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How Schools Can Promote the Intercultural Competence of Young People
Article in European Psychologist · January 2018
DOI: 10.1027/1016-9040/a000308
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Special Issue: Youth and Migration: What Promotes and What Challenges Their Integration?
Original Articles and Reviews
How Schools Can Promote the
Intercultural Competence of
Young People
Martyn Barrett
School of Psychology, University of Surrey, UK
Abstract: This paper reviews existing evidence on how the intercultural competence of young people can be promoted by schools. It begins by
examining the concept of intercultural competence, and the values, attitudes, skills, knowledge, and understanding that together comprise
this competence. The various actions that can be taken by schools to promote the intercultural competence of young people are then reviewed.
These actions include: encouraging intercultural friendships; organizing periods of study abroad; arranging for students to have Internet-based
intercultural contact; setting up school-community links and partnerships; encouraging and supporting students’ critical reflection on their
intercultural experiences and on their own cultural affiliations; using pedagogical approaches such as cooperative learning and project-based
learning; using pedagogical activities that enhance the development of some of the specific components of intercultural competence (such as
role plays and simulations, the analysis of texts, films, and plays, and ethnographic tasks); using a culturally inclusive curriculum; and
adopting a whole school approach to valuing diversity and human rights. It is argued that, while there is evidence for the effectiveness of all
these various actions, further evaluation studies using more robust methods are still required. Additional research is also required to identify
the circumstances under which each form of action is most effective and the subgroups of young people who benefit the most from each
action.
Keywords: intercultural competence, intercultural encounters, school education, educational interventions, prejudice
This paper reviews existing evidence on how the intercultural competence of young people can be promoted by
schools. The promotion of intercultural competence is
crucial for tackling some of the most profound challenges
that European societies currently face. These challenges
include increases in intolerance, prejudice, and discrimination toward minority ethnic and religious groups, which are
higher now in Europe than at any time in the past 50 years
(European Commission, 2014; FRA, 2015). There have also
been significant increases in hate crimes and violence
against minority groups in recent years, in part due to higher
levels of violent attacks on religious minorities including
both Muslims and Jews and the harassment of women
over their religious clothing (Pew Research Centre, 2014).
In addition, far-right political parties in Europe, which openly
espouse Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, xenophobic, and racist
rhetoric and policies, have made considerable gains in recent
national elections as well as in elections for the European
Parliament (Human Rights First, 2015).
These phenomena are deeply disturbing for anyone
who cares about the peaceful coexistence of cultural groups
Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing
and about respect for the dignity and rights of all human
beings. Action is urgently required to tackle these challenges. One action which may be taken is to harness school
systems to boost young people’s commitment to respect
and tolerance for people from other national, ethnic, and
religious groups. There is very good evidence that educational interventions can be used with children and adolescents ranging in age from 5 to 18 years to counter racial,
ethnic, and national prejudice and intolerance (Aboud &
Levy, 2000; Paluck & Green, 2009; Pfeifer, Spears Brown,
& Juvonen, 2007). The present paper describes the various
ways in which schools can act not only to reduce students’
prejudice but also to boost their intercultural competence
more generally. In addition, this paper provides a critical
commentary on the research that has explored the effectiveness of these methods.
An important qualification is necessary at the outset,
however. The promotion of students’ intercultural competence is only one of many actions that needs to be taken
if the societal challenges noted above are to be tackled.
In addition to action at the level of the individual, action
European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 93–104
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M. Barrett, How Schools Can Promote the Intercultural Competence of Young People
is required at the level of institutional structures and procedures (Barrett, 2013a; Council of Europe, 2008, 2011). For
example, there needs to be legislation to combat all
manifestations of discrimination, hatred and intolerance,
and public information campaigns about the societal and
personal consequences of intolerance and hatred. All staff
working for public authorities, public services, and educational and civil society organizations should be trained in
intercultural issues (including teachers, a point which will
be revisited in the final section of this paper), and measures
to promote intercultural dialog, interaction, and exchanges
in the community and in the workplace. Indeed, Barrett
(2013a) lists 14 distinct policy actions that should be taken
by public authorities to tackle the problems of intolerance,
prejudice, discrimination, and hatred. One of the policy
actions identified is harnessing the formal education system
to ensure that all school leavers are properly equipped with
intercultural competence. It is this specific action that the
current paper addresses.
What Is Intercultural Competence?
For the purposes of the present paper, intercultural
competence is defined as the set of values, attitudes,
skills, knowledge, and understanding that are needed for
understanding and respecting people who are perceived
to be culturally different from oneself, for interacting and
communicating effectively and appropriately with such
people, and for establishing positive and constructive relationships with such people.
