Article

the International

Intercultural learning Communication Gazette

2018, Vol. 80(7) 677–694
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telecollaboration? DOI: 10.1177/1748048518802221
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A critical case study
of eTwinning between
Turkey and Germany
Çiğdem Bozdağ
Department of New Media, Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey

Abstract
Digital media offer various possibilities for internet-based telecollaboration in schools
and open up a space for intercultural learning. Diverse initiatives like such as the
European Union-initiative eTwinning network aim to support telecollaboration projects
in education. This article argues that we need to develop critical and grounded under-
standing of telecollaboration projects and how they are being embedded in the context
of existing school cultures. The article presents an in-depth case study of a telecolla-
boration project between a Turkish and a German school. On the basis of observations
in schools, interviews with teachers and focus groups with pupils, the article argues that
there are two main challenges that limit the experience of intercultural learning in the
analysed project. The first point is about the strong teacher-centred project design and
the discrepancy between the perspectives of teachers and pupils. The second point is
the rather simplistic and superficial understanding of culture, which reasserts national
cultures instead of promoting a more open perspective, that influences the project tasks
and topics.

Keywords
Education, eTwinning, Germany, intercultural learning, internet, online intercultural
exchange, telecollaboration, Turkey

Corresponding author:
Çiğdem Bozdağ, Kadir Has University, Kadir Has Caddesi, Cibali, Fatih, Istanbul, Turkey.
Email: Cigdem.bozdag@khas.edu.tr
678 the International Communication Gazette 80(7)

Introduction
Digital media technologies bring along opportunities for connected learning experi-
ences around the world enabling (tele)collaboration between teachers and pupils in
different places. Telecollaboration is becoming part of formal and informal educa-
tion environments through different international projects supported by state insti-
tutions, nongovernmental organizations and private companies.1 Despite this
increasing interest at the policy and practice level, the existing research on inter-
national telecollaboration in schools seems to be quite celebratory about its
impacts and there is a need for critical and in-depth research in the field.
In contrast to the common myth about a ‘super-connected youth’, young people
today use technologies rather to manage their existing connections than to establish
new ones (Livingstone and Sefton-Green, 2016: 249–250). Likewise, despite the
hype around networked learning via digital media, connectedness does not reflect
the reality of school life today. Yet, offering pupils a chance to be a part of inter-
cultural and international networks (via digital media) remains to be an important
ideal for cosmopolitan education in a globalizing world that is marked by cultural
diversity. Experiencing online intercultural encounters could provide pupils a space
for intercultural learning; crossing their everyday boundaries; getting to know
other people with different cultural backgrounds, lifestyles, ideas, and learning
from and with them. Schools can play a key role in creating a space for these
encounters and also giving those pupils, who do not have the means to initiate
such connections themselves, a chance to be a part of international networks (Stier,
2006: 7).
The European Union (EU)-supported eTwinning network offers an online plat-
form for collaborative projects between European schools. Previous research on
eTwinning mainly focuses on good examples showing how eTwinning or other
telecollaboration projects contribute to intercultural learning. However, more
often than expected, teachers and pupils face challenges in their projects, which
restrict or hinder their learning experiences. It is also important to look at these
failed communication situations in order to be able to identify the problems and
the reasons behind them. There is a lack of such critical studies in the field of
telecollaboration. In-depth studies can enable us to develop a critical approach
for understanding technology-based education practices and telecollaboration.
Critical research on education not only aims to provide grounded analysis of edu-
cational practice (Selwyn, 2012: 218) but also to reveal the embedded power rela-
tions in the everyday context of schools by deconstructing naturalized processes of
knowledge production as also emphasized in the established field of research on
critical pedagogy (Giroux, 1997).
This article aims to provide such a critical and in-depth study of telecollabora-
tion by focusing on one particular eTwinning project between a German and a
Turkish school. By adopting the approach of Grounded Theory, the research aims
to reveal how technologies and telecollaboration are being integrated into the
everyday context of schools. The case study includes participatory observations,
interviews with teachers and pupils.
Bozdağ 679

Next section presents a literature review, and then the research design and
methods of the project will be discussed. The section following gives a detailed
account of the case study, and the article closes with a critical discussion of the
research findings and conclusion.

