Intercultural Competence and Training Needs of University Staff: Insights from Critical Incident Analysis

This paper explores intercultural training needs of university staff through the analysis of intercultural critical incidents that were shared by participants in a survey conducted in four universities in Switzerland. In the survey, participants were prompted to describe intercultural critical incidents, to self-assess their intercultural sensitivity and competence, and to indicate their interest in further development. Using qualitative content analysis, categories of incidents were developed based on the Critical Incident Technique. The findings suggest that participants whose scores indicate a higher level of readiness to engage in intercultural training are better able to perceive nuanced details of intercultural critical incidents and to analyse them from an ethno-relative perspective. The findings further suggest that workshops on relationship-building and empathy in intercultural contexts may offer relevant entry points for training of participants with lower scores.