Intercultural Competence in Legal German Teaching: A Didactical Implementation

Abstract

On the basis of a qualitative needs analysis conducted among Finnish jurists, cultural competence was found to be one of the most important skills required in legal occupations. This finding raises the question of how to teach ‘cultural competence’ to law students. In this study, culture is principally conceived of as a way of life and how we construct meanings from the world surrounding us. Intercultural competence is, in the context of this study, constituted through cultural knowledge, which in turn enables us to understand other cultures. This article discusses the didactical implementation of cultural competence in legal German courses at the law faculty of the University of Turku. The didactical approach presented sees culture in relation to legal texts, as juridical work is always text-based and because texts contain cultural phenomena, which are relevant to understanding legal contents. In this study, legal texts are dealt with from a hermeneutic-constructive perspective to interpret systematically their cultural content. Correspondingly, an ethnological-hermeneutic interpretation model forms the core of the theory-conducted interpretations of cultural phenomena. Hence, intercultural competence is acquired through those interpretations. After a few introductory remarks, the article briefly presents a needs analysis, and then proceeds to the theoretical framework of the interpretation model, followed by a case study and its didactic realisation.