At the beginning of August 2025, I wrapped up teaching my 4 week intercultural summer course at Harvard with 31 students from numerous countries around the world. During our intense and transformative time together, we explored deep questions of identity, communication, and connection across difference. From our shared learning and lived experiences, the following key themes emerged, which I’d like to share with you:

• The urgency of resisting dehumanization — even when it begins with something as seemingly small as name-calling
• The power of recognizing the humanity in others: “This is a human being in front of me”
• The necessity of cultivating empathy regularly in ourselves
  The value of intergenerational collaboration and learning across generations
• The insight gained from seeking discomfort daily and staying curious
• The discipline of intentional reflection — the practice of regularly pausing to step back and reflect
• The importance of developing intercultural conflict resolution competencies
• The imperative to embrace our shared humanity
• The transformative effect of integrating intercultural micro-practices into daily life
• The significance of co-creating solutions with stakeholders, rather than imposing intercultural problem-framing and solutions from the outside

One core takeaway was the vision of living an intercultural lifestyle – an intercultural way of being — rooted in seeing and hearing others fully, approaching every person with cultural humility, and acknowledging that each of us carries unseen challenges. It’s a commitment to listening for understanding, to stepping beyond our comfort zones with courage and resilience, and to seeking connection and common ground. Most of all, it’s a way of life that honors the deep interconnectedness of all living beings.

The Process Model of Intercultural Competence (Deardorff, 2006, 2022) highlights a number of crucial elements that are essential to intercultural competence including openness, curiosity, empathy, reflection and listening for understanding as a key skill. These qualities will be indispensable in any environment and especially where trust and cooperation determine success or failure.

WHAT IS INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE? 

Successful intercultural interactions are at the heart of what international education is all about. So what is intercultural competence? What does it mean to interact successfully across differences? And what is necessary for us to get along together as humans on this one planet? The last question is the key question underlying the concept of intercultural competence, the focus of my research which led to the development of one of the first research-baased frameworks on intercultural competence. Through my research, I worked with leading intercultural scholars through a Delphi methodology in reaching consensus on a definition and essential elements comprising intercultural competence, resulting in the first grounded research-based framework, or model, of intercultural competence. The framework is comprised of the following:

Attitudes: Based on my study, several essential attitudes emerged, those of respect, openness, and curiosity. Openness and curiosity not only imply to move beyond one’s comfort zone and what is known but also to continue to learn more about others. In communicating respect to others, it is important to demonstrate that others are seen, heard, and valued, especially those who do not hold the same values. These attitudes are foundational to the further development of knowledge and skills needed for intercultural competence.

Knowledge: In regard to knowledge necessary for intercultural competence, intercultural scholars concurred on the following: cultural self-awareness (meaning the ways in which one’s culture has influenced one’s identity and worldview), culture-specific knowledge , deep cultural knowledge including understanding other world views, and sociolinguistic awareness. There are many definitions that have been used for the word “culture.” For purposes of this discussion, “culture” involves the values, beliefs and norms held by a group of people (with group being broadly defined – including religious groups, sports groups, etc.). Culture shapes how individuals communicate and behave, that is, how they interact with others based on expectations of the group(s) to which they belong. The one element agreed upon by all the intercultural scholars was the importance of understanding the world from others’ perspectives.

Skills: The skills that emerged from this study were ones that addressed the acquisition and processing of knowledge: observation, listening, evaluating, analyzing, interpreting, and relating. Here, listening for understanding is one of the most crucial skills – and one that we as humans don’t practice often enough.  Instead, we tend to listen to react (how will I respond?  What is MY opinion of what is being said) in which we are often more focused on ourselves in the interaction than on deeply listening with our heart to others. 

Internal Outcomes: These attitudes, knowledge, and skills ideally lead to an internal outcome that consists of flexibility, adaptability, an ethnorelative perspective and empathy. These are aspects that occur within the individual as a result of the acquired attitudes, knowledge and skills necessary for intercultural competence. Through these elements, individuals are able to see from others’ perspectives and to respond to them according to the way in which the other person desires to be treated. Individuals may reach this outcome in varying degrees of success, depending on their knowledge and experience of the specific context.  