Literature review
Telecollaboration: Internet-based collaborative learning
The possibilities of collaborative learning via digital technologies in formal and
informal education have been widely discussed in the literature on education and
technology starting in the 1990s (e.g., Warschauer, 1997: 470). Today, through the
developments in the speed and services of the internet, the interest in online col-
laborative learning increased. Especially the potentials of the collaborative tools of
social media offer a wide range of opportunities of innovative pedagogies for sup-
porting learner’s choices and autonomy. The use of social media in education has
also been scrutinized in the literature, firstly, with a hype, and later on, with more
grounded research, which analyse the use of social media in different educational
contexts (Selwyn and Stirling, 2016).
Through the use of the internet, collaboration in education today does not only
take place in physically shared spaces such as the classroom or computer lab but
also in tele-presence of others, in other words, through ‘telecollaboration’ (Ware
and Kramsch, 2005: 190). Telecollaboration in the context of formal education
takes different forms, for example, among pupils from the same school doing col-
laborative homework assignments separately in their homes using a shared plat-
form. Or it can also take place at a larger distance, between pupils in different cities
or different countries. Depending on the context and approach, different names
were used for telecollaboration practices such as virtual exchange, eTandem, online
intercultural exchange (O’Dowd, 2016: 292–294). Earlier application of telecolla-
boration often took place in the form of extracurricular activities, today, it became
part of blended classroom activities in schools and higher education (O’Dowd and
Lewis, 2016: 7).
The body of research on telecollaboration has been growing since the 1990s
(O’Dowd, 2011, 343–344). After the 2000s, especially the interest on inter-
national telecollaboration projects increased due to developments in technolo-
gies among other factors (Kern et al., 2004: 243; O’Dowd, 2011: 342). Most
of these studies focus on telecollaboration in higher education (for an
overview, Guth and Helm, 2010; O’Dowd and Lewis, 2016). International
telecollaboration in schools still remains an under-studied issue, although
there are various initiatives for supporting school-based telecollaboration in
different countries.
One of the major aims of international telecollaboration projects is supporting
intercultural learning by creating opportunities for first-hand experiences of inter-
cultural encounters as it will be discussed in the next section.
680 the International Communication Gazette 80(7)

Intercultural learning through telecollaboration

Telecollaboration is often applied in the framework of language learning, and
(foreign) language education is one of the main focuses of research on telecolla-
boration (see e.g., Guth and Helm, 2010; Helm, 2015; Lee, 2009). Language edu-
cation went through an ‘intercultural turn’ (O’Dowd, 2011: 342) and today,
its practice goes beyond teaching of language skills and embraces ‘intercultural
learning’ as one of its essential elements (Garrett-Rucks, 2014: 181).
Telecollaboration is seen as one of the main pillars of this ‘intercultural turn’ in
foreign language education, as it provides an opportunity for ‘online intercultural
exchange’ and development of intercultural communicative competence (O’Dowd,
2011: 342).
Interculturality is, in general, based on a complex understanding of culture as
something dynamic and continuously changing (Gudykunst and Mody, 2004;
Jandt, 2010). It focuses on the interactions between cultures rather than on
taken-for-granted differences (Adams and Janover, 2009: 228; Stier, 2006: 5–7).
On one hand, cultural difference is articulated through (intercultural) communica-
tion. On the other hand, intercultural encounters can also lead to the deconstruc-
tion of stereotypes and generalizations about each other, and thus to intercultural
learning through development of intercultural competencies (Bennett, 1998: 3–5).
Intercultural learning aims to prepare students for a world that is marked by
cultural diversity and processes of globalization (Portera, 2008: 488), to develop
students’ respect and knowledge about other cultures and enhance their perception
of the dynamics of intercultural interactions. One of the key elements of intercul-
tural learning experiences is exposure to other cultures and first-hand experiences
as well as reflection of these experiences (Stier, 2006: 7). The understanding of
(intercultural) learning as an interactive and social experience is based on a socio-
cultural perspective to education (O’Dowd, 2016: 292). Accordingly, learning is
understood as a process of meaning construction in an active social and collabora-
tive process through a system of symbols (e.g., language) and tools (e.g., com-
puters) as learners are performing certain tasks (Lee, 2009: 427–428). Such a
conceptualization of learning requires a student-centred and collaborative
approach to teaching.
Digital media technologies offer various tools for collaborative learning and
student-centred learning. These tools, when used in an intercultural context, have
the potential to foster ‘mutual understanding between pupils in a variety of dis-
persed geographical and socio-cultural environments’ and support a more ‘cosmo-
politan’ education practice (Merchant, 2012: 16). eTwinning, which will be
discussed in the next section, is one of the largest online school networks and
aims to contribute to telecollaboration and intercultural learning in schools.

