Towards a Grammar of Intercultural Kindness: Connecting Citizenship, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Language Education

This article examines how kindness can be understood, expressed and enacted through intercultural citizenship education in higher education, with particular attention to equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). Situated within a theoretical framework that brings together intercultural citizenship and EDI, the study argues that these fields are mutually reinforcing and that their integration is enriched by foregrounding kindness. Empirically, the article reports on a qualitative multiple case study conducted in 2023, involving university students from Argentina and the United Kingdom who collaboratively designed English language teaching materials focused on kindness. Data consisted of student-generated textual and artistic artefacts, including lesson plans, teachers’ notes, drawings, comics and other teaching materials, which were analysed using a multimodal approach. Across cases, kindness functioned as a relational disposition, ethical compass, emotional anchor and intentional action, serving as a pedagogical response to issues of gender inequality, mental health and disability inclusion. The study argues that a structured grammar of intercultural kindness offers a vocabulary that makes visible the relational, ethical, emotional and action-oriented dimensions through which kindness shapes the pedagogical enactment of intercultural citizenship and EDI. This approach demonstrates that kindness can be taught; however, its transformative potential depends on a deliberate political orientation.