Developing intercultural competence in TESOL service-learning : volunteer tutoring for recently-arrived adult refugees in learning English as a second language

This paper investigates and reflects on TESOL Student Teachers’ (TSTs) volunteer experience tutoring newly-arrived refugees learning English as a second language in an Australian context, highlighting the development of their intercultural competence through various purposely-planned service-learning activities. Although many service-learning research projects outside of Australia have been published, comparatively few TESOL service-learning projects completed in the Australian higher education sector are reported. Guided by constructivist grounded theory, the author collects the data from student reports, supervising teachers’ reports and comments, email communications, and weekly workshop discussions, uses the QSR Nvivo 10 research software program to code and sort the data, and critically analyses emerging thematic contents. The research results show that TSTs have developed their intercultural competence through conducting various teaching/learning tasks and meaningful interactions, while experimenting with teaching methodology and curriculum development. Meanwhile, refugee learners have also developed their intercultural competence, improved their ESL literacy through interactional learning activities, and learnt how to learn while building learner autonomy and confidence. Mutual benefits of volunteer tutoring as part of TESOL service-learning practices are discussed.