, cultural frames of reference, plausibility structures, blending of spaces, schemata, frames, narrative, etc., each of which is highly dynamic, multi-layered, and culturally and subjectively charged. The dynamism and complexity of these cultural and subjective dispositions contribute to the problem of their assessability, particularly in an institutional schooling context, because they are not directly observable. An additional complicating factor for the activity of assessing intercultural competence is the fact that the terms intercultural and competence are both very complex and cannot be defined in a universally valid manner. Even the definition of the five sub-competences of intercultural competence by Byram (1997) which informs the use of the concept in this book (cf. Introduction to Chapter 9), cannot provide a concrete basis for testing, evaluating, and assessing intercultural competence in a precisely measurable manner.¹³² Based on Byram’s model, Deardorff (2011: 40) proposes a slightly more general pyramid model of intercultural competence in which she makes a basic differentiation between “desired external outcomes” and “desired internal outcomes.” The external outcomes are measurable because they refer to that which is observable, namely “behaving and communicating effectively and appropriately (based on one’s intercultural knowledge, skills and attitudes) to achieve one’s goals to some degree” (Deardorff 2011: 40). Generally, this definition of external outcomes is reminiscent of the overall objective of the communicative approach to foreign language learning. This may be the reason for the reference to the intercultural context in brackets in the above citation which, however, is not precisely definable or measurable. The desired internal outcomes are defined as follows: “Adaptability (to different communication styles and behaviors; adjustment to new cultural environments); Flexibility (selecting and using appropriate communication styles and behaviors; cognitive flexibility); Ethnorelative view; Empathy” (Deardorff 2011: 40). These internal outcomes are, due to their internalized status, hardly measurable in exact terms. They cannot be accurately verbalized for the purpose of assessment, and the behavior-based assessment of adaptability, flexibility, ethnorelativity, ability to suspend judgment and empathy can only be conducted in very broad terms, because the relevant context cannot be defined in a valid manner – and frequently it is artificial, for instance, with respect to using critical incidents for assessment purposes, which may induce superficial behavior on the part of the learner who may be aware of the assessment situation and consequently behaves in a manner he or she thinks is expected in order to get the desired mark. It is assumed that knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes develop in the general direction of ethnorelativity during the overall process of foreign language learning, resulting in increased flexibility and cultural adequacy of communicative behavior and openness for the other cultural system of meaning and significance; all this then contributes to observable intercultural behavior of learners. Schulz (2007) has highlighted the basic problem of intercultural assessment which has its roots in the complexity and dynamism of the constructs involved:

The assessment and evaluation of complex constructs such as intercultural competence, which involves the emotional, psychological, and identity-related domains of learners, is clearly highly dependent on the context in which they are used and on the subjects to which they are applied. Therefore, it would be ill advised to try to develop an internationally and cross-culturally valid design for intercultural assessment, because it would fall short of adequately capturing the finer strands of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral shifts of cultural frames of reference, as internalized and genuinely applied by the subject. Furthermore, there has to be clarity for the reasons, purposes, mechanisms, and objectives of assessing intercultural competence, since it touches upon deep-seated psychological traits and subjective constructs of identity (cf. Witte 2008). Possible reasons for assessing intercultural competence include the curiosity of learners to know what progress they have made during the learning process, or the professional interest of teachers and educationalists with regard to the adequacy and success of their teaching methods, or the longing of parents for information on the learning progress of their children in school. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the educational institution – typically the school or university – plays an important role because of its societal mandate to rate students according to their academic merit in terms of marks and grades. In order to ensure a fair rating process, national or regional departments of education normally define authoritative standards for education in syllabi for each school subject in terms of subject-matter and progression; these have to be taught and regularly tested in a seemingly objective manner. In recent years, the traditional orientation on input, which is difficult to assess objectively, has been replaced by an emphasis on learning outcomes, which allegedly facilitate a more precise and measurable assessment of pupils’ performances. On closer inspection, however, this optimism might be queried in several regards:

