Presented by Dr Nanda Dimtrov

The cultural landscape of Canadian university classrooms has shifted dramatically in the past 20 years. Today’s classrooms are diverse communities that hold the potential to build bridges across many dimensions of difference. As universities internationalize both their campuses and their curricula, important questions emerge for instructors: How can we nurture diverse perspectives in our classrooms through inclusive teaching practices that are grounded in our disciplines? And how can we prepare our graduates to engage with difference in a globally interconnected world?

In this session, we will introduce the Intercultural Teaching Competence (ITC) Framework (Dimitrov & Haque, 2016) to explore concrete strategies that instructors can use to promote dialogue and perspective taking in the classroom. Designed as a tool for instructor reflection, the ITC framework introduces 20 foundational, facilitation and curriculum design competencies that instructors can incorporate into their practice as they engage students in intercultural learning across the disciplines.

Dr. Dimitrov is the Director of the Teaching Support Centre and an educational developer and intercultural communication scholar at Western University. She explores critical issues in internationalizing higher education through an intercultural communication lens. She holds an adjunct research professor appointment in the Centre for Research on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education