ABSTRACT
Our interconnected world with its complex and global problems requires students to be engaged not only with their own community – be it local or national – but also with other, unfamiliar communities both within and beyond the boundaries of their country, and thus become intercultural citizens. Education for intercultural citizenship (ICit), i.e., encouraging students to become engaged citizens during their education, leads students to encounter with others, which involve public discourse. While there are many reasons for the lack of civility in public discourse, (blind) convictions binding them to specific social groups may undermine students’ ability to collaborate with others to solve complex problems. Here we develop previous work on ICit by analyzing the relationship between intellectual humility (IH) and ICit and suggesting how to work on ICit and the concept of IH can enrich each other. In particular, we look at how convictions, especially blind convictions, might prevent us from making judgments based on specific evidence and reasoned argument, which is a foundational ability in ICit. Combining the insights from work on IH and on ICit provides a stronger basis for developing the capacities and actions of intercultural citizens.
