Intercultural Lecture Workshop "Intercultural Dialogue on Cultural Concepts for Transcultural Understanding: Practice to Theory"

Intercultural Dialogue on Cultural Concepts for Transcultural Understanding:

Practice to Theory

Prof. David Dalsky, Kyoto University

While intercultural communication education often starts with theory to inform classroom practice, this lecture-workshop takes the opposite approach. Participants will engage with a “Transcultural Understanding Pedagogy” practice that the presenter developed with his students through a series of primarily virtual intercultural exchanges over more than a decade. These exchanges involved participants from Japan, Finland, Germany, China, and Indonesia (Javanese and Balinese) (Dalsky et al., 2025).

Workshop Overview:

1. Introduction and explanation of the pedagogical components of the practice,
2. Demonstration of classroom applications of the model (virtual: Javanese/Chinese; face-to-face: Japanese/Javanese/Chinese),
3. Presentation of the outcomes of these intercultural exchanges through animations and illustrations, and
4. Participation of attendees who will engage with intercultural communication exercises focused on Norwegian, Sámi, and Japanese indigenous (culturally specific) concepts.

The event will conclude by discussing and reflecting on our experience, framed within an interdisciplinary theory derived from practice (the “Equivalent Indigenous Concept Model”; Yang & Dalsky, 2025). Finally, the presenter will share a behind-the-scenes account of his journey from practitioner-research to theory development in intercultural communication education.