This definition is rooted in a particular perspective on the
nature of culture that construes cultural groups as being
internally heterogeneous (Barrett, 2013b, 2016; Barrett,
Byram, Lázár, Mompoint-Gaillard, & Philippou, 2013). This
heterogeneity arises because the members of cultural
groups adopt a range of diverse beliefs and practices, and
because the core beliefs and practices that are most typically associated with a group constantly change and evolve
over time, with different members varying in their uptake
and utilization of newly emerging cultural beliefs and practices. Moreover, all individuals belong to multiple groups
and have multiple cultural affiliations and identities (e.g.,
ethnic, religious, linguistic, national, occupational, generational, and familial). Because each person participates in a
different constellation of cultures, the way in which they
relate to any one culture depends, at least in part, on the
other cultures to which they also belong. In other words,
cultural affiliations intersect, and individuals occupy unique
cultural positionings. This is a further reason why all
cultural groups are internally heterogeneous.
People’s cultural affiliations are fluid and dynamic, with
the subjective salience of cultural identities fluctuating as
European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 93–104
individuals move from one situation to another, with different affiliations – or different constellations of intersecting
affiliations – being highlighted depending on the particular
social context encountered. Fluctuations in the salience of
cultural affiliations are also linked to the changes that occur
to people’s interests, needs, goals, and expectations as they
move across situations and through time (Baumann, 1996;
Onorato & Turner, 2004).
Many human interactions in everyday life take place at
the interpersonal level, with cultural differences playing a
minimal role. However, sometimes cultural differences
become salient. There are several factors that can prompt
an individual to shift their frame of reference from the
interpersonal to the intercultural (Ellemers, 2012; Oakes,
Haslam, & Turner, 1994). This shift typically takes place
when one or more of the following conditions apply:
When there are perceptually salient cultural signs,
emblems, or practices present that serve to elicit the
cultural category in the mind of the individual.
When cultural categories are frequently used by the
individual to think about other people, so that these
categories are primed and are readily accessed by that
individual when he or she interacts with, or perceives,
other people.
When cultural categories help the individual to make
sense of the pattern of similarities and differences
between the people who are present within a situation
When cultural categories help the individual to make
sense of why another person is behaving in the way
that they are.
When the individual’s own cultural affiliations are
experienced as being disadvantaged, devalued, discriminated against, or threatened in some other way
by the cultural group to which the other person is perceived as belonging.
In situations where other people are perceived as members
of another cultural group rather than as individuals, the self
is then also categorized as a cultural group member rather
than in purely individual terms, with intergroup comparisons being made (Oakes et al., 1994). These comparisons
are often automatic and implicit rather than conscious
and explicit.
The crucial point is that in an intercultural situation, one
does not respond to the other person on the basis of their
own individual characteristics, but on the basis of their affiliation to another culture or set of cultures. Intercultural situations, identified in this way, can involve people from
different countries, people from different regional, linguistic, ethnic, or faith backgrounds, or people who differ from
each other because of their lifestyle, gender, social class,
occupation, or sexual orientation. When an interpersonal situation becomes an intercultural situation, because
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M. Barrett, How Schools Can Promote the Intercultural Competence of Young People
cultural differences have been perceived and made salient
either by the situation or by the individual’s own psychological orientation or cultural positioning, these are the conditions under which intercultural competence becomes
relevant.
Hence the definition of intercultural competence that
was given earlier – it is the set of values, attitudes, skills,
knowledge, and understanding that are required for understanding and respecting those who are perceived to be
culturally different from oneself, for interacting and
communicating effectively and appropriately with them,
and for establishing positive and constructive relationships
with them. Intercultural competence is therefore a broader
construct than either tolerance or respect.
As far as children are concerned, research has revealed
that they start to classify people into racial and ethnic
groups from as early as 3 or 4 years of age, with intergroup
comparisons and attitudes emerging immediately thereafter (Barrett & Buchanan-Barrow, 2011); likewise, the classification of people into national groups, along with national
group comparisons and attitudes, begins between 3 and
5 years of age (Barrett, 2007). Thus, by the time that
children start school, some of the group memberships that
are key to making racial, ethnic, and national intergroup
comparisons are already salient to them. Hence, the preceding considerations concerning the nature of intercultural
situations apply not only to adults but also to children from
the time that they begin to attend school.
The Components of Intercultural
Competence
As the preceding definition of intercultural competence
implies, this competence consists of many psychological
components. Numerous theoretical models of these components have been proposed over the years. A useful overview
of the models is provided by Spitzberg and Changnon
(2009). Despite the range of available models, there is
significant consensus among researchers concerning the
main components of intercultural competence. This conclusion emerged clearly from a study by Deardorff (2006),
who used a survey to collect the views of scholars of intercultural competence. Deardorff found that 80% or more of
the respondents agreed about 15 of the main components of
intercultural competence.
More recently, Barrett (2016) conducted an audit and
analysis of 48 models of intercultural competence as part
of a larger audit of models of both intercultural and democratic competence. A set of principled criteria was used to
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identify the core components contained across the models,
and these components were used to construct a new
integrative conceptual framework. This framework contains
all of the components identified by Deardorff but organized
in a more systematic manner, as well as additional components not identified by her study. An initial draft of the
framework was submitted to an international consultation
with academic experts, educational practitioners, and
educational policymakers, and the framework received
strong endorsement in the consultation. This framework
proposes that intercultural competence consists of the
following 14 components1:
Values
Valuing human dignity and human rights.
