‘Intercultural competence’ as an intersubjective process: a reply to ‘essentialism’

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we problematise a competence-oriented reflective approach to intercultural education by drawing on four students’ reflective essays about their experiential learning experiences on an ‘Intercultural Competence’ (IC) module. Their reflections sometimes evidence much-vaunted IC attributes such as ‘tolerance’ and ‘empathy’, but often indicate individually-developed, non-teleologically based IC criteria. Furthermore, reflection was often painful and at times led to a ‘falling back on’ essentialist notions of culture. We suggest that rather than reject essentialism as a ‘simplistic’ starting point, it should be recognised as existing symbiotically with non-essentialist notions and could be used critically throughout intercultural learning.

在此文中，我们对四个学生基于在一门跨文化能力课程中的体验式学习经历所撰写的反思性论文进行分析，从而探讨以能力培养为主旨的反思式跨文化教育方法背后的问题。这些学生的反思有时指向广受推崇的跨文化特质（例如 ‘宽容心’ 和 ‘共情能力’ ），但更多地揭示了他们关于跨文化能力的个体（非目的论的）解读标准。此外，反思往往是痛苦的，并且有时导致对本质主义文化观的 ‘回归’ 。 我们认为，与其将本质主义文化观（作为 ‘肤浅简 单’ 的认知起点）彻底抛弃，我们应当看到本质主义文化观与非本质主义文化观之间的共生关系，并且在跨文化教学的整个过程中对其进行批判性运用。

KEYWORDS:

• Intercultural competence
• essentialism
• non-essentialism
• reflection
• experiential learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Vivien Xiaowei Zhou is Lecturer in Intercultural Communication in the Business School, Edinburgh Napier University, where she is Deputy Programme Leader for MSc Intercultural Business Communication (and with TESOL). Her research interests include Intercultural Communication and Education, Narrative Inquiry and Researching Multilingually.

Nick Pilcher is Lecturer and Programme Leader for the MSc in Intercultural Business Communication (and with TESOL) and teaches writing in academic subjects. He researches around language, education and qualitative methods. He has contributed to work published in journals such as Qualitative Research, Power and Education, The International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics and The European Journal of Engineering Education.

ORCID

Vivien Xiaowei Zhou http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4458-1236

Nick Pilcher http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5093-9345