2017 Volume 45 Pages 49-64
The purpose of this study is to present a model conceptualizing intercultural competence represented by three categories (“Knowledge”, “Skill” and “Attitude”) in six developmental stages. The “Attitude” category consists of “Recognition”, “Feeling” and “Behavior”. The developments of perspective-taking ability, empathy and prosocial behavior in “Attitude” are indispensable through every life stage. Self-efficacy and resilience are based on “Attitude” abilities, and the learning of positive perception toward the self, as well as of concerning others, is important to bring up the “Attitude” abilities of intercultural competence.
The features in six development stages can be characterized with respect to the categories of intercultural competence as follows. 1) The category “Knowledge” is not dominant from 0 to about 4 years old. The abilities of empathy, modeling and prosocial behavior, which are based on hereditary factors in “Attitude,” play a major role of intercultural competence in this period. 2) The category “Attitude” is still dominant from about 5 to 9 years old. The cognitive development in this period is qualitatively changing, and the children of those ages become capable of taking others’ perspectives in some concrete situations. 3) The category “Knowledge” from about 10 to 15 years old is more dominant than in the earlier ages. The children in this period get the third-person and mutual perspective taking, and they can have the empathy to the person even in other cultures, whom they do not meet directly. 4) The percentages of the categories “Knowledge” and “Skill” are much more dominant in from about 16 to 22 years old than in the earlier ages. They get not only positive experiences of cultures, but also negative and various perspectives through education and studying abroad. Metacognition, in-depth and societal-symbolic perspective taking are key competences in the category “Attitude” in this period. Self-efficacy and resilience are also based on these competences. 5) The intercultural competence expected by the society varies in its environment, because each individual has various experiences in adulthood. The category “Skill” is much more dominant than in the earlier ages. 6) Curiosity and openness are needed for the older people to be competent in confronting some different cultures, because they tend to adhere to their conservative way of thinking, and it is hard to follow some unfamiliar ways. Older people requiring nursing by foreigners should have abilities of resilience and reconstruction for adapting to the intercultural environments.
Future research would require those factors to be taken into account: 1) background culture and the chronological contexts; 2) individual variations; 3) relationships between the environmental factors and the individual’s location in the group.
