Intercultural Competence in education, counselling and psychotherapy

Abstract

The present era of globalization, interdependence and multicultural societies has brought about both opportunities and crises in educational institutions. Especially schools and families seem to be unable to cope with such revolutionary changes. The crises also concern all fields involved in maintaining social welfare, including counselling and psychotherapy. Within these fields, there is a growing need for Intercultural Competences at the cognitive, emotional and relational levels which endow teachers and counsellors with the ability to operate in linguistically and culturally complex contexts. However, despite the vast amount of international scholarship, the concept of 'Intercultural Education' and the term 'Intercultural Competences' are often misunderstood and require more precise definition. The present contribution intends to give further impulse to the discussion of Intercultural Competences and to offer concrete definitions that are applicable to the fields of education, counselling and psychotherapy. The article is based on a comprehensive review of literature on Intercultural Competence and an extensive empirical study carried out by the Centre for Intercultural Studies at the University of Verona. The study relies upon focus groups and semi-structured interviews in order to develop a theoretical model of Intercultural Competences with implications at the practical-operative, methodological and vocational levels. © 2014 © 2014 Taylor & Francis.