Going forward with Intercultural Competence (IC) in teacher education and training: Beyond the ‘walls built by ghosts’?

In this chapter, the authors call the phenomena, beliefs and the ensuing attitudes, ‘walls that have been built by ghosts’. They guide the reader in his/her interrogation of the idea of Intercultural Competence (IC), to help him/her tread their own paths through the muddy roads of IC in education. Many ready-made ideas, discourses, words and phrases are imposed on scholars and practitioners about IC that many people do not dare to question or dis-use. Used in language education and teacher education in different parts of the world, this model has been recently complemented by the Confucian Model which relies on a revised understanding of Confucian Ethics. Teacher education has sometimes presented its responsibility to be the delivery of a concrete toolkit of skills and answers for any foreseeable contingencies in schools. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.