In the context of globalization, the intercultural competence (ICC) has become an indispensable ability to be a global citizen and member of the international community. ICC attracts increasing attention in a wide range of countries and by multi-country organisations; e.g., the European Commission, the US Administration and others (ACE, 2016; Association of International Educators, 2007; Department for Education and Skills, 2004; Meer & Modood, 2012). In higher education, ICC is an avenue to cultivate undergraduates’ intercultural competence to be prepared for the future and global workforce (Griffith, Wolffeld, Armon, Rios & Liu, 2016). For this reason, higher education institutions recruit international students and teachers through internationalization at home, and mobility programs such as Erasmus Programme and European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students, or the US Fullbright Program to encourage international students and researchers. This allows stakeholders to give opportunities for intercultural communication, understanding, and cooperation. This is in particular through the provision of Immersive Learning opportunities (Beelen & Jones, 2015; Brewer, 2004; Chen & Su, 2021; Mestenhauser, 2003).

 ICC implies that its development is fostered in an international environment, through interaction and cooperation with people from different cultures and countries. This is exemplified in ongoing OECD actions (2016, 2018) that assess intercultural competence mastery and development; see the PISA 2018 global competence evaluation for 15-year-old teenagers. This also implies that intercultural education has to start at an early education stage.

The above - in the context of the present study - challenges the competences of preservice primary and secondary teachers (PsTs). Next to their ICC mastery, we should consider competences to develop professional competences for developing their students’ ICC. This plays a role in dealing with students from different cultural backgrounds but also in the development of the ICC of students. These teacher competences question for instance strategies to be adopted to pursue ICC competences. Current practices mainly build on oversea exchange, oversea immersion learning practices. Also evaluation approaches have to be rethought.

An additional question is related to the methodologies to map PsTs’ mastery of ICC. The nature of the ICC competence calls for an investment in qualitative data collection approaches, such as (written) reflections, focus group discussion, open-ended structured questions, semi-structured interviews, critical thinking activities, and field notes are applied to learn the transformation of preservice teachers’ ICC. In the literature, we mainly find quantitative or mixed data collection approaches; see e.g., the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) and the MyCAP (My Cultural Awareness Profile) questions in Su, Valcke and Chou’s (unpublished) research. However, these instruments are not geared to map PsTs’ ICC mastery.

The above brings us to the guiding research questions for the present research:

1. Which ICC of preservice teachers are being validated by the teacher education community?
2. What are relevant performance indicators that can be linked to the dimensions of preservice teachers' intercultural competence?

The research builds on the results of a systematic literature review to start tackling these research questions.

The present research applies the Delphi Technique to study the output of the literature review. The Delphi technique is suitable to clarify complex concepts from the perspective of stakeholders (Green, 2014; Kaynak, Bloom, & Leibold, 1994; Mitchell & McGoldrick, 1994). According to Delphi Technique, related steps are stated as follows: 1. Participants In terms of the number of experts, Fowler (2013) advocated that there should be no less than seven while other researchers advocated that there should be no less than ten (Mitchell & McGoldrick, 1994). Prendergast and Marr (1994) believed that experts number of 8-12 people can reduce group errors. The selection of experts needs to be considered that they have been in the relevant research fields and have the profound knowledge and insights on the research topic (Keeney, Hasson, & McKenna, 2001). Based on this, the experts in this study will be 10-12 experts in the field of teacher education, ICC and educational indicators respectively. 2. Instruments, procedures and data processing After reviewing related literature, the first draft of the items for PsTs’ ICC performance indicators will be applied as the instrument to conduct the investigation twice based on Delphi Technique. The first investigation is expected to collect 12 valid questionnaires. On the basis of the results of the first round of investigation, the second round investigation will be developed, and also 12 valid questionnaires will also be collected. The collected data will be processed as below: (1) List the mode and average of the listed items from all the respondents; (2) perform the mode ranking of each item; (3) perform the mean ranking of the same mode; (4) conduct a single group t-test to see the significance on each item; (5) decide the fitness and the rank of importance for the items.

The expected results will be divided into the following two parts: 1. The analysis and expected result in the first investigation In the first investigation, the analysis will be given to see the item fitness and importance. All listed items are sorted based on the mode, and the indicator which ranks at the first place in the mode can be given priority as an important indicator. Based on one group t-test, all the items which will be in the second investigation have to reach statistical significance. If the indicators are statistically significant, these indicators will be included as ICC performance indicators. In addition, the corrections made by 12 experts on the description of items were further integrated as the items used in the second investigation. 2. The analysis and expected result in the second investigation The modification based on the results of first investigation will be applied in the second investigation. The results of second analysis will also be conducted in the same way as in first step. The final indicators are decided. Based on the above, this study will propose systematic PsTs’ ICC performance indicators to provide guidelines for examining the effectiveness of PsTs’ ICC performance. It is expected that according to the results, in addition to providing the indicator for PsTs’ ICC performance, it can also be used as the references for assessing the status quo of ICC before cultivating preservice teachers’ ICC, and further for designing preservice teachers’ ICC training programs. The indicator will be a considerable value for the reference for EU countries which attach the importance to ICC policies in the context of globalization.

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