Towards assessing intercultural competence in medical university teachers
DOI: 10.23951/1609-624X-2026-5-139-148
Intercultural competence is an integrative personal characteristic that facilitates effective intercultural communication, including in the professional sphere. The modern scientific field presents a variety of diagnostic methods for measuring the level of development of intercultural competence. The application of these methods is complicated by the lack of a unified approach to the content of this phenomenon, as well as by the fact that they are presented within the framework of various fields of scientific knowledge (psychology, cultural studies, linguocultural studies, pedagogy, language teaching methodology, etc.) and do not take into account the specific communicative context of a particular professional field. The relevance of researching the intercultural competence of a medical university teacher is determined by the changed conditions of their professional activity due to the growing pace of internationalization of medical education and the increasing number of international students studying in medical universities on programs using a lingua franca. The aim of the article is a theoretical analysis of existing approaches to the content and diagnosis of intercultural competence in the modern scientific field and, based on this analysis, the development of a diagnostic toolkit for its assessment in a medical university teacher. The paper examines approaches to defining the content of the phenomenon of intercultural competence, as well as methods for its diagnosis presented in scientific works in psychology, cultural studies, and pedagogy. In the article, the intercultural competence of a medical university teacher is positioned within the communicative component of their overall professional competence. Based on the provisions of the competency-based approach and taking into account the specifics of the professional activity of a medical university teacher, a system of criteria for assessment is proposed: semantic, knowledge-based, communicative, activity-based, and reflective, along with a suggested diagnostic toolkit for each criterion. The developed diagnostic apparatus can be used for designing professional development programs for teachers of medical universities and building individual trajectories of their professional growth. A prospect for further research is the empirical testing of the proposed toolkit on the basis of medical universities with subsequent statistical verification of its validity.
Keywords: intercultural communication, international students, intercultural competence, medium of instruction, competency-based approach
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Issue: 5, 2026
Series of issue: Issue 5
Rubric: METHODOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY OF PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION
Pages: 139 — 148
Downloads: 5