The document outlines an intercultural competencies curriculum aimed at equipping K-12 students in Broward County, Florida, with the skills needed for global citizenship through experiential learning. It identifies gaps in the current educational offerings regarding intercultural competencies and proposes a course that encourages understanding, flexibility, and adaptability across cultures. Additionally, it emphasizes the importance of diversity within classrooms and the need for intentional student selection based on various criteria to foster intercultural exposure.

1. An Intercultural Competencies
Course Curriculum for Nurturing
Global Citizenship
by Linda E. Fajardo
1

2. MISSION STATEMENT
The mission of this curriculum is to prepare our
students to competitively enter the world stage as
individuals who have been unequivocally
predisposed to practicing intercultural
competencies through experiential learning.
This curriculum will be implemented within the K-12
Social Studies Core Curriculum of Broward County
Public Schools’ Innovative Programs, in any one of
the 21 High Theme programs offered, i.e.,
International Baccalaureate and Liberal Arts
Programs; Communications; International Affairs
and Business, etc.
American students
effortlessly mingling
with the world.
2

3. CURRICULUM NEEDS
No. The Florida Department of Education’s
“CPALMS” website (Curriculum Planning and
Learning Management) indicates there is no
course dedicated to teaching Florida students
intercultural competencies.
Does the FLDOE
currently offer Florida
students this course?
3

4. CURRICULUM NEEDS:
EXISTING CURRICULUM
• Currently, CPALMS offers a “Multicultural Studies” course, it simply teaches
students the facts of how multiculturalism has impacted American society:
“[T]he chronological development of multicultural
and multiethnic groups in the United States and their
influence on the development of American culture.
Content should include, but is not limited to:
 the influence of geography on the
social and economic development
of Native American culture
 the influence of major historical
events on the development of a
multicultural American society
 a study of the political, economic
and social aspects of Native
American, Hispanic American,
African American and Asian
American culture.”
4

5. CURRICULUM NEEDS
• According to the Center of Intercultural Competence in
Switzerland, intercultural competence has become
more and more important with the expansion of
globalization and worldwide contacts between
companies, organizations and individuals who need the
ability to communicate in a successful way.
www.CICB.net
Why should the FLDOE
offer this course to
Florida students?
5

6. CURRICULUM NEEDS
• As recent as November 19th, 2014, the Voice of America reported in its “All
About America” series that fewer than 10% of American students take
advantage of the chance to study in a foreign country.
Americans Studying Abroad International Students Studying in America
vs
290,000 886,052
6

7. CURRICULUM NEEDS
• The Institute of International Education asserts that
international experience is a key component of a
21st century education, since globalization demands
a U.S. workforce with knowledge of other countries,
cultures and languages other than English.
SOLUTION: Offer American students a facsimile
experience in their own classrooms by taking advantage of
America’s own wellspring of diversity through…
An Intercultural Competencies Course
for Nurturing Global Citizenship
7

8. CURRICULUM NEEDS: STUDENT
SELECTION PROCESS
• As previously explained, the best platform within which to begin teaching this curriculum
will be at schools that already support innovative programs with special application
procedures, thus allowing administrators to hand-pick an effective combination of
students for the success of this course.
• Specific selection criteria are already implemented by the FLDOE for program like STEM
and International Baccalaureate.
• With this course, however, student criteria will go beyond traditional rankings and GPA
requirements. In addition to those, this curriculum will choose students according their:
• gender
• race
• religion
• culture
• secondary language proficiency
• Of course, as with the other innovative programs students’ parents/guardians have
specifically sought out this kind of intercultural exposure and would be fully aware of the
sensitive criteria required to create a global microcosm within one classroom.
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9. WHAT IS INTERCULTURAL
COMPETENCY?
• Evolving one’s intercultural social and communication skills toward a more
transparent way of:
• expressing point of view
• being clear with intentions
• aiming to be understood and respected
• The success of such transparent verbal and non-verbal communication
with people of other cultures will manifest itself through:
• understanding the behaviors of others
• understanding other ways of thinking
• staying flexible in extrinsic associations
9