1. What exactly is being measured: superficial cognitive knowledge for the purpose of passing the next test or examination (after which it may be quickly forgotten), or holistic and procedural knowledge which has a long-term effect on the learner’s memory, constructs of identity, and which he or she can always behaviorally draw upon in everyday real-life situations?
2. What form does the assessment take? Are quantitative procedures used in which the whole group of learners is assessed simultaneously by having to answer the same (mainly cognitive) questions, or are qualitative and holistic techniques applied in which the subjective learning success and the potential of each individual learner (in terms of his or her ZPD) are analyzed with the constructive perspective of working out, in tandem with the learner, the optimal learning conditions? In short: does the assessment take an evaluative-summative or a dynamic-formative form?
3. Do adequate instruments and techniques exist for particular assessments? How meaningful can the subjective or collective evaluation of intercultural competence ultimately be, given the complexity of its inherent sociolinguistic, discursive, psychological, cultural, and intercultural dimensions?
4. In how far can (or should) psychological developments of the learner even be measured, for example, subjective character traits, attitudes, beliefs, and emotions, which are all sub-components of intercultural competence and which have to be verbalized for the purpose of assessment?

Assessing and evaluating the different dimensions of intercultural competence is a very complex and difficult endeavor; it is highly dependent on the instruments, contexts and objectives, all of which can be very diverse. However, assessment can basically be differentiated into two approaches: the cognitive-instructivist and social-constructivist approaches. In the framework of the cognitive-instructivist paradigm, teachers and other educational experts want to evaluate summatively in how far and to what extent the learners (within the referential context of the group of learners) have achieved the learning targets, as defined in the relevant syllabus. Particular emphasis is paid to the cognitive level of achievement, not least because of the societal mandate of the school as an institution charged with the task of rating students’ academic performance. This perspective on assessing and evaluating student performance foregrounds the acquisition of knowledge, its encoding, storage, and recall in tests and examinations. However, it is questionable as to how one can measure the subjective learning progress of the complex dimensions of intercultural competence when applying the quantitative criteria of validity, authenticity, reliability, and practicability (cf. Sercu 2004: 79-84). The cognitive-instructionist approach, when applied to the development of intercultural competence, is primarily interested in the learner’s ability to recognize the difference in the beliefs, attitudes, and values of the other, and to tolerate this difference. Although this already entails a certain shift in the consciousness and the identity of the self, it does not extend to assessing the hybridization of consciousness and identity which is characteristic of the higher levels of developing intercultural competence (cf. Section 10.2). Referring to Deardorff’s (2011: 40) terminology, only external outcomes can be assessed by this approach, while internal outcomes are largely ignored.

One example of the quantitative assessment of intercultural competence is the intercultural module of the large-scale DESI study (DESI = Deutsch Englisch Schülerleistungen International [German English Pupils’ Performances International]; cf. Section 10.1) that was conducted in Germany between 2001 and 2006 with 9,623 ninth-grade pupils, aimed at evaluating their intercultural competence with regard to English as a foreign language and culture (cf. Hesse and Göbel 2007). The intercultural module of DESI uses only two artificially constructed critical incidents in which critical interactional situations between members of the two language communities (British and German) are depicted, giving rise to unexpected culturally induced misunderstandings during interaction. Critical incidents have the potential to provoke reflection on the reasons for failed (or successful) communicative and other intersubjective activities, and encourage learners to put themselves in the position of the cultural other in terms of feelings and patterns of thought and behavior. However, critical incidents are frequently constructed by textbook authors with the explicit objective of making it easy for the students at their stage of learning to identify and comprehend the reasons for the particular misunderstanding. Consequently, critical incidents are often artificially composed and do not require a profound analysis of social structures and cultural patterns that could lead to a genuine fostering of awareness with regard to the modification of the internalized patterns of thought and behavior. Moreover, many of these artificially constructed critical incidents use simple essentialist cultural patterns in a contrastive manner.

In the DESI project, pupils were given two critical incidents (which are unfortunately not provided by Hesse and Göbel 2007) and they were supposed to answer the following questions: ‘“What has happened here?’ (Cognitive analysis of the situation); ‘How do the people feel in this situation?’ (Affective analysis of the situation); ‘How would you act in this situation?’ (Strategies of action); ‘What can be learned from this situation?’ (Transfer)” (Hesse and Göbel 2007: 265; my translation, A.W.). For every question, several answers are provided which have to be appraised by pupils in terms of adequacy and success for the situation. The answers of the 9,623 participating pupils were then quantitatively evaluated by the researchers, applying Bennett’s (1993) Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) (cf. Section 10.1), by noting the actual stage of developing intercultural competence for each pupil at the time of assessment. This procedure may fulfill “the criteria of a valid and reliable measurement procedure” (Hesse and Göbel 2007: 270; my translation, A.W.), but almost all relevant sub-competences of intercultural competence are completely disregarded, for example savoir comprendre, savoir apprendre/faire, savoir s’engager, and savoir être. Furthermore, it is questionable whether Bennett’s (1993) DMIS provides an adequate instrument for measuring intercultural competence in the L2 classroom, because it has been developed for a professional context and hence disregards foreign language learning and the development of the intercultural third place (cf. Section 10.1).

