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Intercultural competence and assessment: perspectives from the INCA Project 469

2001: 413). In contrast, the ‘culture learning’ approach assumes that problems
arise when managing everyday interactions, and that when dealing with persons
from different cultures at work, one needs to be aware of the different cultural
approaches. The ‘social identity’ approach focuses on people’s self-identifica-
tions as members of cultural groups.
According to Brislin (1994: 23), one of the routes to success in international
encounters is “good intercultural interaction”. This refers to “a genuine interest
in working with people from other countries as well as the ability to do so” (Bris-
lin 1994: 23). The interest in working with others depends on the way one sees
other cultures. So Bennett (1993) describes a developmental model of intercul-
tural sensitivity that is based on the idea that “as one’s experience of cultural dif-
ference becomes more complex and sophisticated, one’s potential competence in
intercultural relations increases” (Hammer, Bennett, and Wiseman 2003). An in-
dividual can develop greater intercultural sensitivity by moving away from a
worldview in which his/her culture is central to all reality, and can reach a stage
of ethno-relativism where s/he considers different cultures to be equally valid.
So what does ‘intercultural competence’ entail? Different theorists have
proposed different answers.

2.1. Insights from the Council of Europe
According to the Council of Europe, “intercultural skills and knowledge include

– the ability to bring the culture of origin and the foreign culture into relation
with each other;
– cultural sensitivity and the ability to identify and use a variety of strategies
for contact with those from other cultures;
– the capacity to fulfil the role of cultural intermediary between one’s own cul-
ture and the foreign culture and to deal effectively with intercultural mis-
understanding and conflict situations;
– the ability to overcome stereotyped relationships.” (Council of Europe, n.d.:
104–105).

2.2. Insights from foreign language education
Michael Byram and his colleagues (Byram 1997; Byram, Nichols and Stevens
2001), whose expertise is in foreign language education, include the following
five components in their model:

– intercultural attitudes: curiosity and openness, readiness to suspend disbe-
lief about other cultures;
– knowledge: of social processes and knowledge of illustrations of those pro-
cesses;