Intercultural Communication and Universal Design for Learning: Designing Community-Centered ELT For Equity, Engagement, and Cultural Agility

Egle Slezas and Jennifer Lacroix, Ed.D., Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Introduction:

As English Language Teaching (ELT) classrooms diversify across identities, modalities, and abilities, teachers need designs that preempt barriers and foster ethical, relational intercultural engagement. Universal Design for Learning (UDL), advanced through culturally sustaining, social-justice–oriented articulations, supports multiple means of engagement, representation, and action responsive to learner variability (Anyanwu & Olaitan, 2025). Coupled with intercultural communication competence frameworks that privilege reflective, context-sensitive, non-stereotypical interaction, UDL operationalizes equity and global interaction skills (Bennett, 1993; Byram, 1997). This pairing advances the Intercultural Communication Interest Section’s (ICIS) aligned outcomes, which include accessibility, intercultural competence, and ethical communication, within TESOL curricula, assessment, and teacher learning practices.

The community-focused project sequence presented in this article demonstrates how UDL principles can be intentionally integrated with intercultural communication frameworks to support equitable, relational, and culturally responsive learning for English language learners. Drawing on Byram’s (1997) model of intercultural communicative competence, cultural agility, and relational approaches to communication, the sequence foregrounds learner agency, contextual meaning-making, and ethical interaction. Rather than prioritizing linguistic correctness alone, the design emphasizes multiple pathways for engagement, expression, and collaboration, enabling students to negotiate identity, power, and perspective within authentic community contexts. In doing so, the project illustrates how UDL-informed pedagogy can cultivate genuine global interaction skills while fostering emotionally meaningful and socially situated language learning experiences.

Conceptual Framework

This article is grounded in an integrated conceptual framework that brings together Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to support ethical, adaptive communication in diverse English language learning contexts. Intercultural communication is defined here as the ability to interact effectively and ethically across linguistic, cultural, disciplinary, and power-based differences through meaning negotiation, relational awareness, and reflective practice (Byram, 1997). Byram’s (1997) ICC model conceptualizes this competence through four interrelated dimensions: attitudes of openness and curiosity; knowledge of self, others, and sociocultural contexts; skills to interpret, relate, discover, and interact; and critical cultural awareness, emphasizing ethical evaluation and responsibility. Cultural agility further extends ICC by foregrounding adaptability, rapid learning, and relational integrity across unfamiliar and evolving contexts, including academic, professional, and digital environments.

UDL complements ICC by providing a pedagogical framework that anticipates learner variability rather than treating difference as deficit (CAST, 2024). Through its three principles—multiple means of engagement, representation, and action/expression—UDL creates conditions that support intercultural learning processes such as perspective-taking, negotiation of meaning, and reflective dialogue (Anyanwu & Olaitan, 2025). Together, ICC and UDL form a coherent framework for designing inclusive, relational, and context-sensitive ELT learning environments.

Within this integrated framework, intercultural learning explicitly rejects reductionist treatments of culture that rely on static facts, national stereotypes, or decontextualized customs. It moves beyond deficit-oriented practices such as accent reduction, native-like norms, and politeness formulas divorced from power, identity, and positionality (Byram, 1997). Similarly, colorblind or values-neutral approaches are inadequate for addressing ethical responsibility in communication. Instead, ICC is understood as an iterative, reflective, and relational process in which learners continuously examine assumptions, negotiate meaning, repair misunderstandings, and engage ethically across differences.

Teaching Context

The teaching context for this article is Northeastern University Immerse (NUI), an academic bridge program designed to support international undergraduate students transitioning into U.S. higher education. Within the multilingual writing curriculum, students complete an advanced, six-credit critical writing course in their second semester. The course serves a diverse population of emergent bilinguals with high academic ambition who require support in academic writing, research practices, and disciplinary discourse. Course goals emphasize rhetorical awareness, source-based argumentation, sustained dialogue, and intercultural growth, positioning writing as a relational practice connected to identity, ethics, and global academic communication.

Course Design Overview: Mapping the Course to UDL Principles and “Community” as an Organizing Concept

The course design is intentionally mapped to the three UDL principles to support intercultural learning and learner variability (Anyanwu & Olaitan, 2025; CAST, 2024). Multiple Means of Representation are enacted through diverse scholarly and community-based readings, peer-modeled communication in fishbowl dialogues, and multimodal, real-world representations generated through field research. Multiple Means of Action and Expression are supported by student choice in inquiry methods, genres, and production modes, allowing alignment with individual strengths, linguistic resources, and academic goals. Multiple Means of Engagement are fostered through community-centered inquiry, meaningful student choice, and authentic audiences, increasing relevance, emotional investment, and ethical communicative stakes.

