This research aims to investigate: (1) to what extent in-service teachers know about Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC), (2) the in-service teachers’ beliefs about Intercultural Communicative Competence in EFL classrooms, and (3) how in-service teachers’ knowledge and beliefs of Intercultural Communicative Competence are reflected in EFL classrooms.
This research employed the qualitative-case study as the method. The participants were the university teachers of English around Java. By applying purposive sampling, the writer used some participants as the representatives. Eleven respondents participated in filling the questionnaires and four of them voluntarily joined the interview session. The instruments to collect the data were interview, questionnaire, observation, and document analysis. In this research, the researcher applied methodological triangulation to check the validity of data.
The results of the study show (1) the participants of this study have various levels of understanding in internalizing the concept of Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) and some of them consider the aspects in an isolated way. Only one participant saw ICC and its aspects as interrelated. In addition, almost all participants are familiar with cultural topics from diverse cultures, (2) the participants perceive that although their major aim of EFL teaching is mainly to help students acquire language competence, some of them also concern to help their students in achieving cultural competence. Also, they were aware of the importance of cultural teaching or ICC to their students in English classrooms, (3) their knowledge and beliefs about ICC were reflected in their English classrooms in some ways, such as conducting presentation and discussion.
The results indicated that to improve their theoretical understanding of ICC, in-service teachers should join in-house trainings, seminars, or conferences. It is also necessary for them to have more opportunities to implement ICC in their English language classroom practices. At this point, the institutional curriculum supports become an important part to succeed the integration of ICC in EFL classroom. The findings might limit the generalizability of the research. Therefore, It suggested future research discover more about this phenomenon with a more significant population and any other contexts to obtain more comprehensive results.