Indonesian Pre-service Teachers’ Intercultural Awareness and Competence in SEA TEACHER Project: Implications for Professional Teacher Development

International teaching experience is critical in educational teaching as it enables pre-service teachers to expand their knowledge and abilities. SEA Teacher or "Pre-Service Student Teacher Exchange in Southeast Asia" is a SEAMEO’s project designed to offer pre-service student teachers from Southeast Asian universities the opportunity to have teaching experience in schools overseas. However, differences in teaching practice will occur as a result of cultural, pedagogical, and linguistic differences. This study examines the intercultural and teaching experiences of Indonesian pre-service teachers, focusing on intercultural awareness and the implementation of intercultural competencies. It also examines the challenges faced and the significance meaning of the experiences for their professional teaching development. A qualitative case study was used as the research design. The study's data was drawn from open-ended questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and document analysis of participants’ blogs. This work was carried out at the 8th batch SEA Teacher Project in 2021. Seven Pre-service Indonesian teachers from different universities who taught in the Philippines were recruited as participants. The findings indicate that the majority of respondents believe that during the SEA Teacher Program, pre-service teachers gained cultural and pedagogical experiences, gained the ability to compare and mediate cultural differences and similarities, and felt challenged by a lack of school infrastructure, access, and teaching facilities. Respondents confirmed that the SEA Teachers program had a significant meaning on their future careers by improving their perspectives and teaching practices. Keywords: Intercultural Awareness (ICA), Intercultural Competence (IC), Professional Teacher Development (PDT)