Interventions and evaluation of intercultural competence of students enrolled in higher education – a scoping review

Abstract

ABSTRACTOver the past decade there has been an increase in scientific publications addressing intercultural competence (IC) of students. The sheer volume of publications available makes it difficult to determine the extent, breadth, and nature of research within the area. The aim of this scoping review was to describe the state of peer reviewed research related to IC, including academic disciplines addressing the issue, regions of the world conducting research, types of interventions used to foster IC and how outcomes are being evaluated. Six databases were searched, resulting in 15,128 articles. A total of 464 met the inclusion criteria. A trend was observed towards studying IC in interdisciplinary student populations as well as a post-COVID-19 trend towards more online interventions. Most research was conducted in North America (n = 198; 42.7%) within the discipline of education (n = 87; 18.8%). The most common intervention was pedagogical approaches delivered at the students’ home institution (n = 161; 34.7%). Results highlight a gap in research from the Global South and a lack of consensus regarding appropriate tools for evaluating IC. Continued work is required to determine the effects of specific interventions and to support educators in identifying appropriate tool(s) for measuring outcomes.

Keywords

• Education
• global citizenship
• global competence
• internationalisation
• intercultural
• post-secondary