The Formation of Multi-Culturalness as a Prerequisite for the Efficient Performance of Lecturers in Situations of Inter-Ethnic Communication

A characteristic trait of the global society is the introduction of the idea of multi-culturalness into all areas of human life. Therefore, general cultural competencies shall include such a constituent as multi-cultural competency of personality to enable efficient performance in situations of inter-ethnic communication. The set problem has been tackled by all social institutions, however, the central role in that regard is the teaching community, which has a strong influence on the content of young people’s consciousness and behaviour. In this regard, it is important to update the problem of shaping the multicultural competence of university lecturers, which is the purpose of this study. To achieve the set objective, several intercomplementary research methods and techniques were applied: the theoretical analysis of scientific literature, observations, questionnaires, a content-analysis method, testing. A study of 200 teachers showed that in the minds of teachers, knowledge regarding the specifics of a multicultural environment, the image of a representative of another culture and inter-ethnic interactions are presented at the everyday level, are formed spontaneously based on their own experience, which requires the creation of special conditions for their further development. The content-analysis has yielded that markers used during defining a multi-cultural environment often include such semantic constructions as ‘various cultures’ and ‘several cultures’. A study of the characteristics of communicative tolerance showed that most teachers have a high level of tolerance manifested in various situations of interpersonal relations, whereas a low level was not detected.