eTwinning as a telecollaboration network

eTwinning,2 a network established by the EU in 2005, is defined as ‘the free and
safe platform for teachers to connect, develop collaborative projects and share
Bozdağ 681

ideas’3 in EU member and candidate states (such as Turkey). eTwinning functions

through the eTwinning homepage with a gallery of all eTwinning projects, infor-
mation about eTwinning, trainings, webinars and teacher profiles (self-descriptions
and previous projects). Besides the homepage, there is also the TwinSpace, where
the teachers create their project spaces choosing from its various Web 2.0 tools
such as blogs, e-mail, chat, Wikis. Within the project space, teachers have their
separate communication space, but pupils can only communicate in spaces that can
be controlled by the teachers.
eTwinning projects are developed by the teachers on a voluntary basis. The
project types and durations vary. eTwinning offers some pre-designed ‘project
kits’ (e.g., ‘Our Landscape’, ‘A Taste of Maths’) that can be used by the teachers,
but they can also create their projects from scratch. The projects should have at
least two partners from different countries, but there is no upper limit. This flexi-
bility of the project design in eTwinning opens up a space for student-centred
projects.
eTwinning is coordinated by local, national and European support services,
which organize regular conferences and workshops at the regional, national and
European level and bring teachers from different eTwinning countries together for
the purposes of training, networking and presenting and rewarding good cases. The
coordinators also evaluate the impact of eTwinning through regular assessments
(see e.g., Kearney and Gras-Velasquez, 2015; Wastiau et al., 2011). These evalu-
ations often focus on good cases and the platform’s efficiency rather than providing
a critical analysis of eTwinning projects.
The academic research on eTwinning especially focuses on the influences of
eTwinning on intercultural learning skills, collaboration and networking practices
of the pupils and teachers (e.g. Anda and Güven, 2013; Scimeca et al., 2009;
Vuorikari et al., 2015). There are not many multi-level and comparative researches,
which adopt a critical perspective to understand not only the potentials but also the
challenges in the implementation of eTwinning projects. The qualitative study by
Gouseti (2013) is an exception to this. Gouseti (2013: 572) provides critical and in-
depth case studies of eTwinning projects in four schools in the UK, Germany and
Greece. The present case study adopts a similar approach, adds Turkey as a new
context and focuses not only on practices of collaboration but also the intercultural
exchange between the partners.

Research question and methods

The presented qualitative research adopts the approach of Grounded Theory,
which enables a material-based form of theory building (Glaser and Strauss,
1971/1999: 16). Furthermore, although it cannot be considered as a proper ethno-
graphic study, the study adopts ethnographic techniques such as participatory
observations, formal and informal interviews and focus groups with various
actors in the field. Such a research design can bring us closer to the realities of
technology integration in schools in different contexts and help us to ‘develop
682 the International Communication Gazette 80(7)

socially-grounded understandings of the realities of education and technology ‘‘‘as

it happens’’’ (Selwyn, 2012: 219).
The ‘Cooperation’ project,4 which is an eTwinning project between two second-
ary state schools, one in a small city in Bavaria, Germany and one in Bursa,
Turkey, is chosen as a case study because the researcher is familiar with the edu-
cation system in both countries. The Bavarian school is a ‘Hauptschule’, which is
considered to be the lowest ranked in the hierarchy of the German education
system (Auernheimer, 2005: 79). The pupils attending this school are mostly
from a working-class background. The Turkish school was built for the workers
of a factory; however, this changed over time as the school started to accept pupils
from a nearer city. Most of the pupils here have a lower middle class and working-
class background.
The study combines participatory observations, two focus groups with seven
pupils in each group and two interviews with each of the teachers with the aim of
exploring the perspectives of different involved actors and give a detailed insight
into how telecollaboration practices are being integrated into the everyday context
of schools. Although the analysis focuses only on two schools, the strength of this
grounded approach lies not in the number of analysed schools but in the detailed
analysis of the school contexts and the adaptation processes of technologies in the
existing school structures. This in-depth approach can also guide us to understand
other schools, which go through similar processes.
The researcher visited both schools (Bursa in December 2013 and April 2014
and Bavaria in March 2014)5 in order to make observations during joint Skype
lessons, conduct focus groups with pupils and interviews with the teachers and also
talk to the school principal and other teachers in both schools. The focus group
method was chosen to interview the pupils in order to make it easier for them to
reveal their perspectives through a moderated group discussion (Morgan, 1996:
131–132). Seven pupils (ages 13–14 years)6 with different backgrounds in terms
of ethnic and class background and success rates in the school from each classroom
participated in these focus groups. In the semi-structured interviews with the tea-
chers, the teachers were encouraged to talk about their own perspectives through
open questions based on an interview protocol (Froschauer and Lüger, 2003:
15–18). Both the focus groups and the interviews included questions about the
teachers’ and pupils’ experiences in the project, their media literacy level, their
use of digital media in and outside of the classroom, their interest in and connec-
tions to other countries and cultures. The observations throughout the project were
documented in field notes.
The transcribed interviews and the field notes were coded according to the prin-
cipals of open coding as in Grounded Theory, which contributes to an analysis that
is strongly based on the empirical material. The inductive process of open coding
brings about new categories which the researcher might not be aware of before the
research process. One example here for such categories that emerge through coding
and play a key role in the field of analysis was the ‘classroom setting’. This and
other categories will be discussed in the findings section.
Bozdağ 683

