Exploring Intercultural Learning

Originally published March 2024

Instructors can adopt ways to recognize and embrace the diversity of students in their classes and foster the development of intercultural competencies. Intercultural competencies are a “set of cognitive, affective, and behavioral skills and characteristics that support effective and appropriate interaction in a variety of cultural contexts”(Bennett 2009). Providing students with opportunities for reflection, critical thinking, and perspective taking is key to developing their openness, curiosity, and empathy for other cultures and worldviews (Deardorff 2011; AACU 2009).

Faculty are invited to consider the following strategies that can support students in developing their intercultural competencies:

1. Create course learning outcomes on intercultural competencies (Page 2021), such as:

• applying diverse cultural perspectives to concrete examples or case studies; 
• identifying skills needed for successful communication in a diverse team;
• describing impacts of policies or medical paradigms on diverse communities.

2. Incorporate activities that allow students to recognize their own social, cultural, and professional identities, grow knowledge of diverse scholars to challenge disciplinary gatekeeping and citational practices, and appreciate alternative perspectives through group work, for example:

• creating group activities that diversify course materials and identify knowledge and values from Indigenous and non-Western worldviews and scholars;
• developing self- and social awareness using activities like a Social Identity Wheel;
• encouraging students to foster trust during groupwork by discussing backgrounds and strengths to achieve success;
• facilitating discussions that encourage students to examine diversity in STEM disciplines to develop their scientific identity along with their social identities (Explore).

3. Create assessments to facilitate perspective taking, reflect on cultural awareness, or that validate diverse linguistic voices and styles in expressions of learning, for example:

• developing a reflection assignment that invites students to observe and analyze cultural representation on campus;
• considering anti-racist approaches in designing writing assignments;
• assigning a Complexity Paper, which invites students to research why a topic is complex rather than researching to argue and confirm a position.

Faculty seeking additional entry points to assess their own thinking, attitudes, and strategies as both educators and life-long learners, can reflect on the components of Dimitrov and Haque’s Intercultural Teaching Framework; watch Laurier’s panel discussion on Internationalism and Interculturalism in teaching, or enroll in Laurier International’s Intercultural Certificate.

Watch - In conversation with Anne-marie Joy Henry: Helping Students Choose Curiosity

Anne-marie Joy Henry from Laurier International shares the travels that have taken her across Canada and around the globe. These foundational intercultural experiences deeply inform her approach in her current role at Laurier, where she engages students in rich discussions of complex issues in the classroom and supports their preparation for international study. Anne-marie shares strategies she uses to guide conversations and cultivate a more open, insightful, and reflective educational journey that emphasizes the transformative power of curiosity and diversity. Watch the conversation >>

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