10. HOW DO WE GET TO
INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE?
1. By inexhaustibly attempting to reduce ethnocentrism whose 3 stages are
(a) denial, (b) defense, and (c) minimization of the Other.
• Note: Minimization is defined as thinking that people everywhere are basically
the same. Research indicates that many teachers are stuck in this stage, which is
a dilemma because this stage causes individuals to treat everyone as if they
were the same and yet they are different.
2. By reducing or discontinuing judgment of the Other based solely on one’s
own cultural experiences and points of view.
3. By becoming ethnorelative…
10
http://prezi.com/izynigebqykd/?utm_campaign=shar
e&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

11. HOW DO WE BECOME
ETHNORELATIVE?
1. Acceptance – takes a conscious
effort, e.g., taking an Intercultural
Competencies course
2. Adaptation – communicating
successfully across various cultures
3. Integration – indicated by those
individuals who have achieved
multiple frames of reference and who
can identify with, and move freely
within, more than one cultural group
11

12. CURRICULUM INTENTIONS
The intention of this Intercultural Competencies course is to turn
traditionally offered Multiculturalism Studies courses inside out
by no longer only examining the surface of a variety of ethnic
groups and their influence on us, but instead by allowing our
students to enter the bubble--to mingle with, understand and
absorb the wealth of what intercultural connections have to
offer our students as individuals, and our American society as a
whole.
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13. SUPPORTING LITERATURE (1)
• Sleeter, C. E. (2001, March)
PREPARING TEACHERS FOR CULTURALLY DIVERSE SCHOOLS:
Research and the Overwhelming Presence of Whiteness.
Journal of Teacher Education, 52(2), 94-106. doi:10.1177/0022487101052002002
• Purpose: to determine the effects of teacher-training including
cross-cultural immersion and multicultural education coursework
while addressing attitudes and lack of cross-cultural knowledge of
White preservice teachers.
• Findings: (1) that continuing business as usual will only continue to
widen the cultural gap between teachers and their students; and
(2) the teacher-training programs studied call for either more
teachers who are from culturally diverse communities or that try to
develop the attitudes and multicultural knowledge base of
predominantly White cohorts.
• Conclusion: Sleeter calls for follow-up research that will show
public schools how to link teacher training with community-based
learning, and school reform to close the cultural divide between
teachers and their students.
13

14. SUPPORTING LITERATURE (2)
• Mydland, L. (2011, September 15)
The legacy of one-room schoolhouses:
A comparative study of the American Midwest and Norway.
European Journal of American Studies [Online], 6(1), 1-20. doi:10.4000/ejas.9205
• Purpose: a comparative study of the
American Midwest and the country of Norway
exploring the one-room schoolhouse in terms
of the societies’ differing value systems and
the power of the one-room schoolhouse in the
indoctrination of a society’s values.
• Findings/Conculsion: that the American
schoolhouse has been an object of heritage
with high national symbolic values, reflecting
the development of the nation and acting as
the “impetuses in political society” which were
establishing and maintaining national
common values.
14

15. SUPPORTING LITERATURE (3)
• Aydin, H. (2012, September).
Multicultural Education Curriculum Development in Turkey
Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 3(3), 277-286.
doi:105901/mjss.2012v3n3p277
• Purpose: to examine the state of Turkey’s current
multicultural/intercultural education curricula in light of
recent developments toward Turkey’s attempt to accede
to the European Union, in the shadow of Turkey’s
continuing policy of banning the language of Turkey’s
largest ethnic minority, the Kurdish people.
• Findings: that experiential plurality is essential for Turkish
education which needs to educate the present and
future generations to become more tolerant and
acceptant of other cultures living in Turkey
• Conclusion: that all states need to create educational
policies which depend largely on local knowledge, social
heritage, communal experience, and exposure to
international audiences as much as they depend on
various economic factors such as labor force, economic
growth, and commercialization.
15