Research findings
Background of the Cooperation project
The Cooperation project started as Osman, an English teacher in his late 30s
working in a secondary state school in Bursa, Turkey and Andreas, a teacher in
his late 50s from a Bavarian secondary state school met through ‘Skype in the
Classroom’.7 Osman stated that he has been interested in international projects
since his own international exchange experience during his studies adding that he
benefited a lot from this experience. He and Andreas were both involved in inter-
national Comenius8 mobility projects before. Both teachers emphasized pupils’
development of a ‘cosmopolitan’ stance and an idea of a ‘world citizenship’ as
their main aspiration for doing international projects. Andreas was especially inter-
ested in doing a project with a Turkish school because he ‘has an affinity with
Turkey’ through his private interest in traveling and he ‘has a lot of pupils from
Turkey’ in his classroom (Interview Andreas).
The two teachers decided to start a project in their elective English courses
for seventh graders by doing weekly joint class hours in Fall 2013.9 They searched
for common topics; ‘not grammar’ and rather something lighter (‘chillig’)
that ‘brings joy and fun’ (Interview Andreas) and ‘something to make children
like [foreign] languages’ (Interview Osman). They registered their project in
TwinSpace but continued to use Skype as their main videoconferencing tool.10
Neither Andreas nor Osman attended eTwinning teacher trainings before; they
also did not contact the local or national coordinators directly before or during
their project.
Whereas the contact between the teachers took place already before the project
started, the pupils were not involved in designing the project and were only briefly
informed about the project as they received a written notice to take to their parents.
The pupils in Germany stated that the videoconferencing began ‘spontaneously’
and they did not know that it was planned until the first day. One of the Turkish
pupils described the project as follows: ‘Every Friday we do this, we talk to
Germany in English and we improve our English, we do some activities, I mean,
sketches etc.’ The pupils generally had a limited understanding about the aims of
the project showing that there was not enough reflection about the project in the
classroom.

Tasks and topics in the project

The project was mainly based on in-class videoconferencing and homework assign-
ments. The teachers also aimed to use social media functions of the TwinSpace;
however, they both indicated that they could not use these as they wished. Pupils in
the focus groups also confirmed that they did not really use TwinSpace and did not
even remember their passwords. But the students used other digital tools in the
project, such as search engines, digital cameras, presentation tools, for their home-
work assignments. For example, in one of their assignments, the pupils were asked
684 the International Communication Gazette 80(7)

to prepare a presentation or a film about their ‘own culture’ as one of the Turkish
pupils explains:

Aeh we present them our own culture sometimes, for example, aeh we went to take
pictures – we did a performance assignment like that [. . .] We went to historical places,
Atatürk museum, the Archeological museum, we talked about the pictures we took
there in English. (Alican, m)

These kinds of homework assignments, in which pupils are expected to identify

elements of ‘their culture’ and present it to the partner classroom, are quite typical
in eTwinning projects as it could be observed in the interviews with the other
teachers and in the eTwinning project gallery. Such comparisons are also encour-
aged in teacher trainings through the presentation of the projects, which are
rewarded the so-called ‘quality labels’ by the national and European coordinators.
Besides the homework assignments, the students received in-class assignments
during the joint project hours. These assignments were about different topics that
were chosen by the teachers. One of these was the story of Santa Claus.11 Andreas
explains why they chose this topic:

The pupils in Bursa, only a few people know that Santa Claus was a Turk, the saint
from Myra, and also the Islamic Turkey admires and values the holly Santa Claus. He
was a Christian bishop. We sat there with Santa Claus hats, even me. And they did a
mask with a Santa Claus beard. It means that even when we are Islamic or Christian,
there is something that unites us. What unites us? The Santa Claus, he is one of you
and also one of us. And these are the topics, where we think that we can avoid a
separatist cultural perspective. (Interview Andreas)

