University’s Role in Shaping Intercultural Competence Among Students

Throughout university studies, students are prepared and equipped with the knowledge and skills required for entering a specific profession. However, in today’s globalized and culturally diverse society, this is not enough and the need for developing intercultural competence is of great importance. In achieving this, academic courses and students’ overall university experiences can contribute significantly. From here, this paper aims to examine students’ intercultural competences, through assessing the three domains: intercultural knowledge, emotions and behavior. The survey was conducted on a sample of 81 undergraduate students at the International Balkan University (IBU) in Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia, who have taken the course Multicultural Education. Results have shown that students have moderate to high levels in the domains of knowledge and emotions and slightly lower levels in the behavior domain. Findings suggest that students show awareness and care for issues related to the use of different languages, racial and gender inequalities, financial status, and differing sexual orientation, whereas the topics of ethnicity and religious prejudices, for which scores are lower, require additional efforts and need to be addressed in a more structured and proactive manner. This paper also provides recommendations for planning more meaningful and effective teaching and learning activities for the purpose of developing intercultural competencies.