External Outcomes: The summation of the attitudes, knowledge and skills, as well as the internal outcomes, are demonstrated through the behavior and communication of the individual, which become the visible outcomes of intercultural competence experienced by others. This then becomes the summary definition of the intercultural scholars involved in the initial Delphi study, that intercultural competence is “the effective and appropriate behavior and communication in intercultural situations, ” more recently updated to “effective and appropriate behaviour and communication across difference” – whatever those differences may be including gender, generation, religion, language, ethnicity, class, and so on.  However, it is important to understand that this definition is predicated on the elements highlighted in this essay. It is also important to understand the implications of “effective” and “appropriate” behavior and communication: Effectiveness can be determined by the individual while the appropriateness can only be determined by the other person – with appropriateness being directly related to cultural sensitivity and the adherence to cultural norms of that person.

These elements provide a framework, which moves from an individual focus to a relational focus as part of the process to further guide efforts in developing intercultural competence in ourselves, in our students, and with those with whom we work and interact. 

Discussion of Intercultural Competence Framework

This framework illustrates that it is possible for an individual to have the requisite attitudes and be minimally effective and appropriate in behavior and/or communication, even without further knowledge or skills. Adding the necessary knowledge and skills may ensure that an individual can be more effective and appropriate in one’s intercultural interactions. With the added flexibility, adaptability, and empathy, one can be even more effective and appropriate in intercultural interactions across difference. 

This framework also illustrates that intercultural competence is a process – a lifelong process – there is no one point at which an individual becomes completely interculturally competent. Thus, it is important to pay as much attention to the development process – of how one acquires the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes – as one does to the actual aspects of intercultural competence and as such, critical reflection becomes a powerful tool in the process of intercultural competence development.

It is interesting to note that the intercultural scholars in this study could not agree on the role of language in intercultural competence development, citing that language alone does not ensure one’s competency in interacting with others. Thus, language is a necessary but not sufficient skill for intercultural competence. Language, however, can be a noted vehicle through which to understand others worldviews, which is crucial to intercultural competence development.

Intercultural competence unfortunately does not “just happen” for most; instead, it must be intentionally addressed and practiced regularly- even daily. Intentionally addressing intercultural competence development at the post-secondary level through programs, orientations, experiences, and courses – for both our domestic and international students – is essential if we are to graduate global-ready students, recognizing that one course, workshop or experience will not make someone interculturally competent. Having a framework of intercultural competence such as the one discussed in this essay can help guide our efforts in ensuring a more comprehensive, integrated approach throughout students’ formal education. 

Implications for International Educators

What are some applications of this intercultural competence framework for international educators? Since intercultural competence is not a naturally occurring phenomenon, we must be intentional about addressing this at our institutions- through curricular and co-curricular efforts. In utilizing such a framework in our orientations and intercultural programming, our efforts toward developing intercultural competence in our students can be included in a more comprehensive, integrated approach instead of through random, ad-hoc approaches that often occur at our institutions. It is also important that we assess our efforts – both to improve what we are doing to develop intercultural competence among students (which is program evaluation) and to also provide meaningful feedback to students themselves that could aid them on their intercultural journey (which is student outcomes assessment). Intercultural competence assessment is complex but doable, and absolutely essential in moving the field of international education toward a greater understanding of intercultural competence development. It is important to note that quite a few research studies have already been done in this area of student outcomes assessment.  What is important to remember is that rigorous intercultural competence assessment must involve a multi-method, multi-perspective approach – beyond one assessment tool/survey – and that current research is indicating the importance of focusing more on formative assessment (learning during the experience) than on summative assessment (done only at the end of an experience), with students are partners so that assessment is something done WITH them and not TO them. 

Other questions for us to consider in applying this framework to our work: How interculturally competent are we as international educators and what can we do to increase our own development in this area? How can we incorporate the PROCESS (reflection, mindfulness) of intercultural competence development into our programs? Given that this framework represents a more US-centric perspective of intercultural competence, how do perspectives of intercultural competence  beyond North America and Europe impact our work? What are the implications of the intercultural competence/global citizenship nexus? How can we integrate assessment of intercultural competence throughout our programs? And beyond international education, what are the broader implications and contexts of intercultural competence development? As we continually search for ways to get along together as human beings sharing this one planet, the need to transcend boundaries, to bridge and transform our differences, to be in relationship with one another, to join in the oneness of our humanity while accepting our differences – these needs will continue to drive us as we seek to overcome differences that divide us. In the end, intercultural competence is about our relationships with each other and ultimately, our very survival as humankind, as we work together to address the global challenges that confront us in this century.

*Adapted from several previously published pieces including a piece published recently in the monthly newsletter of the World Council on Intercultural and Global Competence, a global nonprofit with free membership (Join – www.iccglobal.org)

Photo by Luis Desiro on Unsplash