The topic was chosen by Andreas as a common topic for the pupils in the two
countries. During this hour, the teacher stood in front of the classroom and all
pupils sat linearly in desks facing him, which is the typical setting of the classrooms
in Turkish state schools. The computer and the webcam were placed in the tea-
cher’s desk in the front. Due to the weak internet connection in the Turkish class-
room, it took a while to start the videoconference and the pupils were waiting
quietly. Once the connection was established, the class hour started with both
classrooms greeting each other in Skype. The pupils had prepared Santa Claus
masks and costumes as a ‘surprise to each other’ (Interview Andreas). After the
greeting, they paused the videoconference and the teachers separately read a short
text about Santa Claus, which explained that he was born in Turkey. Then, a pupil
in each classroom was asked to read the text out loud again. After reading the text,
the videoconference started again with the German teacher asking questions to the
Turkish classroom. Due to the weak connection, the Turkish teacher had to repeat
the questions in his classroom. The pupils raised their hands to answer the ques-
tion, and one of the pupils was called to the front of the camera to answer the
question. Then, it was the Turkish teacher’s turn to ask a question and one of the
Bozdağ 685

German pupils answered while the Turkish pupils were watching them on screen.
Due to the connection problems, the picture was very unclear. This was mentioned
as a problem by the pupils in the focus groups.
Another project task, which was observed during the visit of the German class-
room, was the performance of a cup show along with an English song.12 The
classroom in Germany was designed differently than the Turkish classroom; the
pupils could sit in dispersed tables around the classroom, had more space and
could move more freely during the class hour. The camera and the computer
were placed in the opposite side of the teacher’s desk. However, again here, the
teacher stood beside the computer and the pupils sat in different tables facing him;
they went to the front in order to speak into the microphone and the camera during
the exchange. As the connection was established, the teachers started the class hour
by greeting the pupils. Pupils in the German classroom performed the cup show,
which they had practiced in their free times by watching the YouTube video, for the
Turkish classroom via the camera. One of the girls in the classroom sang the song
as the others did the cup movements. Those who participated in the show seemed
quite engaged. However, some of the pupils, especially boys, did not participate in
the performance, sat in the back seats and were rather distracted. After this per-
formance, the Turkish teacher thanked the pupils in Germany and told them that
in return, they would perform the same song in the next class hour. The pupils in
the Turkish classroom were quite excited about this and saw this as a ‘small game’
(Aykut, m); however, as Osman explained later on, they were not able to do it due
to time restrictions.
The cup song performance took 20 minutes of the class hour and after that there
was again an English practice and the pupils were supposed to read a dialogue from
an English practice book between a tourist and a shop owner in England. One
student was chosen from each classroom to read one character’s lines in the dia-
logue in front of the camera, which was repeated by two pupils in each classroom.
The other pupils were sitting again in their seats and seemed quite distracted. Some
were quietly playing with the cups, repeating the cup movements.

Pupils’ perceptions about the project

As the above exemplary exchanges in the Cooperation project show, there was only
limited direct exchange between the pupils throughout the project. The use of a
singular computer and camera in the front side of the classroom during the
exchanges already called for a quite teacher-centred and -controlled communica-
tion environment. The pupils had the feeling that ‘most of the time only Mr.
Neumann and Osman Isik spoke’ and it was rather ‘boring’ while they ‘had to
sit quietly’ (Anna, f) as the teachers were speaking. The exchanges between the two
classrooms were designed and controlled quite strictly by the teachers; the pupils
participated in the exchange in front of the whole classroom. Both pupils in Turkey
and in Germany stated that they were rather ‘shy’ (Johannes, m), ‘ashamed’
(Tobias, m) and afraid of firstly ‘standing alone in front of the camera’
686 the International Communication Gazette 80(7)

(Matthias, m) and secondly of speaking in English and ‘making mistakes’ (Aykut,

m). Here, not only ‘language anxiety’ (Chen and Yang, 2014: 70) plays a role but
also the fear of the camera and speaking to ‘people you don’t know’ (Eda, f). This
fear of the camera was something that the two teachers did not anticipate because
they believed that the pupils in their classrooms would use digital media without
any hesitation. Teachers’ expectations about the pupils’ digital skills might not
always reflect the reality (see also Kirkwood, 2006: 117). Despite their anxieties
about the camera, the pupils wanted to participate more actively in the exchange
but if possible through different means:

Researcher: How do you get along with the kids there?

Alican: But we don’t talk to them.
Hasan: We would have if we added them on Facebook. I have friends there, we all do.
(Focus Group, Bursa)

The pupils’ statements make it clear that they saw their role in this project rather as
passive; sitting and waiting for the teachers to do their talk and do the given
assignments. As it can be seen in the quotes above, they wished to communicate
directly with the other pupils, especially through social network sites, such as
Facebook. Using different communication tools such as chat, blogs and discussion
forums could also be useful for introducing the pupils to each other before the
camera exchange and reducing their anxiety. Two of the pupils in the Turkish
classroom indicated that they had participated in another eTwinning project
with their previous English teacher in which they each had a student partner
from Norway to chat with. They reported enthusiastically about their ongoing
contact with these pupils through Facebook:

Researcher: What do you talk about?