The assessment procedures of the INCA project (INCA = Intercultural Assessment) that were developed by Byram and others operate with similar scenarios and critical incidents. However, they are presented in much more complex ways (based on texts or videos) and are evaluated in a more differentiated manner. Moreover, each scenario does not intend to make reference to all six dimensions of intercultural competence of INCA (based on Byram’s [1997] model) but, rather, they are conceptualized in such a manner that one sub-competence is emphasized at a time (although the scenarios typically include other components, too). The following scenario, for example, emphasizes and assesses emotional and rational traits of behavior:

In addressing the two tasks to resolve the mystery, the learner has to draw on his or her intercultural knowledge and sensitivity. He or she has also to insert aspects of his or her subjectivity into the intercultural situation, because the ability to negotiate potentially face-threating situations is required, as is a generally open-minded and tolerant attitude and a sense of humor in the learner. Thus, the scenario is aimed at evoking internalized aspects of intercultural competence; a simple application of declarative knowledge would be insufficient to adequately address the interculturally sensitive situation.

Grünewald (2012: 59–68) analyzes further examples of exercises aiming at the initiation and facilitation of intercultural competence. Grünewald comments that the critical incidents are supposed to stimulate culture-contrastive reflections by applying accumulated declarative knowledge; however, a deeper reflection which might include a transfer to the subjective situation of the learner almost never takes place (cf. Grünewald 2012: 61). This valuation is supported by a longitudinal study conducted by Kordes (1991: 287-288) in which, after having observed three years of teaching and learning French as a foreign language at the Oberstufe of a German Gymnasium (upper level of secondary school), he arrives at the conclusion that more than one third of the 112 students evaluated remained completely monocultural in their worldview, a small majority were able to achieve a very limited understanding of some aspects of the foreign culture (albeit with great difficulty), and only six pupils achieved a “transcultural stage” because they were able to identify to some degree with French cultural constructs, while at the same modifying their own internalized patterns to some extent.

This disappointing outcome is certainly also a consequence of the fact that existing instruments and techniques for assessing pupils’ performance in the cognitive-instructive paradigm mainly rely on the measurability of cognitive knowledge of rules, facts, and behaviors which frequently remain at the level of sometimes indifferently learned information that was only superficially internalized and has no lasting effect on emotional or attitudinal domains of the learners. Therefore, they are hardly in a position to validly and comprehensively facilitate or evaluate the development of genuine third places on the part of learners. The schematic manner of teaching and learning often results in flippant learning and short-term memorization of the subject-matter with a view to passing the next test or examination. When the assessment is conceptualized and conducted in a summative manner with the aim of grading performance and institutionally rating pupils on this basis, as the cognitive-instructivist paradigm would imply, this institutional function suppresses a genuine evaluation of the subjective levels of intercultural competence and fosters short-term artificial behavior, designed to tick the right boxes of the expected outcomes. Therefore, this kind of assessment would not be suitable for initiating and advancing intercultural competence in a holistic sense for each individual learner in a subjective dimension. However, for the requirements of the educational institution (school or university) with regard to its societal mandate it has to implement, this restrained evaluation of certain sub-competences of intercultural competence makes sense, even if it cannot assess the enormously important and complex subjective constructs of pupils in terms of their current intercultural third place.

