School of Education, University of Durham, UK.

The purpose of the symposium was to establish the 'state of the art' on assessing intercultural competence (IC) in order to inform current and future work. The format of the meeting was deliberately informal with more time devoted to tape-recorded plenary or group discussions rather than formal papers. Professor Michael Byram, the host of the event, tried in this way to give every participant sufficient opportunity to contribute.

The symposium was opened by a very informative Survey of existing approaches and techniques in assessing intercultural competence by Lies Sercu (Belgium). All participants of the symposium referred in one way or another to the classifications and issues presented there. One of the most important basic questions the school teacher has to answer for herself concerns our perception of the construct ‘intercultural competence’. Do we see acquisition of IC as an acquisition of knowledge, attitudes, skills, awareness or a developmental process? What comes first: acquisition of foreign language competence or intercultural abilities? What is the connection between IC and our familiarity with our own culture and awareness of cultural identity? One of the attempted definitions of IC called it “the flexibility of identity”, an ability to negotiate one’s own identity in the dialogue with other cultures.

For three days specialists from various countries, disciplines and institutions had an opportunity to discuss a number of initiatives dealing directly or indirectly with the question of how intercultural/socio-cultural/cross-cultural competence can be assessed e.g.:

• a project in Canada establishing a framework of reference and the means of evaluating/assessing (Denise Lussier and Réjean Auger)

·         a project at the Council of Europe (European Centre for Modern Languages in Graz) 'Médiation culturelle et didactique des langues' (Geneviève Zarate)

• a LEONARDO project on the assessment of the intercultural competence of apprentices working in international engineering companies (Anne Davidson-Lund)
• the Council of Europe Languages Portfolio project which needs to be expanded to include intercultural competence (David Little and Joe Sheils)
• Bulgarian project on distance teaching (Leah Davcheva, Richard Fay and Alan Pulverness)
• the Interculture Project SARA (Student Accounts of Residence Abroad) at the University of Lancaster

The greatest challenge for a teacher and teacher trainer is to develop a system of assessment that will be at the same time reliable, valid and practical. The "Fast Track" project presented by Mike Fleming’s (Durham University) impressed as a professionally developed model of assessment in order to select teachers who will be potential leaders in the profession. Using multiple assessment methods (interview, role-play, written tasks, etc.) and carefully prepared marking scales (to assess e.g. conceptual thinking, building relationships, commitment to self development, etc.) by multiple, well trained assessors brings it close to the ideal. Nevertheless, the cost of achieving validity and reliability in a professional way makes its transfer into the school context rather unrealistic. 

Another practical consideration refers to the expectations of teachers to assess what they teach and give objectively comparable grades. Many interesting techniques discussed in Durham can be used to help the students with self-assessment or as teaching instruments but they seem to be less useful in an external exam. The Interculture Project at the Department of European Languages and Cultures, Lancaster University prepares the students for a period of residence abroad. Many of the presented ideas such as a self-identity quiz, an interculture quiz or intercultural incidents are meant to activate the students’ knowledge of their own culture and the target culture and raise their intercultural awareness before their foreign visit. Diaries, projects, essays require and test e.g. ethnographic skills during or after the stay abroad. All of the above can be excellent examples of learning activities, some can be used for qualitative assessment, but do not help much the teachers of whom more rigorous, quantitative, assessment is expected. Project work as a form of formative assessment seems to be most useful in developing IC in the school context. The idea is advocated by the Polish authors of British Studies materials for Polish teachers of English - A cross-cultural approach

The portfolio as a language-and-culture, learning and assessment method has been initiated by the Council of Europe. It was launched during 2001, the European Year of Languages, and consists of three parts:

·         Language Passport  - an overview of what you can do in different languages at any level

·         Language Biography - a personal record of your language learning including experience of other cultures

·         Dossier - the selection of documents (e.g. certificates).

It is meant to promote reflective learning (learner autonomy) and may serve as a basis for assessment by others (teachers, employers). Provided it has a standard international form it is hoped the portfolio will be recognised throughout Europe as a valid record of language competence. The question remains to be solved how it can explicitly take account of the owner’s developing intercultural competence?

A number of questions raised in Durham confirmed how complex the issue of assessing intercultural competence is. The following still need careful consideration:

• how to train teacher trainees and in-service teachers in new approaches to assessment
• how to achieve objective, reliable and valid assessment in school conditions
• moral and ethical issues: assessment of attitudes, degrees of tolerance etc. raise problems in formally measuring and reporting
• levels and grading: is it feasible to see assessment of IC as one or more scales? Or is a better metaphor ‘organic growth’?  How do either or both of these relate to theories of moral development?
• how can personal and social education be assessed/evaluated
• to what extent can IC be measured in such a way as to demonstrate an individual’s improvement over time

Thanks to the informal format of the symposium it is in the presented papers, the plenary discussions following and private chats that certain initiatives in the field or the participants’ views were shared.

Last but not least, a day before the symposium the Cultnet group met in order to discuss an international research project, 'Foreign language teachers' perceptions of their role as mediators of language-and-culture.' Several teachers from Belgium, UK, Bulgaria, Spain, Mexico, Sweden, Greece and Poland have carried out the survey, which is the basis for a comparative analysis. 50 teachers in Poland completed an electronic or paper questionnaire, which looked into the respondents' willingness to integrate an intercultural dimension in their foreign language teaching. The aim is to describe the situation in each country, but also to compare the situation in the different countries.

It was decided in Durham to write a research report, with the intended audience being researchers, teacher trainers, policy makers, course book writers and teachers. The results of the project will be used to develop an international in-service teacher training course directed at an international audience, focusing particularly on the teaching of language-and-culture. In Durham they had a chance to look together at some of the collected data and clarify doubts concerning their interpretation of the statistics. It is hoped to be published within the new book series by Multilingual Matters, Languages for Intercultural Communication and Education.