Conceptually, the course is organized around community as a sustained intercultural inquiry that allows students to examine how language, identity, belonging, and power are constructed through communication in academic, local, and transnational contexts (Lowe, 2021). Community was chosen as an organizing concept because it is experientially accessible yet culturally variable, inviting comparison, reflexivity, and ethical engagement. Across a four-project sequence, students move from descriptive inquiry to critical analysis, research-based argument, and reflective synthesis, supported by interdisciplinary readings that foreground discourse, identity, and intercultural communication in higher education and public life.

The four-project sequence is intentionally aligned with the three UDL principles to support intercultural development. Project 1, a persuasive essay defining community, emphasizes multiple means of representation as students engage diverse texts and perspectives, fostering ICC attitudes, contextual knowledge, and interpretive skills. Project 2, a community research project, centers engagement through local, experiential inquiry, cultivating empathy, ethical listening, and observational competence. Project 3, a public-facing multimodal project, offers extensive action and expression choices in genre, audience, and medium, foregrounding cultural agility, accessibility, and ethical communication. Project 4, a final transfer reflection, integrates all three principles through metacognitive analysis, supporting the transfer of intercultural learning to future academic, professional, and community contexts (see Table 1. Project Sequence Overview: UDL-Aligned Design).

Table 1. Project Sequence Overview: UDL-Aligned Design

Dialogic Pedagogy: Fishbowl Discussions

Fishbowl discussions are structured, dialogic activities in which a small group of students engage in sustained conversation while peers observe, listen, and later reflect before roles rotate. In this course, fishbowls are student‑led and intentionally instructor‑absent, positioning learners as co-constructors of meaning and responsible interlocutors. This design fosters trust and productive vulnerability by privileging lived experience and uncertainty, while strengthening relational communication, perspective-taking, and active listening. Over time, fishbowls contribute to emotional engagement and a shared sense of academic community, reinforcing intercultural awareness through dialogue rather than performance.

Outcomes: Building ICC and Cultural Agility

Across the course, students demonstrated growth in all components of Byram’s (1997) ICC model, including increased openness, contextual knowledge, interpretive skill, and ethical cultural awareness. They also developed cultural agility through adaptive communication, tolerance for ambiguity, and responsible, ethical storytelling in public-facing projects. Reflective writing and dialogue revealed relational confidence, emotional engagement, and increased capacity to negotiate meaning across difference, signaling meaningful intercultural and communicative development.

UDL-informed intercultural course design helps dismantle linguistic, cultural, and affective barriers by anticipating learner variability and valuing multiple communicative pathways. TESOL educators can adapt similar project sequences by centering community-based inquiry, dialogic learning, and multimodal expression, thereby shifting instructional goals from language correctness toward ethical, relational, and globally situated interaction competence.

Conclusion

For ICIS readers, this article underscores how UDL functions as an enabling framework for equitable, emotionally meaningful, and culturally responsive intercultural communication development. When paired with community-based, choice-driven pedagogy, UDL prepares multilingual learners to engage ethically and adaptively in real-world intercultural contexts, fostering sustainable global interaction skills beyond the classroom.

References

Anyanwu, L., & Olaitan, D. A. (2025). Culturally responsive pedagogy and Universal Design for Learning: For building inclusive and accessible curriculum for diverse learners. International Journal of Academic Multidisciplinary Research (IJAMR), 9(5), 129–134. http://ijeais.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/5/IJAMR250518.pdf

Bennett, M. J. (1993). Towards ethnorelativism: A developmental model of intercultural sensitivity. In R. M. Paige (Ed.), Education for the Intercultural Experience (2nd ed., pp. 21-72). Intercultural Press.

Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

CAST (2024). CAST Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 3.0. Retrieved from https://udlguidelines.cast.org

Lowe, T. (2021). What is “community” and why is it important? Centre for Public Impact. https://medium.com/centre-for-public-impact/what-is-community-2e895219a205

Egle Slezas is a part-time instructor at the College of Professional Studies at Northeastern University and a learning designer at Brown University. She is passionate about creating engaging and effective learning environments that foster collaboration, equity, and a sense of belonging for every student.

Dr. Jennifer Lacroix is a global educator, award-winning professor, and founder of Authenticity, a cross-cultural communication consultancy. Named the 2025 X-Culture Best Professor, she teaches at Northeastern University and leads programs that help individuals and organizations communicate across cultures with clarity, empathy, and confidence. With a passion for inclusive leadership and cultural agility, she empowers authentic global voices and builds stronger, more connected teams.