Description of Intercultural Competence

Definition of Intercultural Competence

Monash.edu gives a first general definition of intercultural competence:

"lntercultural competence is the ability to function effectively across cultures, to think and act appropriately, and to communicate and work with people from different cultural backgrounds – at home or abroad. Intercultural competence is a valuable asset in an increasingly globalised world where we are more likely to interact with people from different cultures and countries who have been shaped by different values, beliefs and experiences.

Intercultural competence is part of a family of concepts including global competence, graduate attributes, employability skills, global citizenship, education for sustainable development and global employability. Core to all these concepts is recognition of globalisation as a force for change in all aspects of the contemporary world, and the importance for graduates to be able to engage and act globally."

Intercultural competence goes hand in hand with communication skills.

Based on "Intercultural Competence" by Jürgen Bolten (2012) Intercultural Competence can be described with the following aspects:

 

 

 

Concept of Culture and Perspective on Culture

In accordance with the expanded concept of culture, we understand cultures as living worlds that people have created and are constantly creating anew through their actions. These lifeworlds exist without standards of evaluation. They are not based on a selection of the beautiful, the good and the true, but encompass all expressions of life of those who have contributed and are contributing to their existence. This also includes religion, ethics, law, technology, educational systems and all other material and immaterial products. Likewise, they interact with processes of the natural environment.

Cultures are historically to a large extent the result of intercultural processes, which include in particular migratory movements, trade relations and colonisation. Consequently, there is a greater or lesser degree of overlap between cultures. Cultures are blurred at their edges, "fuzzy," and cannot be represented as homogeneous units in the sense of containers.

How cultures are perceived and described always depends on the point of view and the interests of the person describing them - among other things, also on how strongly he or she "zooms in" on the subject area. A close-up perspective will be able to provide much more detailed information, while a macro perspective is more for orientation, but can also be prone to stereotypes.

Cultures essentially represent products of millennia of communication processes. Normality, plausibility and meaningfulness are the crucial elements to be able to recognise a lifeworld as "one's own". They are permanently communicatively determined by the members of a culture. This can be done in a constant way by using what has already been communicated in an unchanged form, such as laws and interpretations of laws, manners, curricula or even technical tools. But it can also be done with intentions of change, by questioning what already exists, communicating new possible solutions, and thus contributing to at least minimal changes in what is "normal" or "plausible".

Intercultures are to be understood dynamically as meetings of members of different cultures. In this respect, they have a processual rather than a spatial character. Intercultures do not represent syntheses, but potentials for synergy. Whether and in what way synergies unfold is largely situation-dependent and thus unpredictable.

Interculturality - Perception and Expectations

Perception takes place essentially as a hypothesis-guided search process. The expectations or hypotheses that are built up during this search process are based on already existing and individually very different experiences and knowledge. New  knowledge and experiences are compared with already existing patterns and assigned to them. If experiences and expectations do not match, this leads under the premise "There should be a meaning!" either to an "unfair" assignment of the experience to an only conditionally suitable expectation pattern or (in the positive case) to a correction, differentiation and expansion of the expectation pattern.

The more diverse our experiences are, the more open and thus flexible must be the patterns with which we act. If, on the other hand, we have only a few (and always the same) experiences, the patterns with which we interpret and construct realities harden. Our possibilities of interpretation are then smaller, so that we tend either not to tolerate the unknown at all or to classify it "stereotypically" or in a relatively fixed pattern network.

The core of cultural knowledge stocks is often handed down over centuries as relatively fixed pattern networks - analogous to the lower layers of a sand mountain. They have proven themselves again and again as tools for interpretation and problem solving in historically progressing life-world contexts and therefore appear plausible. Since transmission processes take place communicatively, cultural knowledge stocks are at the same time a product of communication and a basis for communication. They thus essentially shape the communication, thinking and action style of those who are socialised in this mediation context. The more restricted and closed this context of mediation is (e.g. due to lack of media diversity, lack of travel opportunities, strict formation of canons), the greater is the collective indifference and binding nature of the common knowledge stock. Conversely, the more diverse the possibilities of experience of the individual in a transmission process (in that facts can be thematised and questioned), the greater the individual deviations from the underlying cultural knowledge stock and the correspondingly lower is the binding nature of a "common" cultural style.

Self-, Other- and Meta-Images, and Multiculturalism

Self-, Other- and Meta-Images

Something seems strange to us when it contradicts normality expectations, when it is not plausible, when it "makes no sense" (to us) and when routine actions are no longer possible "in the usual way".

Self-, other-, and meta-images are mutually dependent. Judgments, opinions and attitudes towards others are therefore neither "objective" nor unchangeable, but are always formulated in relation to the person making the judgment.

The use of stereotypes and prejudices cannot be avoided, especially in intercultural contexts, because a correspondingly differentiated view of the world cannot be achieved. On the one hand, the spectrum of our possibilities to gain experience is necessarily limited, on the other hand, everyday communication, in order to function at all, will always depend on reducing complexity and using "simple" images for orientation purposes.

Successful integration, or better: networking, only works on the basis of the recognition of heterogeneity. Striving for homogeneity - from whatever side - provokes dangers of identity surrender.

Multiculturalism

The spectrum within which the term "multiculturalism" is used in public is broad and essentially characterised by the degree of interculturation that takes place or is permitted between the individual lifeworlds. The greater the density of interaction, the more pronounced the interculturality of the respective "multiculturalism".

Integration should not be carried out by the receiving culture, but is conceivable as a mutual process of negotiating margins of acceptance, in which coexistence is created in this way. The negotiation itself is a synergetic process, which should accordingly be moderated rather than controlled.

Mutual respect for the autonomy of the partners prevents demands for homogeneity and consensus, which ultimately cannot be met by any of the participants. The goal should be to realise a "unity in the face of diversity" in the sense of accepting a pluralistic, permanently evolving world of values.