A profoundly different goal-orientation and approach to testing, assessing, and evaluating intercultural competence is represented by the social-constructivist approach to teaching and learning which assumes that the activity of learning ultimately develops from subjective intentions; these, however, are not completely subjective but socioculturally induced (cf. Chapters 1-4). In the L2 classroom, every learner should be encouraged (with the sensitive guidance of the teacher and the peers) to bring his or her own inner self into the learning process. Learners cannot stand idly by and let the facts and figures go over their heads, but instead they have to be prepared to insert their selves to the process of learning and negotiating for learning, thus risking deep change. This is the reason for the failure of artificially construed critical incidents in assessing intercultural competence in the context of schooling: they remain far too much on the cognitive level and do not necessitate the transfer to the subjective stance of the learner. If the learning process concentrates on the progress of each individual student and his or her subjective situation and requirements, the activities of testing and assessing must center on the individual student, too, with the aim of targeted intervention in advancing the subjective processes of learning. The purpose of this kind of evaluation is not the objective assessment of the achieved level of learning with the aim of a summative rating of achievement, including the award of a certain grade, but it is the dynamic improvement of subjective learning progress, without any form of grading. In this context, the assumption of a progression from the simple to the complex in fostering intercultural competence has relevance for assessing the subjective progression of learning, because the definition of the different pedagogic principles provides a basis for the adequate tailoring of assessment with the purpose of advancing learners’ intercultural development. For instance, the objective of Principle 6 could be the students’ ability to define the concept of worldview and give examples of ways in which it impacts on their behavior.

The concept of Dynamic Assessment (DA) does not separate the domains of instruction and evaluation but treats them as two sides of the same coin. Conceptually, DA is anchored in Vygotsky’s (1978) theory of the “zone of proximal development,” or ZPD (cf. Section 9.5). DA does not aim at the retrospective assessment of achieved progress but it is aimed at the immediate future of the next learning zone of the individual learner: “DA is a future-in-the-making model where assessment and instruction are dialectically integrated as the means to move toward an always emergent (i.e. dynamic) future rather than a fixed endpoint” (Lantolf and Thorne 2006: 330). In this kind of evaluation, the assessors are not distanced and neutral figures, but they intervene in a constructive manner in the individual’s learning process.¹³³ Ideally, the assessment procedures should be integrated into the principles of fostering intercultural competence so that the assessment should also be characterized by a multidimensional, multiperspective, ongoing, aligned, and intentional approach. There are no formal tests and examinations, but only dynamic procedures of evaluation. This configuration implies that DA is unsuitable for the requirements of the typical institutional school context, with the possible exception of classes with only a very small number of students (thus facilitating an awareness of each student’s actual state of ZPD on the part of the peers and the teacher). However, DA makes sense in intercultural L2 classes at third level where class sizes tend to be small and learners have already achieved an advanced level of the L2 and its underlying cultural patterns and values. In fact, DA provides an ideal approach to assessing the pedagogic principles of fostering intercultural competence, as outlined in Section 10.2, because it is interested in the learner’s emerging learning in terms of achieved subjective development and potential development (Vygotsky’s notion of ZPD).

Test instruments and techniques have been developed which form a compromise between the formative DA and the summative approach of the cognitive-instructivist tradition. These instruments include role plays, scenarios, (authentic) critical incidents, questionnaires, simulation games, and project work. They lend themselves to the evaluation of (meta-)knowledge, skills of interaction, openness for others and Other, and stages of critical consciousness of culturally induced phenomena of (inter-)action. However, the fact that someone can act adequately in a role play and can display the required characteristics does not necessarily reveal the genuine ability of this individual to employ these behavioral traits in his or her habitual everyday life. After all, learning in a school context is always, to some degree, learning in an artificial environment with artificial objectives (e.g., passing the next test). Moreover, if these instruments are used for summative forms of assessment, there is the danger of essentializing and artificially standardizing the dynamics and complexities of culture and behavior, and also reducing the complexities of the learning process.

Complex role plays, cultural simulation games, portfolios, interviews, and reflexive autobiographical diaries are ideally suited to the dynamic evaluation of actual subjective stances and sensitivities in the process of developing intercultural competence. The students are evaluated dynamically and holistically, because paths of learning, abilities, skills, beliefs, and attitudes, as well as subjective constructs in terms of interlanguage and interculture, form part of the evaluation; not only the results of learning activities, but also processes and developments of learning are included. The evaluation is dynamic and subject-centered, and it forms the basis for targeted individual advancement of the learning activities and processes of the individual learner in terms of the ability to shift one’s cultural frame of reference, integrate elements of the other culture into one’s subjective identity and behavior, and perform effectively and appropriately when interacting with cultural others. Fantini (2009) provides an overview of 44 assessment tools that have been designed specifically for assessing intercultural competence in its different manifestations (business, management, language development, counseling, literacy, etc.). However, none of these tools assess the development of subjective intercultural competence in terms of the centrally relevant intercultural third place.

