SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN ENGLISH CLASSROOMS OF LATIN AMERICA

Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) for foreign language education has developed over the last 25 years and has become a predominant guide for public policies regarding interculturality within the instruction of foreign languages. In Latin America, national governments have adopted ICC into English Foreign Language (EFL) pedagogy national standards and policies. Nevertheless, how ICC has been adopted in the classrooms needs to be clarified. This systematic review of empirical studies on ICC in Latin America identifies the emergent themes and gaps in the research. The search identified 23 Latin American papers written in Spanish or English from SCOPUS, SciELO, and WOS databases in September of 2022. The review results are organized into four themes. It analyses what has been studied in the EFL classrooms in schools, ICC English Language Teaching degree programs, EFL in higher education, and the development and analysis of ICC in didactic materials for EFL. Findings, among others, indicate a gap in investigations in schools, a change in EFL teachers’ perceptions of ICC, a preponderance of practitioner action research, and critical pedagogy.