Preface: Intercultural Citizenship – A Passion Project

Preface: Intercultural Citizenship – A Passion Project Kaishan Kong and Allison J. Spenader When we first conceptualized this volume, the editors came together through a mutual passion for language teaching and a commitment to fostering intercultural development in students. We had both found our excitement ignited by the recent publication of Wagner, Cardetti and Byram’s Teaching Intercultural Citizenship Across the Curriculum: The Role of Language Education (2019). We share a deep commitment to teaching for intercultural development and, upon ACTFL’s publication of this piece, were excited to see a focus on interculturality in language teaching validated at the national level. Within this important publication, Kaishan immediately found herself drawn to the four classroom projects described. In fact, as the current manuscript was taking shape over the summer of 2022, Kaishan was participating in a Fulbright Scholar program in Malaysia, and the only physical book she took in her luggage was the Wagner et al. (2019) volume! Likewise, Allison was highly enthusiastic when she first heard about the book and she immediately purchased it and read it cover to cover. At the annual ACTFL conference in 2019, Allison tracked down Manuela Wagner, peppering her with questions to learn more about her work on intercultural citizenship. By summer 2021 we had conceptualized this edited volume, aiming to share the synergy that we were seeing among our colleagues in the field of world language. We saw a great deal of energy around the confluence between intercultural development and language teaching and learning. We wanted to contribute to the momentum that we saw in this important and evolving educational framework. We held inclusivity of diverse voices as an explicit goal, aiming to incorporate a wealth of languages, program types, as well as author backgrounds and perspectives. While most of the contributing authors have deep connections to the Upper Midwest, the volume simultaneously reflects the work and voices of teachers and researchers from all over the US as well as several other countries. xix