Fantini (2009) did not include in his list the “Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters” (Council of Europe 2009a; Byram 2009: 227-234), or AIE, which is an example of such a form of evaluation because it “focuses entirely on helping learners to analyze their own encounter with otherness” (Byram 2009: 224; emphasis added) by way of reflecting upon and describing their authentic experience of otherness. The AIE, however, is not primarily designed for use in typical state schools, because it presumes that learners have actually spent a period of time in the host culture or have had direct encounters with cultural others in their own cultural community, and it is aimed at making learners aware of the reasons for the success or failure of intercultural encounters (cf. Section 10.2).¹³⁴ For the AIE, learners select and describe a specific intercultural encounter which they actually have experienced, guided by the structured AIE questionnaire, in order to analyze their subjective experience and identify aspects of their current level of intercultural competence with a view to developing their current competences further (cf. Principle 8). All sub-competences are included in the evaluation with regard to the respective subjective intercultural encounter or experience; they can be revisited at a later stage or in the context of subsequent different intercultural encounters, for example, “My first conversation in a foreign language,” or “The wrong day for Christmas” (Council of Europe 2009a: 4). The personal stance and subjectivity is brought into the learning process right from the beginning when the learner has to characterize his or her self in the very first exercise. This subject-focused approach is maintained in subsequent exercises, which all relate to actual personal experiences of the learners; they are not confronted with hypothetical situations or constructed scenarios. Examples for questions involving the learner as a subject include the following:

This form of individual DA has the same drawback as all other forms of assessment, namely that intercultural competence is accessed via performance; the learners have to verbalize their innermost beliefs, emotions, attitudes, memories, desires, and apprehensions, which always leaves a remnant of implicit constructs that cannot be made explicit. On the other hand, learners are made aware of their achieved intercultural learning progress, and they are gently guided in the direction of the next possible zone of proximal development of intercultural competence. DA not only evaluates knowledge made explicit, but it also extends to implicit knowledge (or internal outcomes), including subjective sensitivities, attitudes, and abilities. The AIE, together with its specific form of DA, is presently the most valid instrument for assessing intercultural competence of intermediate and advanced learners who have spent a period of time in the L2 speech community. However, it would be questionable whether these subjective psychological traits could (or even should) be considered for institutional purposes of assessment, because they touch upon subjective character traits such as openness, intro- or extroversion, preparedness to take risks, patience, tolerance of ambiguity, ability to distance oneself from one’s own actions, emotions, sense of humor, and behavior. All of these may be valuable for developing intercultural competence, but their explicit assessment in the classroom would massively transgress the societal mandate of the institution of school. After all, school is supposed to mediate knowledge, abilities, skills and values in order to educate pupils to become mature and responsible persons, but it has no mandate to assess subjective traits of students’ psyches and characters.

On the other hand, with ideal conditions (such as no pressures in terms of time and institutional requirements, as well as excellently trained teachers in terms of didactics and methodology of mediating intercultural competence and in terms of facilitating multifaceted and appropriate experiential learning opportunities for a small group of learners, but also for each individual learner), the AIE could be used as a guide for discussing intercultural classroom experiences by relating back to the very subjective feelings, behaviors, and shifts of cultural reference (cf. Principle 8). On the basis of performance observation (role play, simulations, dramas, videos), diary entries, portfolios, and interviews, the questionnaire of the AIE could be used to dynamically assess the learners’ current level of intercultural development by eliciting awareness on the part of learners as to what they have learned and how this experience has changed an aspect of their cultural frame of reference, or worldview. Questions could also be asked as to which elements of the experience were, from the learners’ point of view, particularly helpful (or not) for fostering intercultural skills, awareness, and abilities within at a certain pedagogic principle, as proposed in Section 10.2. However, it would be a desideratum for longitudinal research to compile culturally adequate learning tools and dynamic assessment instruments to validate (or falsify) the succession of pedagogic principles of fostering intercultural competence, as outlined in Section 10.2.