European higher education is currently shaped by competence-based reforms promoted by the Bologna Process, the Tuning Project (González & Wagenaar, 2003), the European Framework for Key Competences (European Commission, 2019), and national regulations such as the Spanish LOMLOE (2020). These frameworks emphasize transversal competences as key elements for employability, democratic citizenship, and social inclusion, positioning them at the core of curriculum design in teacher education. Nevertheless, the extent to which these competences explicitly address diversity, inclusion and interculturality remains insufficiently explored.

In this context, this contribution presents a comparative analysis of transversal competences in Education degrees examining the extent to which those competences explicitly incorporate dimensions of diversity, inclusion, and interculturality.

To achieve this objective, the study adopts a clear conceptual framework. Competence is understood as an integrated configuration of knowledge, procedures, attitudes, and personal capacities that enable effective professional action across multiple dimensions, including knowing, doing, being, and learning to learn (Balaguer et al., 2025; Delors et al., 1996; Isus et al., 2002). Within the Tuning framework, transversal competences are classified as instrumental, interpersonal, and systemic, and are distinguished from subject-specific competences linked to disciplinary knowledge (Beneitone et al., 2021). This perspective provides the analytical basis for examining how transversal competences are formulated in curricula.

Building on this understanding, the study conceptualises diversity as the plurality of social and cultural characteristics present in educational contexts, including cultural background, gender, sexual identity, socio-economic conditions, abilities, and belief systems (Yang et al., 2025). Inclusion is understood as a systemic process aimed at responding to diversity through structural and pedagogical transformation in order to reduce exclusion and inequality (UNESCO, 2003; Wigdorovitz, 2008). From this perspective, intercultural competence refers to the capacity to negotiate cultural meanings, communicate effectively across identities, and act in ways that promote dignity and rights (Chen & Starosta, 1996; Barrett & Borghetti, 2025). It integrates behavioural, affective, and cognitive dimensions and requires critical reflection on cultural difference and social contexts (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2007; Valsiner, 2019). Together, these concepts constitute the theoretical lens through which curricular competences are analysed.

On this basis, the study addresses the following research question: To what extent do transversal competences included in Education degree curricula explicitly incorporate elements of diversity, inclusion, and intercultural competence?

A systematic comparative analysis of official study plans from four Education degrees—Pedagogy, Social Education, Early Childhood Education, and Primary Education—was conducted to examine how transversal competences incorporate dimensions of diversity, inclusion, and interculturality. The study adopted a qualitative comparative curriculum analysis design, focusing on the formal articulation of competences within institutional curriculum documents. Official study plans and publicly available competence descriptions from a Spanish public university were selected as the data corpus, as they represent authoritative and standardised expressions of competence-based reforms at the institutional level. To ensure conceptual coherence and analytical rigour, a coding matrix was developed based on five interrelated conceptual categories derived from relevant theoretical and policy frameworks: competence (Delors et al., 1996; González & Wagenaar, 2003), diversity (García-Prieto et al., 2021; Yang et al., 2025), cultural diversity (Díaz, 2023; Manghi et al., 2022), inclusion (UNESCO, 2003; Wigdorovitz, 2008), and intercultural competence (Chen & Starosta, 1996; Barrett & Borghetti, 2025). Each transversal competence was coded according to multiple analytical dimensions, including explicit references to diversity categories (cultural, gender, socio-economic, abilities, identity), explicit mention of inclusion or inclusive education, references to intercultural communication, respect for difference, rights or social justice, and the degree of conceptual explicitness of these elements (explicit, implicit, or absent). A comparative matrix was constructed to facilitate cross-degree analysis and to identify patterns across programmes. The analysis examined the number of transversal competences incorporating diversity-related dimensions, their distribution across instrumental, interpersonal, and systemic categories, and degree-specific emphases in the articulation of diversity, inclusion, and interculturality. Rather than applying quantitative statistical techniques, the study followed a descriptive-comparative approach aimed at identifying convergences, divergences, and underlying conceptual orientations in curricular formulations. The analysis sought to determine whether diversity and inclusion are structurally embedded in the formal definition of transversal competences or whether they remain implicit and dependent on subsequent pedagogical interpretation. In doing so, the study provides insight into how institutional curricula translate European competence-based policy discourses into explicit curricular commitments to diversity and intercultural education.

The analysis indicates that transversal competences in the examined curricula predominantly emphasise general values such as teamwork, ethical commitment, and social responsibility. However, explicit references to cultural diversity, gender diversity, socio-economic inequality, and intercultural competence are unevenly articulated across degree programmes. Competences related to inclusion are more prominently formulated in Social Education and Pedagogy, whereas Early Childhood Education and Primary Education programmes tend to conceptualise inclusion primarily in terms of attention to diversity or special educational needs. Furthermore, when intercultural competence is addressed, it is frequently embedded implicitly within broader notions of citizenship or social commitment rather than explicitly articulated in terms of intercultural negotiation, critical reflexivity, or rights-based action. From a European perspective, these findings reveal a tension between the normative emphasis on diversity and interculturality in supranational policy frameworks and their concrete curricular implementation at institutional level. While competence-based curricula formally align with European reference frameworks such as the Bologna Process and the European Key Competences, the integration of diversity and intercultural dimensions remains partial and contingent upon programme orientation. This pattern reflects broader challenges within European higher education systems, where transversal competences related to inclusion and interculturality are often rhetorically endorsed but inconsistently operationalised in curriculum design. Overall, the results suggest that the translation of European competence-based reforms into explicit curricular commitments to diversity and intercultural education is still uneven, highlighting the need for more coherent and systematic integration of these dimensions across teacher education programmes.

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