Intercultural Competence: The Challenge for Contemporary Teaching

What we ask of our schools verges on the paradoxical: they are to transmit a culture capable of inducing a disparate set of individuals to affiliate themselves to a shared existence and teach them to recognise, respect and protect each person’s uniqueness. Yet they are also to inculcate in the same individuals a single system of thought and co-existence, that of democracy. The school thus lies at the heart of a painstaking, complex process of individual and collective, and cultural and political transformation. This chapter focuses on the role played by pre-school and primary teachers in addressing the challenge faced by contemporary societies, that of assuming an intercultural habitus that allows one individual or group to co-exist with others in a multi-ethnic, global society. From this perspective, it is essential that teachers acquire intercultural competences. Both words in this latter concept (competence and intercultural) are polysemantic, and neither has been defined entirely consistently in the literature. Having first clarified what we mean by these constructs, we consider the question of teacher preparation and training. It is clear that schools and classrooms themselves are key environments for learning and acquiring such competences, but a number of questions remain that faced by all teachers, and indeed by all school systems and societies: have the teachers themselves adopted an intercultural mindset? Do they have the competences they need to make their classes an inclusive environment in which every student enjoys equality of opportunity, and each child is acknowledged and supported? Do they know how to develop intercultural competences among learners? Research on these issues has revealed a sector that is struggling with the challenges it faces, with teachers stumbling in the face of a task of increasing complexity. Yet, the question remains: what intercultural competences do pre-school and primary teachers actually require? Drawing on a phenomenological study, this essay proposes a suitable model.