Three pitfalls in intercultural education: Cultural uniformity, pedagogical neutrality, and presumptions of competence

This article critically examines three persistent pitfalls that undermine the transformative potential of intercultural education: cultural uniformity, pedagogical neutrality, and presumptions of competence. These interconnected tendencies are rooted in essentialist conceptions of culture, the depoliticisation of educational practice, and the instrumental reduction of intercultural competence to a measurable skill. Drawing on critical pedagogy and decolonial scholarship, as well as empirical studies on monolingualism, assimilationism, and institutionalised hierarchies, the article demonstrates how well-intentioned initiatives often reproduce structural power asymmetries, symbolic violence, and epistemic marginalisation. It thus advocates an intercultural education grounded in critical reflexivity, political responsibility, and a sustained commitment to epistemic and social justice. Moving beyond reductive frameworks, the article advances dialogic, participatory, and decolonising approaches that interrogate dominant norms, recognise the pluriform and situated character of knowledge, and foreground the relational dynamics of interculturality. Intercultural learning is thus reframed as an ongoing, power-conscious process of negotiating difference within structurally unequal conditions rather than as the transmission of predefined competencies.