Valuing cultural diversity.
Attitudes
Openness to cultural otherness and to other beliefs,
worldviews, and practices.
Respect for other people and for other beliefs, worldviews, and practices.
Self-efficacy.
Tolerance of ambiguity.
Skills
Analytical and critical thinking skills.
Skills of listening and observing.
Empathy (in particular, cognitive and affective perspective-taking skills).
Flexibility and adaptability.
Linguistic, communicative, and plurilingual skills.
Knowledge and critical understanding
Knowledge and critical understanding of the self.
Knowledge and critical understanding of language and
communication.
Knowledge and critical understanding of culture,
cultures, and religions.
Each of these components is described and explained in
full in Barrett (2016). The framework proposes that an
interculturally competent individual is someone who is
able to mobilize, orchestrate, and deploy subsets of these
components in a dynamic, fluid, and adaptive manner in
order to meet the fluctuating demands, challenges, and
opportunities of intercultural situations. It is clear from
the list of components that some of them (e.g., openness
and empathy) may be targeted from a relatively early age
at preschool and primary school, whereas others are more
These 14 components are extracted from a longer list of 20 components that covers not only intercultural competence but also democratic
competence. The other six components (which include, e.g., civic-mindedness and valuing democracy and the rule of law) have greater relevance
to democratic rather than intercultural competence and are therefore omitted here. See Barrett (2016) for further details.
Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing
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M. Barrett, How Schools Can Promote the Intercultural Competence of Young People
Table 1. A list of the actions that schools can take to promote the intercultural competence of students
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Actions based on intergroup contact
Encouraging intercultural friendships
Organizing periods of study abroad
Arranging for students to have Internet-based intercultural contact
Setting up school-community links and partnerships, and implementing service learning projects
Actions based on pedagogical approaches
Supporting students’ critical reflection on their intercultural experiences and on their own cultural affiliations
Using pedagogical approaches such as cooperative learning and project-based learning
Using other pedagogical activities to enhance the development of specific components of intercultural competence (e.g., activities
emphasizing multiple perspectives, role plays and simulations, the analysis of texts, films, and plays, and ethnographic tasks)
Actions based on school institutional policies
Using a culturally inclusive curriculum
Adopting a whole school approach to valuing diversity and human rights
suitable for targeting in upper secondary school or even in
higher education (e.g., knowledge and critical understanding of culture). As such, promoting intercultural competence is a task that applies across all levels of formal
education, from preschool through primary and secondary
education to higher education.
From the point of view of the present review, the
important point to note is that educational practices and
experiences that enable young people to develop and use
one or more of these 14 components within intercultural
contexts are those that can be used to promote intercultural
competence. By boosting students’ mastery of these components, intercultural competence itself is boosted. Some of
the main actions that can be taken by schools to promote
students’ intercultural competence, and to reduce their
intercultural prejudices, are listed in Table 1, where they
have been categorized according to whether they are actions
based on intergroup contact, actions based on pedagogical
approaches, or actions based on school institutional policies.
The review follows this tripartite categorization.
Actions That May Be Taken by
Schools to Promote the Intercultural
Competence of Young People
Actions Based on Intergroup Contact
Encouraging Intercultural Friendships
It is now well established that encouraging students to
form intercultural friendships is an effective method for
reducing intercultural prejudice. The evidence comes from
extensive research into the contact hypothesis (Allport,
1954; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). This hypothesis proposes
European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 93–104
that intergroup contact can reduce prejudice toward people
from other cultural groups, and that four contact conditions
maximize this effect:
The contact should take place between people who
perceive themselves to be of equal status within the
contact situation.
The contact should be sufficiently prolonged and
close that it has the potential to allow meaningful
relationships or friendships to develop between the
participants.
The contact should involve cooperation on joint
activities that are aimed at achieving common goals
(rather than competition between groups).
The contact should be backed by an explicit framework
of support by those in authority or by social institutions.
There is now a wide range of robust evidence which indicates that contact under these four conditions does indeed
lead to the reduction of prejudice, not just in adults but also
in children, adolescents, and college students (Pettigrew &
Tropp, 2006).
These conditions mean that, in the school context, simply
bringing students from different cultural backgrounds into
contact with one another may not be sufficient for reducing
prejudice. Instead, students who have different cultural
affiliations need to cooperate within the classroom on tasks
where they have common goals (e.g., through cooperative
learning tasks where they are required to collaborate
together – see below for further discussion of cooperative
learning), and they need to see themselves as having equal
status within the collaborative situation (e.g., they should
have an equal opportunity to express their views, make
suggestions, and influence group decisions). The school
itself should also provide explicit policies expressing its
support for intergroup contact and friendships, and class
teachers should explicitly endorse these policies.
