Five Strategies for Teaching Intercultural Learning

For international educators whose jobs include teaching or training, intercultural competence is necessary for preparing students for success in a multicultural, global society. When students better understand the attitudes, influences, and values driving their own beliefs and behaviors, they can spark conversations about different cultures without resorting to stereotypes or prejudice.

Several tried-and-true teaching strategies can help educators meet these objectives and effect intercultural learning, as well as assess and measure success.

1. Build trust.

Discussions around an individual’s identity, assumptions, and values are intensely personal and often evoke emotional reactions. International educators should build trust within the classroom by setting a tone that encourages students to listen to and support each other.

“Students are recognizing [that there are] all these forces on who they are, how that places them in the world, how others treat them, and how they interact with the world around them,” says Katherine Punteney, EdD, professor and founder of the MA in international education management program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. “This is inherently personal, and it can be threatening to be vulnerable by discussing their identities.”

One way to build trust, Punteney says, is to give students choices in how they engage, which could include offering a choice of research or presentation topics and allowing students to express themselves in a variety of ways—from essays and art projects to videos and more. And international educators should also allow students to decide for themselves what personal information they feel comfortable sharing.

2. Encourage