Tools for Change—Dynamic and Realistic Intercultural Competences

Abstract

The knotty concept of intercultural competence is introduced in this chapter. The author calls for a dynamic defi nition of the concept that questions universal and objective assumptions about it. The most popular models of intercultural competence are reviewed and decon-structed. The author then proposes to concentrate on what he calls a realistic approach to intercultural competences (in the plural form) that could allow practitioners, researchers, and decision makers to revise their use of the concept. The chapter ends on observations of teachers' intercultural competence made by student teachers who were trained to 'do' intercultural competences in the proposed way when they did their practicums. This section proposes to reconstruct interculturality after having decon-structed it in the previous sections. A series of conceptual and meth-odological tools are defi ned and illustrated with examples. With these tools, a new sense of interculturality can be achieved in education. The central but problematic concept of intercultural competence is dealt with. Following a critical review of the concept and demonstrating how it has contributed to the problems presented in the previous sections, the idea of intercultural dynamics is introduced as an alternative to the problematic concept of intercultural competence. Components of the dynamics are exemplifi ed.