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M. Barrett, How Schools Can Promote the Intercultural Competence of Young People
Interestingly, there is evidence that not only direct contact
but also indirect contact can reduce prejudice. Three forms
of indirect contact that have been investigated are extended
contact (i.e., when a fellow ingroup member is friendly with
an outgroup member), vicarious contact (i.e., observing an
ingroup member interacting with an outgroup member),
and imagined contact (i.e., imagining oneself interacting
with an outgroup member), all of which have been found
to be effective in reducing prejudice in adults (Dovidio,
Eller, & Hewstone, 2011). There is considerable potential
here to develop classroom interventions based on these
forms of indirect contact (Turner & Cameron, 2016).
For example, one intervention based on extended
contact developed by Cameron, Rutland, Brown, and
Douch (2006) involved reading a series of stories once a
week over a 6-week period to 5- to 11-year-old children.
In the stories, peers from the children’s own ingroup
were described as having close friendships with a refugee
child. Compared to controls, this intervention led to significantly more positive attitudes toward refugee children.
Another intervention using imagined contact developed
by Stathi, Cameron, Hartley, and Bradford (2014) required
7- to 9-year-old children to create three stories using
pictures in which they had to imagine that they were interacting positively in multiple contexts with a same-age peer
belonging to another cultural group. The intervention
significantly improved the children’s outgroup attitudes
compared to controls, and made them more willing to have
contact with outgroup members in the future. Imagined
contact has also been found to be successful for improving
outgroup attitudes in 16- to 17-year olds (Turner, West, &
Christie, 2013).
Organizing Periods of Study Abroad
As an alternative to intercultural contact within the classroom (which is not always possible when schools are
ethnically homogeneous), students can encounter people
from other cultural groups in various other ways. One
way is to spend a period of time studying abroad. Several
studies (e.g., Anquetil, 2006; Vande Berg, 2009) have
shown that studying abroad does not always enhance
students’ intercultural competence; indeed, under some
conditions, studying abroad can actually be a deeply
distressing, stressful, and unsettling experience (Ayano,
2006). However, when students are provided with appropriate preparation and support, the experience can result
in significant gains in intercultural competence.
This finding emerges clearly from a series of studies
evaluating the impact of the AFS study abroad program.2
On this program, high school students spend 10 months
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living and studying abroad. Crucially, AFS provides a highly
structured experience. Preparation activities include predeparture orientations, student research into the host country,
and the provision of advice on language learning and on
forming friendships in the host country. During the period
of study abroad, students also receive several host country
orientations. Students are only placed with suitable host
families and host schools, and they also have access to a
local liaison volunteer.
Evaluation studies (AFS, 2012; Hammer, 2004; Hansel,
2008a, 2008b) show that, compared to controls, high
school students who have participated in the AFS program
have higher levels of intercultural competence, experience
less anxiety when interacting with people from other
cultures after returning home, and have more friendships
with people from other cultures. They also, not unexpectedly, have greater knowledge of the host country and
greater fluency in the language of the host country. Importantly, students maintain these advantages 20–25 years
later: compared to controls, after this period of time, they
are still more likely to speak at least one other language
fluently, to have friends from other cultures, to be more
comfortable in different cultural settings, and to seek jobs
that involve contact with other cultures. They are also more
likely to encourage their own children to meet people from
other cultures and study abroad, suggesting that communication and interaction with people from other cultures has
become a core part of their value system.
Arranging for Students to Have Internet-Based
Intercultural Contact
Not all school students are able to take advantage of study
abroad schemes. The financial costs of student mobility, in
particular, can be a significant inhibitor of participation.
However, even in the case of students who attend ethnically homogeneous schools and whose families cannot
afford to send them on a lengthy period of study abroad,
there are other actions that schools can take to ensure that
their students have suitable intercultural experiences and
contact.
Creative use of the Internet is one such action (Barrett,
Byram, Lázár, et al., 2013; Fisher, Evans, & Esch, 2004).
The Internet provides students with an almost unlimited
opportunity to access information about other cultures, to
communicate with students from those cultures, and to
exchange views and perspectives with diverse people
whom they might otherwise never meet or interact with
in person. For example, online video conferencing and
social media can be used for collaborative projects between
students in different countries, in which the students
AFS (originally the American Field Service) is an international organization that operates in over 80 countries and provides study abroad
opportunities for over 13,000 students and teachers annually.
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M. Barrett, How Schools Can Promote the Intercultural Competence of Young People
present themselves, interview each other, discuss issues,
and complete tasks designed by their teachers. If communication becomes difficult or breaks down, there is the opportunity for discussions with the teacher about what went
wrong, what unintended messages might have damaged
the communication, and how future communications can
be conducted in a more interculturally sensitive manner.
Online activities using social media could therefore enable
students to develop, inter alia, openness, listening skills,
perspective-taking skills, tolerance of ambiguity, respect
for others, critical thinking skills, communication skills,
cooperation skills, and critical understanding of culture
and cultures.
