Abstract:

Within the framework of the university's curriculum, students learn to understand, analyze and take into account modern cultural trends. In this regard, the program should include fundamental Humanities subjects and disciplines – from the history and sociology of culture to the rhetoric of everyday life and critical writing. In most universities, students from the first year master current research tools, methods and techniques for working with cultural facts, and also have the opportunity to include in the practical implementation of various cultural projects and events. In our research, we propose to conduct continuous multicultural training of the university students, including an intercultural course in the educational program also at later stages of training.

The purpose of this research is to develop and implement an intercultural course in the educational program of the university students. The objectives of the study are to conduct a survey of employers and students in order to identify the necessary cross-cultural competencies for professional and functional literacy of graduates and to determine, using expert evaluation, the disciplines that need to be included in the intercultural course of the Bachelor's and Master’s degree programs, as well as in Postgraduate training and lifelong education.

The research methodology is based on a personal-oriented, personalized, constructivist and competence-based approaches to the development of curriculum in higher education. The study also used empirical methods, content analysis, and expert evaluation. Based on the data obtained during the survey of potential employers and students enrolled in educational programs of humanitarian orientation, organizational and methodological principles for the selection of didactic units of the intercultural course were developed, which have both components specific to the professional orientation and invariant components. The consistency and expediency of using the selected didactic units were evaluated by experts in professional fields and the most qualified and experienced university teachers, who participated in our study. A retrospective analysis of the implementation of the developed intercultural courses in the curriculum allowed us to identify and eliminate shortcomings, which mainly concerned the formation of levels related to the content of the intercultural course indicated in the identifiers of competencies described in the educational program.

As a result of our research, we described the general principles of developing intercultural courses for students of higher education institutions of humanitarian orientation, selected didactic units, and compiled working programs of intercultural courses for various humanitarian areas. The further perspective of our research is the application of the described principles for the development of intercultural courses to include them in the curriculum for master's, postgraduate and continuing education students.

Keywords:

Multicultural education, intercultural course, curriculum, humanitarian education, didactic units.