CONTEMPORARY EDUCATIONAL TRANSFORMATIONS: The Role of Intercultural Mediation from the Perspective of Global Citizenship (Atena Editora)

Abstract

The contemporary instructional context has been revealed as a fruitful space for the development of intercultural competences at the level of Global Citizenship Education, in which educators assume a crucial role as mediating agents, especially with regard to issues related to interpersonal communication and relationships, respect and acceptance of the Self and the culturally different Other, as well as awareness of the rights and duties of each human being in society. In this sense, this article presents some theoretical questions underlying the intercultural communicative process, as well as the role of mediation in managing meanings with interlocutors from other cultural backgrounds. This debate will be based on the legitimacy of reconstructing the meaning of human rights today, since there is an urgent need to rethink the true scope of their universal ownership, as well as the content of the human dignity that underpins them (NUSSBAUM, 2014). Next, we will present a critical analysis of the guiding documents of the intercultural perspective (CEFR 2001; CEFR, 2017), highlighting the new emphasis placed on intercultural mediation provided for in the latter in an intrinsic relationship with language learning. Finally, we advocate the importance of promoting research based on intercultural mediation aimed at teachers who wish to understand their role within a global citizenship perspective, in order to try to operationalize intercultural mediation actions, both inside and outside the school context, that foster interactions with intercultural communicative competence and the ability of learners to become citizens of cultural mediation at local, national and global levels.