Higher education institutes, including research universities and universities of applied sciences, face the challenge of developing effective internationalisation practices to prepare students for the demands of a globalising world. Researchers reporting on studies that are focused on universities’ internationalisation practices show that few practices are effective to develop students’ intercultural sensitivity. Broadly speaking, intercultural sensitivity means the ability to distinguish between real differences in values and behaviours across cultures, as well as the appreciation of values and behaviours even if they differ from one’s own. Interestingly, across the board researchers do not provide an explanation of what drives intercultural sensitivity development. This study reports on the impact of a new learning intervention that effectively developed local Dutch students’ intercultural sensitivity in the Netherlands, and it provides an explanation of this impact. For the intervention the theory of the Creative Action Methodology pedagogy (CAM) was used as a heuristic tool. CAM is a pedagogical approach that focuses on developing critical, analytical, and creative skills by having students break away from a culture of the truth. Results in this mixed-methods study, using the Intercultural Development Inventory and interviews, reveal that students significantly developed their intercultural sensitivity as they became empowered to break away from a culture of the truth.

Intercultural sensitivity is one of the more influential fields of intercultural communication, engagement, equity, and inclusion. It describes the standard ways in which people experience, interpret, and interact across cultural differences. Intercultural sensitivity starts with the awareness that there are genuine differences between cultures and that these variations are commonly mirrored in the approaches by which people communicate and relate to one another. By recognizing how one experiences cultural predictions about one’s effectiveness of intercultural communication can be made. Educational interventions can be tailored to facilitate intercultural sensitivity development. Generally, this development signifies a move from an ethnocentric view to an ethnorelative view. Researchers have undertaken several approaches, not only to understand ethnocentrism but also to attempt to reduce it in Higher Education Institutions. In this essay, we first discuss the concepts of intercultural sensitivity and intercultural competence and how these are connected. Then, we present several studies focused on internationalisation practices to develop students’ intercultural sensitivity and/or competence, finalising with an alternative pedagogical approach to intercultural sensitivity development -The Creative Action Methodology (CAM).

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