Intercultural Competence
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Intercultural Competence
Martyn Barrett The Council of Europe’s White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue (2008) proposes that intercultural dialogue offers the best approach for managing issues of cultural diversity within contemporary societies. The White Paper defines intercultural dialogue as the open and respectful exchange of views between individuals and groups from different ethnic, religious, linguistic and national backgrounds on the basis of mutual understanding and respect, and it argues that such dialogue is crucial for promoting tolerance and understanding, preventing conflicts, and enhancing societal cohesion. However, the White Paper also observes that the competences which are required for participating in intercultural dialogue are not acquired automatically by individuals. These competences instead need to be learned, practised and maintained, and the White Paper assigns to education professionals the specific responsibility of fostering intercultural competences in learners. However, a difficulty confronting education professionals in fulfilling this responsibility is the bewildering array of conceptualisations of intercultural competence that are currently available. Over the past twenty years or so, there has been a proliferation of different models of intercultural competence across the social sciences, in disciplines as diverse as management, health care, counselling, social work, psychology and education. These various models have recently been reviewed by Spitzberg and Changnon (2009), who classify them into five types: (1) Compositional models, which identify the various components of intercultural competence without attempting to specify the relations between them – these models therefore simply contain lists of the relevant attitudes, skills, knowledge and behaviours which together make up intercultural competence. (2) Co-orientational models, which focus on how communication takes place within intercultural interactions, and how
Intercultural Competence
Martyn Barrett The Council of Europe’s White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue (2008) proposes that intercultural dialogue offers the best approach for managing issues of cultural diversity within contemporary societies. The White Paper defines intercultural dialogue as the open and respectful exchange of views between individuals and groups from different ethnic, religious, linguistic and national backgrounds on the basis of mutual understanding and respect, and it argues that such dialogue is crucial for promoting tolerance and understanding, preventing conflicts, and enhancing societal cohesion. However, the White Paper also observes that the competences which are required for participating in intercultural dialogue are not acquired automatically by individuals. These competences instead need to be learned, practised and maintained, and the White Paper assigns to education professionals the specific responsibility of fostering intercultural competences in learners. However, a difficulty confronting education professionals in fulfilling this responsibility is the bewildering array of conceptualisations of intercultural competence that are currently available. Over the past twenty years or so, there has been a proliferation of different models of intercultural competence across the social sciences, in disciplines as diverse as management, health care, counselling, social work, psychology and education. These various models have recently been reviewed by Spitzberg and Changnon (2009), who classify them into five types: (1) Compositional models, which identify the various components of intercultural competence without attempting to specify the relations between them – these models therefore simply contain lists of the relevant attitudes, skills, knowledge and behaviours which together make up intercultural competence. (2) Co-orientational models, which focus on how communication takes place within intercultural interactions, and how
References: Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Caligiuri, P.M., Jacobs, R.R. & Farr, J.L. (2000). The Attitudinal and Behavioral Openness Scale: Scale development and construct validation. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 24, 27-46. Council of Europe (2008). White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue. Strasbourg, France: Committee of Ministers, Council of Europe. Deardorff, D.K. (2006). Identification and assessment of intercultural competence as a student outcome of internationalization. Journal of Studies in International Education, 10, 241-266. INCA project (2004). http://www.incaproject.org/ Klak, T. & Martin, P. (2003). Do university-sponsored international cultural events help students to appreciate ‘‘difference’’? International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 27, 445–465. Olson, C.L. & Kroeger, K.R. (2001). Global competency and intercultural sensitivity. Journal of Studies in International Education, 5, 116-137. Pascarella, E.T., Edison, M., Nora, A., Hagedorn, L.S., & Terenzini, P.T. (1996). Influences on students ' openness to diversity and challenge in the first year of college. The Journal of Higher Education, 67, 174-195. Spitzberg, B.H. & Changnon, G. (2009). Conceptualizing intercultural competence. In D.K. Deardorff (Ed.), The SAGE Handbook of Intercultural Competence (pp. 2-52). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Straffon, D.A. (2003). Assessing the intercultural sensitivity of high school students attending an international school. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 27, 487-501. 5 Zhai, L. & Scheer, S.D. (2004). Global perspectives and attitudes toward cultural diversity among summer agriculture students at the Ohio State University. Journal of Agricultural Education, 45, 39-51. About the contributor Martyn Barrett is Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Surrey, UK. He is a developmental and social psychologist but has a strong commitment to multidisciplinary research, and he is currently working with political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, policy analysts and educationists. He works on processes of national and ethnic enculturation, the development of prejudice and stereotyping, the identifications and cultural practices of ethnic minority and mixed-heritage individuals, the development of the intercultural competences which are required for successful intercultural dialogue, and the development of political cognition, attitudes and active citizenship. He is currently leading an FP7 project funded by the European Commission entitled Processes Influencing Democratic Ownership and Participation (PIDOP), which is running from 2009-2012. He is also working as an expert advisor to the Council of Europe. He is Academic Director of the multidisciplinary Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism (CRONEM) at the University of Surrey, and an Academician of the Social Sciences. Contact: m.barrett@surrey.ac.uk URL: http://www.surrey.ac.uk/psychology/people/prof_martyn_barrett/