The following study examines how university teacher educators in Brazil and Chile perceive the integration of interculturality in the teaching and learning of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and English as an International Language (EIL). While both countries included English in the curricula as a foreign language, they have recently rethought the status of English in the education system—Brazil officializing it as ELF and Chile proposing it as EIL— the extent to which this policy changes translate into pedagogical practice remains unclear. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with ten English teacher educators from both countries, this research investigates their beliefs about the challenges and opportunities of implementing ELF or EIL with an intercultural orientation. The findings reveal a disjunction between awareness of policy mandates and uncertainty about their classroom application, reflecting limited guidance and persistent reliance on native-speaker norms. By situating these insights within broader ELF/EIL and interculturality scholarship, the study highlights the need for clearer policy practice alignment and for teacher education programmes to provide explicit support in developing intercultural competence. In doing so, it contributes empirical evidence from Latin America, a region underrepresented in ELF/EIL research, expanding understanding of how global language paradigms are interpreted in local educational contexts.
Rojas et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: