English language professional improvement with intercultural approach for international cooperation

Abstract

The Ministry of Education of the Republic of Cuba (MINED) is responsible for training teachers for developing international cooperation in the English language. An exploratory study revealed an insufficient intercultural approach revealing the need for research that would contribute to solve the following problem: How can the intercultural approach be strengthened in the English improvement of teachers for international cooperation. The research's objective was to develop a theoretical and methodological concept to strengthen the intercultural approach in the improvement of teachers for international cooperation in the English language. The theoretical methods used were: historical-logical, to reveal the regularities of the intercultural approach in the improvement of these teachers; analytical-synthetic and inductive-deductive, to determine the theoretical-methodological references of the research and the particularities of the intercultural approach to this improvement; the structural-functional systemic approach, to guarantee the systemic relationships between these references, the results of the diagnosis and the proposed theoretical-methodological conception; modeling, to obtain a prior representation of this theoretical-methodological conception. Among the empirical methods, the documentary study allowed us to analyze how the documents that regulate this process promote the intercultural approach, and the survey allowed us to determine the particularities of this process. The main result is the theoretical and methodological conception as a tool for teaching staff to contextualize this improvement in the culture of the agreed English-speaking countries, which strengthens their general culture by virtue of respect for foreign society.