Reconociendo al otro: Retos para la apreciación de la diversidad y la multiculturalidad en la educación superior.

The competency-based approach is a focus of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Provides a common international language, to define and express the academic and professional profiles considered optimal, and to set the curriculum offered by each university, as these proposals make training as the backbone to define the exact set of skills that can and should achieve the graduates in various disciplines and qualifications. The educational model set up around this concept is basic to a changing society that formulates and reformulates their demands constantly and simultaneously seeks to conceive in terms of university education and employability profile. In the Tuning Project (2000), one of the first initiatives was born in the Socrates program to respond to the Bologna Declaration and the Prague Communiqué, we formulated a list of thirty competences rather than related to any subject area or specific discipline, but related to all areas of professional and academic performance. These skills are classified into three levels: instrumental, interpersonal and systemic. While all are important, highlights the framed as "appreciation of diversity and multiculturalism." This competition covers interpersonal understanding and acceptance of diversity interindividual (sex, age, physical ability, sensory, intellectual or mental health), linguistic, social and cultural (religion, ideology and / or ethnicity) as a component of personal enrichment and collectively to develop harmonious relations among the people. It has psychological, social and professional and is intended to respond to cultural diversity in an increasingly globalized world. It also represents a set of attributes cross, valuable and useful to all people working in relationship with others. Implies express and understand different perspectives, negotiate meaning and express empathy, which is a relevant resource for professional achievement and citizenship. There are different models of this competition relate differently sociolinguistic components, communication and cultural, but the main challenge is to integrate outside those contexts. As with the other generic skills, it is necessary to establish mechanisms to facilitate acquisition and parameters for valuing. The current situation is irreversible and university classrooms are a mirror of society that will never be monocultural. To address this situation suggests some strategies such as: a) Develop educational interventions on knowledge and contact between different cultures, any disciplinary field, b) Facilitate and promote processes of exchange, interaction and cooperation between cultures, with a treatment equal to them (take the Erasmus model); c) Design specific training for teachers; d) Develop educational resources for multicultural work at the university level; e) Open specific lines of educational research and innovation-oriented teaching multiculturalism