چکیده:
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.