While detailed and robust research is still needed into the
extent to which it is possible to implement optimal intergroup contact conditions through the Internet, there are
some existing studies which suggest that this may well be
possible. For example, Byram, Golubeva, Hui, and Wagner
(2017) draw together a series of studies involving higher
education students that explored the outcomes that can
occur when students in different countries, who are of equal
status to each other, cooperate on focused projects through
email, Skype, and/or a dedicated project wiki, with support
and encouragement from their teachers. The studies
involved collaborative projects that were set up by foreign
language teachers in such a way that they required the
students in the different countries to communicate and
cooperate closely with each other, to become aware of their
own cultural presuppositions, to engage in critical thinking,
and to foster the acquisition of the different components of
intercultural competence. The projects ranged across a
variety of different topics but always had to result in some
kind of civic or political activity by the students in their own
communities that addressed a specific topic or issue (e.g.,
recycling, graffiti, or climate change).
The studies were qualitative rather than quantitative, and
employed relatively small samples. However, analyses of
the conversations that took place between the students,
and analyses of the students’ reflections on the collaborative process, revealed that these students came to form
“bonded” international groups, developed common international identifications, gained new intercultural and
international understandings, acquired skills of criticality,
developed their intercultural competence, and learned
how to apply their intercultural competence through action
in their own communities.
Collaborative e-projects do not necessarily need to involve
students in different countries. They can also involve
students living in different regions of the same country.
For example, McKenna, Ipgrave, and Jackson (2008) set
up a project in which primary school children living in a large
multicultural city in England used email to communicate
with same-age children living in a monocultural rural area
European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 93–104
in England. They found that the children communicated
well with each other, formed relationships, learned about
each others’ cultural worlds through their communications, and developed their intercultural competence in the
process. Similar findings have been obtained with high
school students (White & Abu-Rayya, 2012).
Setting Up School-Community Links
and Partnerships, and Implementing
Service Learning Projects
Another way in which schools can create opportunities for
students to experience contact with members of other
cultural groups, even when those schools are ethnically
homogeneous, is by forming educational links and partnerships with organizations and individuals in their local
community.
There are numerous possibilities here. For example,
individuals with other cultural affiliations can be invited
to the school to work with or talk to students in the classroom; students can also interview visitors using questions
prepared in advance with the teacher. In addition, students
can visit community organizations and places of worship in
their neighborhood, and they can also interview community
members in their own environments. Finally, students can
be required to make observations and reflect critically on
their own responses to meeting people who have different cultural affiliations from themselves. Jackson (2014)
provides detailed guidance on the preparations that teachers need to undertake to manage these kinds of intercultural contacts effectively in order to maximize the
likelihood of appropriate outcomes being achieved.
There is evidence that involving external visitors from
different cultural backgrounds in primary school students’
activities in the classroom does indeed help to reduce those
students’ cultural stereotypes and prejudices and enhance
their cultural knowledge (Christou & Puigvert, 2011).
In addition, service learning projects that are undertaken
in the community seem to be highly effective in fostering
several components of intercultural competence. These
projects require students to participate in organized service
activities that benefit the community beyond the school,
with the activities being based on what has been learnt in
the classroom; afterwards, students are required to reflect
critically on their service experience in order to develop
their academic learning and to gain further understanding
of course content (Bringle, 2017; Rauschert & Byram,
2017). Undertaking service learning activity in the community that involves contact with individuals from other
cultural backgrounds seems to be especially effective with
both high school and higher education students, leading
to better self-knowledge, self-efficacy, empathy, and understanding and tolerance of cultural otherness (Bringle, 2017;
Morgan & Streb, 2001).
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M. Barrett, How Schools Can Promote the Intercultural Competence of Young People
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Actions Based on Pedagogical Approaches
Supporting Students’ Critical Reflection on Their
Intercultural Experiences and on Their Own Cultural
Affiliations
It is important to reiterate that intercultural contact is more
likely to reduce prejudice, increase tolerance, and boost
intercultural competence if the four intercultural contact
conditions are fulfilled and if students are appropriately
prepared for their intercultural encounters. In addition,
intercultural competence is most likely to be enhanced if
students are encouraged to reflect critically on their
intercultural encounters (Alred, Byram, & Fleming, 2003;
Byram et al., 2017; Vande Berg, 2009). Furthermore,
it has been found that if 11- to 18-year-old students actively
explore their own cultural identities and heritage, this
exploration can also contribute to their levels of intercultural competence over and above the contribution that is
made by their contact with people from other cultural
backgrounds (Schwarzenthal, Juang, Schachner, van de
Vijver, & Handrick, 2017). Thus, encouraging students to
reflect critically on their intercultural experience and
encouraging them to explore their own cultural identities
and heritage are two important additional strategies that
can be used for building their intercultural competence.
