Intercultural Education for the Twenty-First Century: A Comparative Review of Research

Abstract

Based on the assumption that globalization should not imply homogenization, it is important for education to promote dialogue and intercultural understanding. The first appearance of the term ‘intercultural education’ in Europe dates back to 1983, when European ministers of education at a conference in Berlin, in a resolution for the schooling of migrant children, highlighted the intercultural dimension of education (Portera in Intercultural Education 19:481–491, 2008). One of the mandates of intercultural education is to promote intercultural dialogue, meaning dialogue that is “open and respectful” and that takes place between individuals or groups “with different ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic backgrounds and heritage on the basis of mutual understanding and respect” (Council of Europe in White paper on intercultural dialogue: Living together as equals in dignity. Council of Europe, Strasbourg, p. 10, 2008). Such backgrounds and heritages form cultural identities, not limited to ethnic, religious and linguistic ones, as culture is a broader concept including several layers such as “experience, interest, orientation to the world, values, dispositions, sensibilities, social languages, and discourses” (Cope and Kalantzis in Pedagogies: An International Journal 4:173, 2009). As cultural identities are multi-layered, so is cultural diversity, and therefore it becomes a challenge for educators and researchers to address it (Hepple et al. in Teaching and Teacher Education 66:273–281, 2017). Referring to Leclercq (The lessons of thirty years of European co-operation for intercultural education, Steering Committee for Education, Strasbourg, 2002), Hajisoteriou and Angelides (International Journal of Inclusive Education 21:367, 2017) argue that “intercultural education aims to stress the dynamic nature of cultural diversity as an unstable mixture of sameness and otherness.” This challenge relates to the dynamic concept of culture itself, as socially constructed, and continuously shaped and reshaped through communicative interactions (Holmes et al. in Intercultural Education 26:16–30, 2015).