
Intercultural Competence in the Classroom
Intercultural competence can be taught in five separate parts, and one of them only shows up while a conversation is happening. This week works through all five, using Michael Byram's model.
About this course
Is being intercultural a personality some teachers happen to have, or a competence that can be taught? Michael Byram’s answer has organised this field since 1997: it is a competence, and it breaks into five parts specific enough to build a week around. Five parts, five days — attitudes, knowledge, interpreting, discovery in real time,…
Methodology
Byram's five components are separated deliberately and given a day each, because the reason intercultural training so often fails is that the five get merged into a single vague quality that nobody can practise.
Each component is introduced through the author's own definition, with the page it comes from, rather than through a summary — including the component that is easiest to leave out of a summary because it cannot be handed out on paper.
Open groups are multinational by design, so Thursday's real-time interaction work happens with people who actually read a situation differently; a dedicated single-school group works from the supplied role briefings instead.
Friday sets out the strongest published criticism of Byram's model alongside the model itself, so participants can defend what they take home instead of only repeating it.
What you'll take home
Name all five components of Byram's model, define each in the author's own terms, and say which of the five a given classroom activity actually develops.
Distinguish the two halves of intercultural knowledge — what a group does, and how interaction itself works — and rebuild a "facts about a country" lesson so that it teaches the second.
Interpret a document or event from another culture, explain it, and relate it to a document from your own, then turn that process into a lesson your students can follow.
Handle the real-time part: acquire what you need in the middle of an interaction you cannot pause, and analyse afterwards what you actually did.
Run a structured reflection on a real intercultural encounter with your own class, using the Council of Europe's Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters.
Evaluate a cultural practice — including one from your own culture — on explicit criteria, and explain the published criticism of Byram's model well enough to argue with it.
Other dates for this course
- 7–11 Dec 2026 İstanbul Planned
- 18–22 Jan 2027 İzmir Planned
- 1–5 Feb 2027 İstanbul Planned
- 29 Mar – 2 Apr 2027 Mersin Planned
- 19–23 Apr 2027 İzmir Planned
- 10–14 May 2027 İstanbul Planned
- 16–20 Aug 2027 Antalya Planned
- 13–17 Dec 2027 İzmir Planned
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What's included
Not included
Aggregated across all EMA courses, not specific to this session.
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