Abstract:

World in all times was interrelated and now even more. Our actions, as well as attitude and opinion, have a great influence on others, even from a distance. As well as the cultural differences - that also could be distinguish not only traditionally according to the ethnicity but also according to the gender, age, social status and etc. characteristics - that influence everyone's perception, behaviour, working and learning style and etc. At the same time, we need more tolerance and empathy to understand and accept others, especially those who behave, think, and act differently, also in the teaching/learning process. The need for multicultural literacy, which could be described as the ability to understand and appreciate the parallels and differences between customs, values, and beliefs of your culture and a different culture, is obvious.

Multicultural literacy is one of the most relevant competencies in current world. It is the 21st-century's competence that is needed to become active citizens who will work towards achieving social justice within communities and in the entire world (Boutte, 2008). The analysis of theoretical and practical discourse emphasizes the need for development of multicultural literacy for future jobs as well as their relevance in today’s teaching/learning process. One of the possibilities to develop students' multicultural literacy is to involve the main ideas, principles, attitudes, and skills of multiculturality in the study programmes and other extra-curriculum activities. The presentation will be based on the survey and experience analysis of Siauliu valstybinė kolegija higher educational institution in developing those competencies for our national and international students.

Analysis of empirical data showed how multicultural literacy could be developed in formal and non-formal education, what are the positive factors as well as challenges and problems, how self-directed learning skills help here.

Theoretical and empirical discourse analysis enables to distinguish some positive factors that could be the basis for more effective multicultural literacy education. The most important positive factors are the following: ability to overcome prejudices; more empathy and tolerance; productive, constructive participation in another culture and global world, better understanding your own and other cultures, openness for an unknown, different and untraditional, ability to communicate and act beyond your cultural boundaries and etc.

On the other hand, development of multicultural literacy is not harmonic process. It means that it is necessary to continue it in all possible places, aspects and levels because it is obvious in the successful situation some challenges and problems rise.

The challenges and problems that are needed to discussed are such as sometimes weak motivation of majority of students to participate in Erasmus+ or other programmes, self-directed learning competencies that could enable students to be more active and successful not only in multicultural education but in all kind of their studies; teachers’ (professors’) competences in self-directed learning/teaching as well as in internationalization and multiculturality, lack empathy and tolerance in society; lack competences of some students (for example, reflection), lack experience being in another culture, close-mindedness and etc.

Keywords:

Multicultural literacy, higher education, simulation, case studies, new strategies in development of multicultural competencies.