The Intercultural Deskpad: A Reflection Tool to Enhance Intercultural Competences

Abstract

Because of their diverse and international student and employee population, many educational institutions cannot imagine their current working environment without intercultural and multilingual communication anymore. This new reality sometimes leads to unexpected moments of interaction, where students and staff do not know how to react, might feel less comfortable, and be less effective, in doing their daily work. Intercultural competences help dealing with these unexpected situations where different cultural frames of reference might influence communication. Becoming interculturally aware is among the first important steps in developing these intercultural competences. This paper describes how the Intercultural Deskpad, a reflection tool developed at Utrecht University for support and administrative staff, can enhance intercultural awareness by using Rich Points (Agar 1994) to initiate reflection and learning. The aim of the tool is to guide participants from the point where they are first becoming interculturally aware, through the next step of being interculturally aware, towards a fuller more sustained competent awareness of their intercultural interactions (i.e. becoming and being interculturally aware and competent, in Dutch: bewustvaardig). Using a non-essentialist perspective on intercultural communication, this paper considers what is meant by intercultural awareness and intercultural competences and argues that the development of both is a cyclical and ongoing learning process.