This critical and reflexive qualitative study examines a particular group of English teachers’ understandings and experiences of ‘intercultural education’ in the context of the Junior Cycle English classroom. It investigates how pedagogy, centred on analysis ofliterature and film, informs intercultural education. Ten semi-structured interviews with teachers from a range of different school types were employed to gather data. A theoretical framework composed of concepts drawn from Critical Literacy (Freire, 1967,1970), and supported by concepts drawn from Critical Race Theory (Bell, 1992; Delagado and Stefancic, 2001; Crenshaw, 2011; Ladson-Billings and Tate, 1995), and Post-Colonial Theory (Bhabha, 1990, 1994; Said, 1978, 1994; Spivak, 1988), constituted the critical lens informing examination of teachers’ selection of, and pedagogy related to literature and film. The data was coded manually, and the critical lens was then applied to the coded data. Critical analysis reveals divergence among teachers’ conceptualisations and experiences of intercultural education in the context of their English teaching. Half of the study participants express perspectives that align with well-meaning though superficial understandings. They foreground celebration of diversity, and while they emphasise their commitment to the well-being of all students, their expressed understanding of the intercultural features a limited and therefore problematic gap in knowledge regarding both the nature of racism as well as appropriate pedagogic responses to it. The other half of the participants conceptualise and enact more critical forms of intercultural education in their classroom exploration of literature and film that bear the hallmark of active anti-racism and commitment to social justice.