Alican: English, of course he is two or three years older than me. That’s what I see
from his pictures. But there is a big difference in the level of English that we speak. He
speaks like..and I always write ÐWhat?’ for example
Hasan: I always translate from google
Researcher: Do you also talk with them?
Hasan: Yes, I also had two, one girl and one boy. One’s name, the boy’s name is
Marius and the girl’s name is Eugine. I was also talking to them, and after a while we
even started to talk somewhere else, the telephone number. (Focus Group, Bursa)

As in the example above, given the chance to communicate with their partners
directly, pupils can establish connections, which have the potential for turning into
informal (learning) networks outside the school, for example, for language learning
or other shared interests such as popular culture. The discussions in the focus
groups about free time activities demonstrated that pupils in Germany and
Turkey had more common interests such as popular movies, series, games, music
than what they could reveal to each other during the project.
Bozdağ 687

In the focus groups, the pupils were also asked what they learned about the
culture of the other country throughout the project. The pupils in Germany openly
said that they ‘did not really learn anything about Turkey’ (Anna, f). And the
pupils in Turkey rather reconstructed what they knew on the basis of stereotypes
and generalizations such as ‘they are rich’ or ‘it is cold’, and not what they had been
discussing in the project when asked what they knew about Germany. These state-
ments and the participatory observations show that the cultural exchange between
the pupils remained at a rather superficial level and lead neither to the questioning
of complex relations between the cultures nor deconstruction of cultural bound-
aries or prejudices.

Teachers’ perception about the project

As discussed in the last section, the pupils were rather disappointed about the way
the project was carried out. The teachers, on the contrary, were quite pleased with
the project outcomes and believed that the pupils could learn a lot from it. Andreas
believed, for example, that the project was very interactive due to the dialogues that
they practiced in the classroom:

Interaction is important and it takes place in our project. Not like Anglicists imagine it
to be, as perfect. But, it is cute. We trained a dialogue, Anna stood before the camera
and in Turkey stands a partner, Tobias, for example, and they speak a dialogue and
are 2000 km away from each other. I think this is gigantic. I think this is great.
(Interview Andreas)

Andreas believed that their project can be defined as interactive through the dia-
logues in the classroom between pupils in Germany and Turkey. However, based
on the pupils’ statements, it is clear that even when the pupils were part of these
dialogues, which were prepared by their teachers, they did not really feel that ‘they
talked to each other’ or ‘spoke’ at all. Assuming that pre-designed dialogues that
are read by the pupils can be defined as interaction misses the core of the approach
of participatory and collaborative learning, namely, putting the pupils in the centre
of the learning process and giving them space for guided self-learning.
Osman, the Turkish partner of the project, also believed that the project was
quite successful, but he also stated at one point that the project could have been
more participatory in order to involve pupils more in the communication processes.
He sees the success of the project rather the fact that the pupils got to know people
from another cultural context:

I mean our cultures are not so different. Everybody should by now be aware of the
concept of world citizenship. This is actually what we do, [showing] what a world
citizenship can be like. Everybody is the same at the end, a German or a French
person, we don’t have any differences, we are all human beings and have common
needs. This project is a small thing for deconstructing these prejudices and live in a
688 the International Communication Gazette 80(7)

more peaceful world, but the kids can at least see that the people on the other side are
not that different from us. (Interview Osman)

Osman has an ideal of ‘world citizenship’ in mind, which he defines on the basis of
being human. He believes that the pupils could learn from their joint project that
they are not very different from each other and implies that they could deconstruct
prejudices about Turkey and Germany.

Discussion
The scope of the internet-based telecollaboration projects are shaped and limited
by the school cultures and perspectives of the teachers who design and guide these
projects. Developing a critical and grounded perspective towards the practice of
telecollaboration projects can help us understand the dynamics that impede inter-
cultural learning processes and improve them. The above in-depth case study
points out to two major problems that continue to hinder more fruitful intercul-
tural learning experiences in telecollaboration projects. First of these problems is
related to the teacher-centred design of the project, the second to the superficial
understanding of culture and persisting influence of national cultures on education.

