Beyond understanding: intercultural teacher empathy in the teaching of English as an additional language

The dominant paradigm of monolingualism and monoculturalism in the context of the increasing linguistic and cultural diversity of students in all sectors of Australian education has brought pressure to bear on educators to develop interculturality. This study focuses on empathy as an important, but neglected, aspect of interculturality. The study interprets the beliefs, experiences and meanings that a group of English language teachers associated with empathy and the complex multilingual, multicultural setting in which they work. The setting for the research was an English language pathway program for international students situated in a public institute of higher education in Australia. The data were gathered through group and individual interviews with ten English language teachers. The study design was informed by an interpretivist perspective and adopted a constructivist grounded theory approach that viewed the related literature as data. The data were analysed using grounded theory processes and procedures. The findings are presented in the form of five theoretical propositions that together form a tentative theory of intercultural teacher empathy and English language teaching.