In contrast, Rezaei and Naghibian (2018) designed an ICC-focused syllabus integrating American short stories and reflective tasks, including journals aligned with Byram’s (1997) components. Through activities like critical reading, role-play, and interviews, students deepened cultural awareness and appreciated both local and Western cultures, highlighting the value of literary texts in ICC development.

Byram and Morgan (1994) provide a broader theoretical foundation, aligning culture teaching with the British National Curriculum. Their framework promotes comparative methodology and cognitive empathy through themed activities that span personal, social, environmental, educational, and global domains. The approach places foreign language learning at the heart of liberal education, aiming to combat prejudice and promote critical cultural understanding.

Building on this, Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor (2008) offered practical techniques across all four language skills, advocating for activities such as video-based intercultural analysis, critical reading, and culturally focused writing. These tasks not only support linguistic development but also cultivate ICC, CDA, and multiperspectivity—essential attributes for navigating cultural complexity (Barrett et al., 2014).

Together, these studies and frameworks demonstrate a shared emphasis on cultural comparison, critical reflection, and learner agency. Yet, they also expose a gap: while recommendations for culture teaching exist, little is known about how these practices unfold in multilingual, international classrooms. This monograph addresses that gap by investigating how critical intercultural aims are interpreted and enacted by teachers, experienced by students, supported by materials, and represented in institutional documents.