Theme: the role of case study technology in formulating communicative competence of academic lyceum students contents

Literature Review

The intercultural competence framework comprises attitudes, knowledge and skills (Deardorff, 2009). The essential attitudes include respect, openness, curiosity and discovery of other cultures. Openness and curiosity imply a willingness to risk and to move beyond one's comfort zone. In communicating respect to others, it is important to demonstrate that others are valued. The knowledge necessary consists of cultural self-awareness (meaning the ways in which one's culture has influenced one's identity and worldview), culture-specific knowledge, and deep cultural knowledge including understanding the world from others' perspectives. The skills are the ones that address the acquisition and processing of knowledge, i.e., observing, listening, evaluating, analysing, interpreting, and relating. These attitudes, knowledge and skills ideally lead to an internal outcome that consists of flexibility, adaptability, an ethnorelative perspective and empathy. At this point, individuals are able to see from others' perspectives and to respond to them according to the way in which the other person desires to be treated. Individuals may reach this outcome in varying degrees of success. Finally, the summation of the attitudes, knowledge and skills as well as the internal outcomes are demonstrated through the behaviour and communication of the individual, which become the visible external outcomes of intercultural competence experienced by others. These five overall elements can be visualized through the model of intercultural competence, as illustrated in Figure 1, thereby providing a framework to further guide efforts in developing intercultural competence¹.

Figure 1: Model of Intercultural Competence (Source: Deardorff, 2009)

An educated and advanced Uzbekistan

In Uzbekistan, the percentage of population with higher education is 9.8 percent (Nessipbayeva & Dalayeva,). This percentage is the lowest among the Central Asia republics. Higher education reforms in Uzbekistan started in 1997 with the adoption of the Education Act and the National Programme for Personnel Training (NPPT). The aim of these initiatives was to increase the percentage of the population with higher education qualifications and to train highly qualified specialists to the equivalent level in advanced or developed states. At present, there are 76 HEIs in Uzbekistan, including 11 joint higher education establishments (EACEA,). These institutions are all legal entities and there are no non-government universities in Uzbekistan (EACEA,).
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, higher education reforms in Uzbekistan moved toward standardised university entrance tests as a criterion for admission. There was also a restructuring away from sectoral ministerial control, encouraged diversification of education provision as well as decentralisation of governance, salary, and tuition structures (Heyneman, Silova & Steiner-Khamsi, 2008). The implementation of the unified education policy is governed by the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialised Education (MHSSE), which is responsible for the development of the education sector as a whole, including the implementation of education reforms (EACEA,). Generally, the changes were perceived as necessary to enhance the Soviet higher education system embedded in Uzbekistan, while upgrading the system to benchmark against international higher education requirements¹.