16. SUPPORTING LITERATURE (4)
• Moon, S. (2010)
Multicultural and Global Citizenship in the Transnational Age:
The Case of South Korea
International Journal of Multicultural Education, 12(1), 15. Retrieved 2014, from http://www.ijme-
journal.org/index.php/ijme/article/view/261/392
• Purpose: to demonstrate the paradigm shift necessary in methods of
teaching multicultural citizenship and global citizenship in this world that has
“changed from a space of ‘places’ to a space of ‘flows’…[where] people
residing in the transnational world need to develop new notions of
citizenship.” Moon explains that because the traditional understanding of a
nation-state with its homogenous culture and society has been “challenged
by a transnational population of immigrants,” multicultural education must
now meet that challenge and go beyond the “limited nation-state border
to the global community.”
• Findings: that the “global context [of] educating students to function in one
nation-state does not prepare them for global citizenship” as this would be
“inconsistent with the racial, ethnic, and cultural realities” …as “outside
forces of globalization interrupt the nation-state’s position as the
predominant unit of social organization.”
• Conclusion: in keeping with the founding ideology of Korea in 2333 BC,
which states that “the purpose of Korean education is to cultivate Korean
citizens to contribute to democracy and mutual prosperity of all human
beings,” Korean “educators and policy makers should think about how to
educate citizens that meet the needs of a transnational and cosmopolitan
society.”
16

17. SUPPORTING LITERATURE (5)
• Dervin, F., Paatela-Nieminen, M., Kuoppala, K., & Riitaoja, A.-L. (2012)
Multicultural Education in Finland:
Renewed Intercultural Competencies to the Rescue?
International Journal of Multicultural Education, 14(3), 1-13. Retrieved November
2014, from http://ijme-journal.org/index.php/ijme/article/view/564/784
• Purpose: to investigate intercultural competencies in the
European and Nordic country of Finland, including present
uses of multicultural education and the perception of
intercultural competencies by decision-makers, researchers
and teachers.
• Findings: the Finnish core curriculum approaches
multicultural education as if the majority and minority groups
were taught separately thereby not taking into consideration
the multiple diversities within majority student populations in
Finland; “multiculturalism has remained trapped within a set
of nation-centric assumptions as it continues to address issues
of cultural diversity within a national framework.”
• Conclusion: the way forward in Finland could lie in increasingly
glocally-oriented multicultural education that has its roots in cultural-
historical analysis and global ethics in terms of ethical engagement
with the Other.
17

18. CURRICULUM VALUE AND OBJECTIVES
(IMPERATIVES: INTEGRATION
AND RELEVANCE)
• To improve American students’ intercultural social skills and intercultural
communication skills by improving their sensitivity and understanding for other
cultures’:
• values
• points of view
• ways of living
• ways of thinking
• Furthermore, by American students improving themselves by learning to be self-
conscious while transferring one’s own values and views in a clear way, yet
appropriate for the culture being addressed.
• Overall, students will develop intercultural flexibility, humor, patience, openness,
interest, curiosity, empathy, tolerance for ambiguity, and suspending judgment,
among others.
18

19. PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS
PRAGMATISM: experiential learning -
focuses on the reality of experience.
Since intercultural reality constantly
changes with exposure to each
different culture, we learn best
through applying the experiences
we’ve had to solve problems, as they
arise.
Becoming interculturally competent
requires learners to adapt to each
other and to their environment.
Give the pupils something to do, not
something to learn; and the doing
is of such a nature as to demand
thinking; learning naturally
results.”- John Dewey
IDEALISM: The search for truth
and values that stand the test of
time.
As we have seen, being
interculturally competent means
having the ability to
communicate one’s intentions
through honesty, kindness,
courtesy, and respect. This
equates ethical reality which in
turn equates idealism.
The shadows of the sensory world
must be overcome with the light
of reason or universal truth. -
Aristotle
Pragmatism
19

20. LEARNING EXPERIENCES:
WHAT WILL THEY DO?
• To begin, students will learn the conceptual
difference between Multiculturalism Studies and
Intercultural Competencies, thereby grasping the
purpose and goals of this particular year-long
course.
• Next, students will begin by choosing a target
culture and its language. [Note: whereas
proficiency in a second language would
complement the student’s experience, it will not be
a curriculum pre-requisite.]
• For the target culture, learners will:
1) explore its Family, Education, Law and Order or
Power and Politics;
2) gather material outside the classroom in relation
with these cultural topics;
20

