Intercultural education, a response to contemporary multilingual societies and a new challenge for Maritime Education and Training (MET) Institutions

Globalization has made intercultural communication inevitable. Communicating with other cultures characterizes today's workplace, classroom, and community. Intercultural communication is of importance in any career field, but for maritime institutions, especially, this topic has become a, must-have' of education. The teacher faces new challenges while teaching students pertaining to different cultural and ethnic environments. The way of approaching such issues is vital if we aim to achieve a peaceful global unity. On the other hand the onboard training of our nautical students has come in the aid of identifying the features of the challenges they face during their onboard training. Such challenges are the result of a multicultural crew dynamics made up of different people speaking different languages. This is the reason of tackling such a topic in our paper as we are trying to develop methodological and pedagogical strategies for intercultural education adapted both to our own environment and to the cultural diversity that our students must absorb. The results of our research will help us to develop and implement the "Intercultural Communication Onboard Ships" as a course that is to be implemented within marine education curriculum (C) 2013 The Authors Published by Elsevier Ltd.