Two educational tools that have been developed specifically to support and scaffold students’ critical reflections
on their intercultural encounters and on their own cultural
identities are the Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters
(AIE; Byram, Barrett, Ipgrave, Jackson, & Méndez García,
2009) and the Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters
through Visual Media (AIEVM; Barrett, Byram, Ipgrave, &
Seurrat, 2013). These tools provide students with structured
sequences of questions that are designed to progressively
channel and deepen their thinking about their intercultural
encounters, about their reactions to those encounters, and
about their own cultural positioning. The AIE supports
critical reflection on face-to-face encounters that have
involved communication with cultural others, while the
AIEVM supports reflection on images of cultural others that
have been encountered in visual media such as television,
cinema, newspapers, and magazines. At the time of writing,
a third tool is in the process of development which supports
students’ critical reflection on intercultural encounters
involving communications that have taken place through
social media. All three tools are designed to be used repeatedly over an extended period of time (such as an entire year
of school study) in relationship to multiple encounters, over
the course of which the various components of intercultural
competence are progressively strengthened through the process of critical reflection. There are two versions of each
tool: one for use by younger students aged between 5 and
11 years old, and one for students aged 11 years and older.
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Studies into the effects of using the AIE and AIEVM with
students in higher education (Lindner & Méndez Garcia,
2014; Méndez García, 2017) suggest that these tools are
indeed effective for enhancing students’ intercultural
competence, especially their intercultural awareness, selfawareness, and perspective-taking abilities. However, these
evaluation studies are small scale and qualitative in nature.
Further studies using larger samples, younger samples, and
experimental methodology are still needed to test the
effects of using these tools on students’ intercultural
competence.
Cooperative Learning
One pedagogical approach that has been found to be
extremely effective in boosting intercultural competence
in students of any age from 3 years upwards is cooperative
learning (see Johnson, 2003, 2009; Johnson & Johnson,
1999; Parrenas & Parrenas, 1990; Slavin, 1991, 1995).
Cooperative learning does not simply mean students working together in pairs or small groups in an unstructured
manner. Instead, it involves students working together on
tasks that have some specific cooperative features built into
their structure. Johnson and Johnson (2009) argue that the
following features are required:
Positive interdependence: students need to perceive
that they are linked with other group members in such
a way that they cannot succeed in achieving the
common group goal unless they work together on the
given task.
Individual accountability: the performance of each
individual student needs to be regularly assessed and
the results given back both to the group and the
individual.
Promotive interaction: students need to help, share,
and encourage each other’s efforts to complete the
tasks and achieve the group goals.
Appropriate use of social skills: students need to be
taught the social skills that are required for high-quality
cooperation (e.g., decision-making, trust-building, communication, and conflict-management skills) and be
motivated to use these skills (note that some of these
skills are components of intercultural competence).
Group processing: groups need to reflect periodically
on how well they are functioning and how they might
improve the working relationships between the group
members.
Positive interdependence is particularly important in
cooperative learning, because it enables students to recognize that everyone’s efforts are needed in order to achieve
the group goals, and this in turn generates a commitment to
other students’ success as well as their own.
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Cooperative learning that follows these principles,
especially when the group members are drawn from different cultural groups, helps to boost the number of intercultural friendships, the significance that is attached to those
friendships, students’ acceptance of cultural differences,
an appreciation of the strengths of diverse people, empathy,
and communication skills (Johnson, 2003; Johnson &
Johnson, 1999).
An alternative form of cooperative learning is the jigsaw
classroom. This involves dividing the class up into groups of
five or six students. Each member of a group is assigned
some unique information to learn that must later be shared
with the other members of that group in order for the
group to achieve its common goal (Aronson & Patnoe,
2011). The distinctive characteristics of a jigsaw group are:
All of the students’ individual assignments within a
group are related to each other in such a way that every
student receives some but not all of the pieces of the
overall group assignment.
Individual students have to master their own assignments and then teach them to the other members of
the group – thus, each individual spends a part of their
time taking on the role of an expert and exercising their
communication skills.
Each student must listen to all the other students in
their group, ask appropriate questions, and master all
of the material – thus, the assignment requires both
individual work and team work.
The overall group assignment is to synthesize all of the
individual contributions in order to construct a complete picture – the assignment therefore culminates in
a whole group problem-solving task.
The structure of the jigsaw activity means that every group
member becomes equally important. Because students
have to rely on each other in order to do well, their competitive attitudes are reduced and their cooperative attitudes
are enhanced – the group can only succeed if every student
succeeds. It has been found that jigsaw activities lead to
increases in students’ empathy and positive attitudes
toward their peers, and reduce their levels of racial prejudice when the groups are composed of students drawn
from different cultural backgrounds. Much of the evidence
for these conclusions comes from work with fifth and sixth
grade children (Blaney, Stephan, Rosenfield, Aronson, &
Sikes, 1977; Geffner, 1978; Walker & Crogan, 1998).
Project-Based Learning
Another pedagogical approach that has been found to be
effective in developing students’ intercultural competence
is project-based learning (Cook & Weaving, 2013; Trilling &
Fadel, 2009). Such learning involves students participating
European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 93–104
in real-world situations or tasks. A project needs to be
meaningful and engaging, and based on a set of core questions that have to be answered by the student. Projects can
vary in scope from short projects that address a single
specific issue through to lengthy projects that result in the
creation of substantial products and presentations that
may be made to one or more audiences. Projects typically
require the student to undertake planning and design work,
decision-making, investigative activities, and problemsolving as part of the project. Projects are usually undertaken in collaboration with other students, although
they may also be conducted independently. Critical selfreflection on the process of conducting the project, and
particularly on the learning process, is usually an integral
component of a project, with evaluations of learning taking
place throughout the progress of the project.
