Crossing Cultures, Policy–Practice Perspectives: English Teachers' ICC and Translanguaging in Japan

This study analyzes how intercultural communicative competence (ICC) is acknowledged and enacted across secondary and tertiary schools in Tokyo as a select case study in a multicultural educational setting. Analysing through the lens of Byram’s ICC and Kramsch’s symbolic competence and situated within a relatively small constructivist paradigm design, combined interviews with teachers (n=8; four Japanese, four non-Japanese), classroom observations (12 sessions), six weeks of student journals (n=24; ages 13–20; Japanese and multicultural backgrounds), and document analysis. The research findings reveal a consistent policy–practice gap despite existing reform rhetoric: monolingual norms, rigid syllabi, and excessive exam focus narrow the opportunities for intercultural work. In this particular case, teachers were generally seen to promote ICC, but the finding also displayed uneven conceptual depth associated with it. In the context of the Japanese respondents, they were inclined towards the informational/cognitive framings, and non-Japanese teachers were privileging dialogic and relational orientations. Hence, translanguaging emerged as both a resource and a fault line valued for participation, yet resisted in responding to English-only expectations. Students reported greater engagement when lessons focused on histories, language, and different perspectives, and demonstrated some sense of frustration when “culture” was reduced to a broad theme and explained only at the surface level. The research argues for a shift from only correctness-driven instruction in English class and also as social practice, supported by (1) policy alignment recommendation that drives ICC in not only curriculum but also as assessment, and evaluation, (2) help sustaining professional learning and linking it to theory in classroom designs such as translanguaging, narrative and critical discussion tasks, (3) material preparation that focuses on diverse voices and global English. The study positions Japan’s English classrooms as critical sites for cultivating linguistic capability alongside intercultural judgment and reflexivity.