Technologies for improving teacher’s cross-cultural literacy

Abstract

The general trends of modern education include the desire to integrate and universalize social relations. The process leads to the intensity of intercultural interaction between representatives of different cultural communities. In modern Russia, intercultural contacts are expanding; this aspect emphasizes the importance of achieving mutual understanding among people of different cultures. Education is not able to overcome the problems confronting society but it can make a significant contribution to the harmonization of a multicultural society. Education develops and modernizes technologies and forms of evolution and socialization of the process of students’ intercultural relations. Education can also affect the development of tolerance of students involved in the educational process and respect for the cultural diversity of society. It can help a person understand his own culture and the culture of other nations, to acquire the skills of an adequate assessment and understanding of both individuals and cultural diversity in general. Being the most important part of a culture, education is designed to ensure the entry of a person into a culture through the introduction of an individual to the national values of his people. Similar to culture, education cannot be limited by the framework of native cultural values; it should create conditions not only for enriching a person with human values but also for understanding the significance of this diversity. Multiculture-focused education should become an inseparable part of general education, since with the multinational population, the saturation of interpersonal relations takes place in a multiethnic, multicultural environment. Provided that a person learns, works, rests in the conditions of a multiculture-focused environment, the need for communication with representatives of different cultural communities is formed, and, as a result, the cross-cultural literacy of an individual is raised.