Projects based on group work at both primary and
secondary school level have been found to be effective
in building various aspects of students’ intercultural competence, including linguistic and communicative skills, listening skills, perspective-taking skills, and respect for others
(Bell, 2010; Harper, 2015; Pellegrino & Hilton, 2012).
Other Pedagogical Activities
In addition to cooperative learning and project-based learning, there are numerous other pedagogical activities that
can be employed by teachers to promote the intercultural
competence of students. For example, Barrett, Byram,
Lázár, et al. (2013) describe all of the following:
Activities emphasizing multiple perspectives: these
take the form of a verbal description or a visual recording of an event or phenomenon which is then supplemented with or juxtaposed to other descriptions or
recordings of the same event or phenomenon provided
by other people who see it from different perspectives.
Such activities can help to develop students’ perspective-taking skills, tolerance of ambiguity, openness,
and skills of listening and observation.
Role plays and simulations: these help students to
experience at first-hand what it is like to be different,
to be criticized, or to be marginalized or excluded.
They can enable students to understand that, although
people might exhibit superficial differences in appearance or differences in beliefs and values, they nevertheless still have dignity and are deserving of respect.
Analyzing texts, films, and plays: depending on the
choice of text, film, or play, and the teacher’s framing
of the exercise, which could involve asking students to
explain their own judgments or to take the perspective
of characters that have been depicted, this type of
activity can be used to build knowledge and understanding of people from diverse cultural backgrounds,
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M. Barrett, How Schools Can Promote the Intercultural Competence of Young People
to stimulate critical reflection on cultural issues, and to
enhance openness, empathy, respect, critical thinking
skills, and the valuing of human dignity, human rights,
and cultural diversity. Staging plays extends this learning still further because acting enables people to personally explore and reflect on experiences which they
would probably never otherwise have.
Ethnographic tasks: these tasks involve students either
observing or talking to people beyond the classroom
and bringing their observations or notes back into the
classroom which they can then compare, analyze, and
reflect upon. Reflection can help them to think critically about what they have observed or heard and
about how they themselves reacted within the ethnographic situation. If the activity involves interviewing
people, students can also develop their active listening
skills, perspective-taking skills, tolerance of ambiguity,
and respect.
Actions Based on School Institutional
Policies
Using a Culturally Inclusive and Relevant Curriculum
A further way in which some of the components of intercultural competence can be promoted in students is through
the use of a culturally inclusive and relevant curriculum.
This approach treats the cultural affiliations of minority
students who are in the class as a resource for learning.
School curricula are often based on the national history
and culture of the majority cultural group, and exclude
the culture and contributions of minority groups. Culturally
inclusive curricula include coverage of the histories, cultural
practices, beliefs, and contributions that have been made by
minority cultural groups as well as those of the majority
national group, and they can provide a much more accurate
representation of the diversity that is often present within
the classroom. For this reason, they can have far greater
relevance to both minority and majority students within
the classroom, especially if the cultural affiliations of both
minority and majority students are treated on an equal
footing (Nieto, 2000). It has been found that, when primary
and secondary schools introduce culturally inclusive
curricula, it helps to reduce students’ cultural prejudices
and fosters greater respect toward minority groups that
are usually marginalized within society (Cammarota,
2007; Ladson-Billings, 1995a, 1995b; Sleeter, 2011).
Adopting a Whole School Approach to Valuing
Diversity and Human Rights
A whole school approach to valuing diversity and human
rights involves ensuring that all aspects of the school – not
just curriculum content but also teaching and learning
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methods, leadership, governance, school decision-making
structures and policies, codes of behavior, interpersonal
relationships including staff-student relationships, extracurricular activities, and external links to the community – are
based on the valuing of diversity and the valuing of the
dignity and human rights of everyone within the school
community and beyond (including both majority and minority group members). A wide range of actions can be taken to
implement a whole school approach to valuing diversity.
In addition to using a culturally inclusive curriculum, actions
can include holding inclusive celebrations of cultural and
religious festivals, respecting all students’ holiday traditions,
ensuring that all students’ cultural or religious needs are
met, and appointing staff who have minority cultural affiliations (Billot, Goddard, & Cranston, 2007).
A particularly noteworthy example of a whole school
approach to valuing diversity and human rights is provided
by UNICEF UK’s Rights Respecting Schools Award scheme.
To become members of this scheme, schools have to place
the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
(UNCRC; United Nations, 1989) at the heart of their planning, policy, practice, and ethos. Through a wide range of
activities, these schools teach children about their own
rights and about the key principles inherent in upholding
human rights, including dignity, responsibility, accountability, nondiscrimination, interdependency, and participation.