21. LEARNING EXPERIENCES:
WHAT WILL THEY DO?
3) work with a variety of activities that require their use of
listening, speaking, reading and writing in order to develop
overall communicative competence, and promote
intercultural awareness and understanding, i.e.:
a) Listening: video-taped cultural dialogues, or tape-recorded
interviews with native speakers;
b) Speaking: face-to-face tandem learning and role-playing
wherein learners focus on body language and helps them
gradually assimilate the nonverbal behaviors of the target
culture;
c) Reading: critical reading which requires learner to focus not
only on what the text says but, most importantly, on how the
text portrays the given topic through the author’s choices of
language and structure, i.e., when reading situations in which
there is a cultural bump, that is, a situation that causes
people to become uncomfortable or strange given particular
cultural beliefs and attitudes;
d) Writing: tandem e-mail learning, designing stories and story
continuation, to develop writing skills with a particular
emphasis on the intercultural component.
21

22. EVALUATION APPROACHES
• Intercultural competence can hardly be defined in
numbers or in a percentage profile, but many
different tools allow for reliability statements:
• computer-based validity-testing by questioning, i.e.,
Harvard University’s Implicit Association Tests
• structured biographical interviews
• simulation-games by interacting in groups and
specific situations
• differentiating between respect/empathy,
prejudices, frustration tolerance and contact
activities
• analyzing self-assurance and adaptation-tendency
22

23. CURRICULUM’S DESIGN
• LEARNER-CENTERED
• Students will be active in their one-world
school room environment;
• Learning will be based on students’ lives,
needs and interests;
• Activities will empower students through
ownership of intercultural competencies
• EXPERIENCE-CENTERED
• Students have ON THE SPOT experiences in
their one-world school room
• RADICAL DESIGN
• Students will gain awareness on their own
of interculturalism, intercultural
competencies and broadened attitudes
that will allow them to become better
global citizens.
23

24. SOURCES FOR CURRICULUM
DESIGN
• our diverse, multicultural student body—the learners themselves as teachers
• our diverse, multicultural society in our own county
• modeled by the functions of the United Nations, the European Union, multi-
denominational places of worship
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25. IMPERATIVES:
SCOPE AND SEQUENCE
• Scope: High School Innovative Programs, Communications/Social Studies
• Sequence:
American
cultures
American cultures and
their own
in American cultures
and compare these with
and in American cultures
25

26. IMPERATIVES:
SCOPE AND SEQUENCE
Models:
• Center of Intercultural Competence, SWITZERLAND
http://www.cicb.net/en/home/what-is-it-about
• University of Jyväskylä, FINLAND
http://www.edicc.eu/
• Alberta (CANADA) Teachers of English as a Second Language Curriculum
Framework http://www.atesldocuments.com/cf/icc
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27. IMPERATIVES:
YEAR-LONG PLAN
◄1ST Quarter
(Introduction to the
concept of Interculturalism)
◄2nd Quarter
◄3rd Quarter
◄4th Quarter
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28. IMPERATIVES:
THREE AXES OF ARTICULATION
• VERTICAL: this curriculum can be taught throughout the length of
primary and secondary education (K-12) and therefore highlights
the continuity and value of learning Intercultural Competencies
• HORIZONTAL: this curriculum is naturally organized with horizontal
articulation since several classes across the curriculum can (and
should be) planned to simultaneously attempt to accomplish the
same objectives as this core Communications/Social Studies
course;
• INTERDISCIPLINARY and MULTIDISCIPLINARY: the study of
Intercultural Competencies as a school subject will associate with
other disciplines in the curriculum as it will reinforce what students
are learning in other disciplines that highlight other cultures.
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30. SUNSHINE STATE STANDARDS
• Language Arts:
• LA.A.2.4.8 - construct meaning from a wide range of texts, synthesize information,
and draw conclusions
• LAAC.1.4.4 - identify bias, prejudice, or propaganda in oral
• LA.D.l.4.2 - recognize the shifts in language from informal to formal, social and
academic; and to refrain from gender and cultural biases when expressing
language
• LA.D.1.4.3 - understand that differences exist in dialects in the English language
• LA.D.2.4.1 – understand that language is a powerful tool in shaping the "reactions,
perceptions, and beliefs of the local, national, and global communities“
• LA.E.l .4.3 - understand multiple literary forms prevalent in the literature of all cultures
• LA.E.l.4.5 - recognize different styles, themes, and structures of literary forms within a
cultural and historical context
• LAE.2.4.8 - think about and respond critically to various texts and forms of literature,
knowing that individuals respond differently based on "their background knowledge,
purpose, and point of view''
30
http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=sferc

