Intercultural Learning in Moroccan Higher Education: A Comparison between Teachers’ Perceptions and Students’ Expectations

In light of the new millennium, there has been a growing need for learners who can live and act as intercultural speakers/intermediaries in such a globalized world. This need, therefore, has brought a new learning pedagogy called “Intercultural Learning”, aims to provide an ever-lasting learning process to prepare intercultural speakers for cross-cultural encounters. However, the way intercultural learning is perceived by the teachers would differ from the way it is perceived by the students, which may affect the learning outcomes. In this respect, the present study aims to compare teachers’ perceptions with students’ expectations regarding intercultural learning in Moroccan higher education. To this end, with a total sample of 51 participants (teachers “N=25” & students “N=26”), two Likert scale questionnaires were used. Based on descriptive and inferential statistics, the findings indicated that most of the teachers held positive perceptions by showing a high degree of agreement with different aspects of intercultural learning namely, the cultural aspects of language teaching, the cultural topics covered, the techniques and the assessment methods used in intercultural learning. Regardless of students’ disagreement with some aspects of intercultural learning, the results revealed that they showed positive and high expectations about most of the aspects. Furthermore, on the basis of independent samples t-test, the results indicated that the means of the two groups are not significantly different, and so there is no significant difference between teachers’ perceptions and learners’ expectations regarding intercultural learning. The study provides insightful implications for teachers and learners regarding intercultural learning.
learning.