The principle of nondiscrimination requires schools to work
to achieve positive outcomes for all children irrespective of
their cultural affiliations, while the principles of participation, dignity, and accountability require schools to provide
opportunities for pupils to make active contributions to the
life and community of the school. Rights respecting schools
ensure that their policies and structures apply a rights-based
approach to all decisions and activities within the school and
not just in the classroom. The schools function as communities where students’ rights are learned, taught, respected,
promoted, and protected, and where students and indeed
the entire school community learn about human rights by
putting them into practice every day. The schools also
monitor and review their activities to ensure that children’s
rights are being protected, using the UNCRC as a framework, and making explicit how everything they do promotes
and protects human rights. The rights-based approach is
applied across all school relationships, including children,
teachers, parents, governors as well as the wider local and
global community (UNICEF UK, 2017).
Research into the impact of the Rights Respecting
Schools Award in both primary and secondary schools has
revealed that, in these schools, students develop a clear
understanding of not only their own rights but also their
responsibilities toward other people, become supportive of
the rights of others locally, nationally and globally, develop
positive and socially responsible identities, develop listening
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M. Barrett, How Schools Can Promote the Intercultural Competence of Young People
skills, empathy and respect for others, develop higher order
critical thinking and reasoning skills (as a consequence of
thinking about rights dilemmas in particular), and feel
empowered as citizens who can challenge injustice,
inequality, discrimination, and poverty in the world.
Students in these schools also have high self-esteem and
feel valued, are more engaged and feel empowered, have
positive attitudes toward inclusivity and diversity in society,
have cooperative relationships with their peers, and are
ready to accept responsibility for their own mistakes
(Covell, 2013; Sebba & Robinson, 2010). In short, these
students develop many of the components of intercultural
competence to a high level.
Conclusions
It is clear that there are numerous actions that can be taken
by schools to promote the intercultural competence of
young people. These include actions based on intergroup
contact, actions based on pedagogical approaches, and
actions based on school institutional policies (for a summary, see Table 1).
However, for these various actions to be successfully
implemented, teachers need to act as agents of transformation in students’ lives. This is an extremely significant role,
and teachers need to be adequately prepared for it. Such
preparation should involve both pre-service and in-service
training to ensure not only that teachers’ own intercultural
competence is sufficiently developed to enable them to
deliver suitable educational experiences to their students,
but also that they are sufficiently familiar with and
experienced in using the various methods that can be used
to promote students’ intercultural competence.
This paper has reviewed a large number of such methods, together with the studies that have been conducted
to evaluate their effectiveness. The studies provide an optimistic picture that young people’s intercultural competence
can indeed be enhanced through the use of these various
methods. However, the existing evaluation studies are often
not optimal. Many studies use small samples, use qualitative methods but do not perform reliability checks on the
interpretations drawn from the data, fail to employ control
groups, and often fail to even report the precise ages of the
students who have participated in the studies. There is an
urgent need for new evaluation studies, based on more
rigorous research methods, to assess the effectiveness of
many of the actions identified in this paper.
In addition, further studies are required to assess the
effectiveness of these various actions in different cultural
settings. It is possible that a particular action promotes
the development of intercultural competence in one setting
European Psychologist (2018), 23(1), 93–104
(e.g., in an ethnically heterogeneous school) but not in
another (e.g., in an ethnically homogeneous school).
A further complication is that it is also possible that
particular actions are only effective in promoting the intercultural competence of highly specific subgroups of young
people. The intercultural experiences of children and
adolescents are likely to be specific to particular subgroups
defined in terms of their age, gender, ethnicity, locale, and
nation (e.g., specific to younger females from a minority
background living in a large multicultural city in a particular
country, or specific to older males from a national majority
background living in a monocultural rural area of another
country). In other words, young people occupy very specific
cultural positionings, and different methods may be needed
to boost their intercultural competence according to their
positioning. Both teachers and researchers need to be aware
of the internal diversity that exists within all cultural groups,
alert to the possibility that different actions may be required
to promote intercultural competence within different subgroups of young people, and avoid drawing over-general
conclusions that go beyond the actual evidence base.
In short, there is a considerable research agenda that still
needs to be pursued in this field. While existing work has
identified a wide range of actions that can be used to
promote the intercultural competence of young people in
schools, more research is required to identify the precise
circumstances under which particular actions are most
effective and the subgroups of young people who can
benefit the most from each action.
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Received June 24, 2017
Revision received October 3, 2017
Accepted October 17, 2017
Published online March 16, 2018
Martyn Barrett
School of Psychology
University of Surrey
Guildford
Surrey GU2 7XH
UK
m.barrett@surrey.ac.uk
Martyn Barrett is Emeritus Professor
of Psychology at the University of
Surrey, UK. His primary research
interests are focused on young people, race, ethnicity and nation, and
the societal challenges that arise
from cultural diversity. He is currently working on a flagship project,
“Competences for Democratic Culture,” for the Council of Europe,
which is producing a new European
Reference Framework of the competences that young people require
to participate effectively in democratic culture. He is also currently
working with the OECD PISA team
developing the conceptual framework and assessments of global
competence for PISA 2018.
Ó 2018 Hogrefe Publishing