Byram (2019) tells us that “education is political”, yet, in modern times, language education faces challenges with pedagogical models which struggle to integrate essential cultural and intercultural knowledge as part of a ‘political education’. This situation is due to a number of reasons, chief among them, we believe, being the existence of too many unengaging and apolitical elements within our language curricula. The generic language materials studied are too flat, too unenlightening and too clean and politically correct.
FL learners need to become multilingual intercultural citizens to navigate, take responsibility and contribute to a digital and multicultural world. Ergo, learners need to be challenged and ‘politicised’ academically as well as linguistically. To achieve this, we believe that critical pedagogies are required, and going further, critical digital pedagogies that include elements core to language education: critical digital literacies (CDL) (Authors, 2017; Dudeney & Hockly, 2016) and intercultural citizenship (ICz) (Byram, 2008).
In this paper we will present data from a multicultural virtual exchange (part of the E+VE programme) in a blended learning context within an Applied Language students (n=80) Language Technology module. We discuss the implications and challenges of such practices and argue for the teaching of agentive digital literacies (Authors, Forthcoming) whereby such ‘knowledge application’ is employed in a socio-political context with virtual exchange activities as the vehicle for creating a critical digital pedagogy. These activities produce: “The agency to know, understand, and therefore the ability to act upon, create, or resist one’s reality” (Hauck, 2018). The reality in our context is to enable students to become better self-directed, ‘politically’ responsible learners as well as digitally literate, multilingual global citizens.