Intercultural competence is a set of skills, including the ability to forge one’s own identity, both singular and multiple; to overcome cultural fears and prejudices; to recognize otherness, and to demonstrate openness, welcome, understanding, acceptance and inclusion. It includes the ability, in an encounter with a person from another culture, to feel one’s own roots without being uprooted, and without fear of losing or denying one’s roots. All these components of intercultural competence have become indispensable if we are to function happily in the growing diversity of our living environment.
Compare this with tolerance, which is a more limited attitude that does not extend to openness, welcome or inclusion, or even acceptance, and which is not enough to ensure societal peace.
Intercultural skills are based on human values of consideration, appreciation, sharing, solidarity, justice and empathy, which are shared across cultures. Their philosophical, spiritual and religious foundation is the unity of human beings beyond the particularities of their respective cultural identities. They enable us to cultivate relationships based on feelings of human unity, and to experience cultural diversity as a source of richness.
Working on them in class also helps develop students’ reflexive thinking: what would happen if no one accepted human otherness any more? How would those whose difference is rejected react? And how do we feel when otherness is recognized by all?
See also: Intercultural competence education, Transcultural competence
Quotes and references:
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“Intercultural competence is defined as the ability to communicate successfully with people from other cultures. This ability can be present from an early age or (depending on readiness and willingness) be developed methodically. The basis of successful intercultural communication is emotional competence and intercultural sensitivity. This concept is mainly used in the world of industry and finance.
Wikipedia
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Questioning one’s identity in relation to others is an integral part of the intercultural approach”.
Martine Abdallah-Pretceille, in Forming and educating in heterogeneous contexts, Anthropos, Paris, 2003.
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Intercultural competence is the ability to interpret the intentional (words, signs, gestures) and unconscious (body language) communicative acts and customs of a person from a culture different from our own. The emphasis is on empathy and communication.
Dr. Milton Bennett, Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity, 1993.