31. SUNSHINE STATE STANDARDS
• Social Studies:
• SS.912.P.10.1 - Define culture and diversity.
• SS.912.P.10.11 - Discuss the psychological research on gender and how the roles of women and men in societies are perceived.
• SS.912.P.10.12 - Examine how perspectives affect stereotypes and treatment of minority and majority groups in society.
• SS.912.P.10.2 - Identify how cultures change over time and vary within nations and internationally.
• SS.912.P.10.3 - Discuss the relationship between culture and conceptions of self and identity.
• SS.912.P.10.6 - Discuss how privilege and social power structures relate to stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination.
• SS.912.P.10.8 - Discuss psychological research examining diversity in sexual orientation.
• SS.912.P.14.4 - Explain the role of culture in human motivation.
• SS.912.P.15.5 - Explain how culture and gender influence emotional interpretation and expression.
• SS.912.P.16.11 - Analyze how individualistic and collectivistic cultural perspectives relate to personality.
• SS.912.P.6.17 - Describe social, cultural, and emotional development through childhood.
• SS.912.P.9.5 - Describe effects of others’ presence on individuals’ behavior.
• SS.912.P.9.8 - Discuss the nature and effects of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination.
• SS.912.S.1.8 - Identify, evaluate and use appropriate reference materials and technology to interpret information about cultural life in the
United States and other world cultures, both in the past and today.
• SS.912.S.2.1 - Define the key components of a culture, such as knowledge, language and communication, customs, values, norms, and
physical objects.
• SS.912.S.2.12 - Compare and contrast ideas about citizenship and cultural participation from the past with those of the present community.
• SS.912.H.3.3 - Identify contributions made by various world cultures through trade and communication, and form a hypothesis on future
contributions and changes.
• etc., etc., etc.
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http://www.cpalms.org/Standards/Standards_Coding_Schema.aspx

32. WIGGINS AND MCTIGHE:
UNDERSTANDING
• This Intercultural Competencies curriculum will give students knowledge,
understanding and skills that will lead them to have sophisticated insights
and abilities in intercultural communications and social skills.
• Students’ skills will be reflected in the context of the successful intercultural
connections they build throughout their K-12 experience with which mastery
will come as a result of their experiential learning in their one-world
schoolroom and beyond.
• This curriculum will move students through knowledge acquisition toward
understanding by (1) inexhaustibly attempting to reduce ethnocentrism,
specifically minimization of the Other, (2) by reducing or discontinuing
judgment of the Other based solely on one’s own cultural experiences and
points of view, and (3) by becoming ethnorelative…(see Slides #10-11)
32
McTighe & Wiggins

33. ESTABLISHING CURRICULAR PRIORITIES
Worth Being Familiar With:
- Sensitivity and understanding for other
cultures’: values, points of view, ways of
living, ways of thinking
- Improving themselves by learning to be
self-conscious while transferring their own
values and views in a clear way that is
appropriate for the culture being
addressed
Important to Know and Do:
Acceptance: which takes a conscious effort
Adaptation: communicating successfully across
various cultures
Integration: achieving multiple frames of reference
and identifying with, and moving freely within, more
than one cultural group
=
ETHNORELATIVITY
Enduring Understanding:
Valuing Everyone’s Values
as Relevant - regardless of
gender, race, culture,
religion, age, or political
leanings
33
McTighe & Wiggins

34. WIGGINS AND MCTIGHE:
TWO SAMPLE ASSESSMENTS
• Students will read about human rights violations and will engage in several
activities for them to think critically about how the situation might have changed
if the violating society had been interculturally competent.
• Involvement in the Model United Nations program: member states (student
groups will) realize that the expanding problems of a planet know no national
boundaries and understand that poverty, disease and pollution are a few of the
plagues affecting citizens of all states. Some policies (official or non-official) of
member states do not agree with the stated community goals of the UN.
However, all members choose to remain members of the UN despite their
differences - demonstrating the importance nations place on the institution.
Theories on why states participate are gaining a new focus on the emerging
global community and placing less emphasis on the state.
34
http://students.jccc.edu/orgs/un/valueMUN.htm#part2 McTighe & Wiggins

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