Intercultural competences: conceptual dialogues and a reinterpretation proposal for higher education

Abstract

Intercultural competences in higher education, especially in Brazil, is an incipient theme despite its long-lasting importance and its indisputably rich cultural framework. An environment with a predominance of the functional perspective of interculturality (CANDAU, 2012; WALSH, 2009) still lacks reflections on the development of knowledge about the themes that permeate it. This article sought out a conceptual dialogue about intercultural competences in higher education, based on qualitative and exploratory bibliographic research, incorporating the main national and international publications about the subject. Conceptual reflection stemmed from discussions about skills and interculturality, as well as the combination of the two concepts (intercultural skills) in higher education. Therefore, it was possible to perform a reinterpretation based on competences concepts from the perspective of inputs (predominant North American trend with focus on the set of characteristics of the subject) and outputs (predominant European trend with focus on results) and interculturality (interaction between cultures) with classification concepts as relational, functional and critical described by Walsh (2009). From this research, new discussions and perspectives on the subject have been presented, as well as empirical studies that will aggregate the results presented here, in addition to the search for didactics aimed to develop intercultural competences that can be implemented in Higher Education.