Failed communication between pupils and teachers

One of the keys to intercultural learning, understood as an interactive, experience-
based form of learning, is a student-centred learning design (O’Dowd, 2016: 292),
which lacked in the analysed case study. In the Cooperation project, the pupils
were neither involved in the designing of the project nor were they able to reflect
their experiences and opinions about the project. They were rather fulfilling their
pre-designed roles during the classroom assignments. There was only limited room
for spontaneous interaction between them. Due to the lack of communication
between the teachers and pupils, their perspectives about the project clearly
diverged from each other. For instance, the teachers believed that the project
included the pupils and was designed in an interactive manner, but the pupils
felt left out of the project and indicated that mostly the teachers were doing the
talking in the project. Moreover, whereas the teachers believed that the project led
to ‘deconstruction of prejudices’ and contributed to ‘living in a more peaceful
world’, the pupils did not believe that they learned a lot about the others. Both
for the pupils in Bursa, who come from a working-class and lower middle-class
background, and the pupils in Bavaria, who come from a working-class back-
ground, the Cooperation project provided a first contact with international net-
works. However, the project failed to go beyond this and to provide a rich and
critical intercultural learning experience.
The teacher-centred design of the project results especially from the persistence
of traditional teaching approaches and lack of knowledge about student-centred
teaching methods. The interviews and informal conversations outside the
Bozdağ 689

classroom showed that the two teachers’ ideas about interactive and participatory
learning were quite limited. None of them had a chance to participate in the
eTwinning teacher trainings, which could have been a guide for seeing successful
eTwinning examples with a more participatory project design. The eTwinning
support network could play a key role here by including more teachers in their
workshops and offer them guidance and training for using Information and
Communication Technologies (ICT) in a more student-centred manner.13 The
school principals’ and local institutions role in this project was also rather control-
ling than supportive.

Persisting national cultures vs. cosmopolitan ideals

The second problem in the analysed case study lies in the rather static and sim-
plistic understanding of culture as national cultures. Culture, understood as a
social construction, is ‘not stable, coherent or localized’ and ‘never was’
(Couldry, 2000: 93). Although in the more recent literature, ‘intercultural commu-
nication’ is conceptualized based on a more complex understanding of culture and
intercultural relations (Adams and Janover, 2009: 228; Stier, 2006: 5–7), a rather
simplistic and superficial concept of culture prevails in the educational practice.
For instance, in eTwinning projects, pupils are often instructed to look for cultural
and historical symbols that are supposed to represent their culture as discussed in
previous sections. Setting out to look for cultural differences from the beginning,
pupils are requested to define and present the characteristics and symbols of
national cultures as ‘their own cultures’. Such assignments not only take national
cultures for granted but also encourage pupils to draw mental boundaries, which
might not necessarily be there in the beginning. This could even lead to reconstruc-
tion of boundaries and stereotypes rather than deconstructing them.
The teachers themselves also often represent a clear-cut understanding of ‘us’
and ‘them’ in class, such as Andreas’s depictions of ‘us’ as ‘Christians’ and ‘them’
as ‘Muslims’ while talking about Santa Claus as a figure to unite both cultures as
discussed above. As he is looking for elements to ‘avoid a separatist cultural view’,
he is at the same time generalizing the cultural backgrounds of pupils in both
classrooms. Whereas the teachers are on the one hand trying to reach cosmopolitan
ideals, promote openness and dispel stereotypes, they are at the same time unwit-
tingly working with materials and task designs, which encourage notions of other-
ness and difference (Starkey, 2007: 56–57). Thus, there is often a tension between
policies that ‘promote intercultural communication and persistent traditions of
national cultures’ (Starkey, 2007: 56).
This rather static and simplistic understanding of culture is also reflected in the
ways both teachers deal with cultural differences within their own classrooms. In
the German classroom, almost half of the pupils have a migration background and
the Turkish classroom has a large group of Kurdish pupils, who have migrated
from eastern regions of Turkey due to economic reasons and ongoing armed con-
flict in the region, and pupils of Turkish ethnic origin who migrated to Turkey from
690 the International Communication Gazette 80(7)

different Balkan countries. The German teacher addresses this diversity as some-
thing to celebrate; however, some of his statements in the interview and in the
classroom were stereotyping the behaviours of the pupils with Turkish and
Russian backgrounds. From the perspective of the Turkish teacher, the diversity
within the classroom rather constituted a problem because these pupils, especially
those with a Kurdish background, are rather the ones who perform weakly in class
and have poor Turkish language skills.
The teachers’ perceptions of cultural diversity are partially marked by the general
educational contexts of both countries. In Germany, terms such as ‘intercultural
learning’ and ‘doing diversity in the classroom’ are already in common use and are
part of teachers’ everyday vocabulary and discussions. In the Turkish educational
policies and curriculum, cultural diversity is much less significant and there is a
strong emphasis on the importance of having a uniting national culture and language.
The cultural and lingual differences are rather ignored or even worse suppressed in the
Turkish school environment. A symbol of this suppressive approach was the sign
saying ‘please, speak Turkish’ in the schoolyard of the school in Bursa, which indicates
that pupils should avoid speaking Kurdish or other languages not only in the class-
room but also in the breaks. This sign is not specific to this school and can also be
found in other schools in Turkey. Such a suppressive approach towards cultural
diversity is in clear contradiction with the promoted aims of eTwinning for increasing
intercultural understanding between teachers and pupils of diverse cultural back-
grounds. An educational approach, which pre-assumes and celebrates cultural differ-
ences at the international level, but ignores stereotypes and/or suppresses cultural
differences at the national level, can be interpreted as another sign of a rather sim-
plistic and superficial understanding of culture and (inter)cultural exchange.

