The Development of Students’ Cross-cultural Competence in the Conditions of Transitive Society

North Ossetian state university named after K.L. Khetagurov, Department of pedagogy and psychology, 362025 Vladikavkaz, Russia

^* Corresponding author: borisbit@mail.ru

Abstract

The study is devoted to the substantiation of the need for the development of students’ cross-cultural competence at the time of transitive society: it demonstrates that the current stage of social development has an actualizing effect on the psychology of the individual due to the fact that the society and its individual representative resemble the image of two-faced Janus, when one side of the person is turned to the past and the other – to the future. Under these conditions cross-cultural competence as an activity-oriented concept, the aim of which is a social adaptation of the student’s personality through the acculturation in the multicultural world, becomes a psychological and pedagogical imperative. It is noted that the cross-cultural competence in the era of postmodernism and globalization contributes to the education of students in the spirit of openness, pluralism of tastes, opinions and tolerance; at the cognitive level it is a significant expansion of cognitive space, a better understanding of both personal and other cultures. The Methodological Base of the Study: the humanistic paradigm in education and social Sciences, system, activity, cultural and personality-oriented approaches. The Research Methods: analysis and synthesis, systematization and classification, observation and generalization.