Conclusion
This article presented an in-depth case study of an eTwinning project between a
German and a Turkish school as an example for ICT-based telecollaboration pro-
jects in schools, which aim to increase intercultural and international connections
between schools and contribute to intercultural learning. This article makes a claim
about the importance of grounded and critical studies about these projects. Although
the number of analysed schools might be limited in a qualitative case study, it pro-
vides us an in-depth understanding of the telecollaboration experiences of different
involved actors in the context of school cultures. The use of digital media in schools
or establishment of intercultural connections do not automatically transform school
cultures, they are rather embedded in the everyday context of the schools, which are
still strongly regulated at the national level. In contrast to policy emphasis (especially
at the EU-level) on cosmopolitan and student-centred education, the school cultures
today are still strongly shaped by national cultures. Furthermore, the projects are
also influenced and limited by the teachers’ perceptions of intercultural communica-
tion and their habits about teacher-centred education.
Bozdağ 691

Transforming the national school cultures and changing teachers’ perspectives

and habits remain to be the main challenges for a more participatory and enriching
experience of international telecollaboration in the classroom. Facing these chal-
lenges and taking measures to support teachers in this regard are crucial given the
potentials of telecollaboration projects for enriching pupils’ learning experiences.
Designed in a more participatory way, these projects could open up a space for
various forms of intercultural learning. Through this collaborative communication
space, pupils could be part of international learning networks, which later on can
turn into informal networks outside of the school. Furthermore, such projects
would also contribute to the improvement of pupils’ language and digital skills
‘marking them as digital creators’ (Brown et al., 2015: 17), which seem to become
more and more important in an increasingly complex and competitive world of
global connections.

Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the Istanbul Policy Center of the Sabanci University and the
Mercator initiative for their support.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article: The presented research was supported by the
Mercator-IPC fellowship program.

Notes
1. Some examples are eTwining (https://www.etwinning.net/), iEarn (https://iearn.org/),
Global Nomads (https://gng.org/), Global Teenager Project (http://www.educationinno-
vations.org/program/global-teenager-project) and Skype in the Classroom (https://edu-
cation.microsoft.com/skype-in-the-classroom/overview)
2. eTwinning combines the prefix ‘e-’, which stands for electronic, and the Word Twinning,
which means becoming ‘buddies’.
3. Whereas EU-member countries such as Germany were part of the eTwinning network
since the beginning, Turkey became a part of the eTwinning network in 2009 (see http://
www.etwinning.net/en/pub/index.htm).
4. The Cooperation project is part of a larger multi-level comparative study between Turkey
and Germany which comprised interviews with teachers from different schools and
eTwinning coordinators and participatory observations in teacher trainings, besides the
in-depth case study presented here.
5. In the beginning of the research, the project coordinator teachers were contacted per e-mail
and Skype, and they both agreed to take part in the research. The researcher also obtained
official research permissions from the regional educational directorates in both countries.
692 the International Communication Gazette 80(7)

6. Parental consent for the pupils’ participation in the study was obtained by the teachers.
7. Skype in the Classroom is a service of Skype that offers teachers a network and a free
license for using Skype’s advanced functions in the classroom.
8. Comenius projects were mobility projects of the EU’s 7th Framework Educational
Program. Similar projects such as Comenius are being carried out within the eighth
framework program of the EU under the name Erasmus+, which is also the overarch-
ing program that includes eTwinning.
9. As both teachers were pleased with the functioning of the project later on, they con-
tinued for one more semester in 2014. They were hoping to continue with the project in
the next years. However, the project did not continue after 2014, as the Turkish teacher
Osman left his school for an international position in Paris.
10. eTwinning does not offer a videoconferencing tool of its own.
11. The researcher participated in the Turkish class about Santa Claus in December 2013.
12. The video of the so-called cup song was very popular in Germany at the time of the
research (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼6y1aOg_UO_A)
13. The interviews with the coordinators and other eTwinner teachers also show that only a
very limited group of teachers can participate in the training programs due to lack of
financial and human resources.

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