Course features

This course equips educators and education professionals with theory and practical tools to foster inclusion, navigate cultural complexities, and create equitable learning environments—empowering you to meet future challenges and support every learner across borders and backgrounds.

In today’s global and multicultural learning environments, cultural competency is not optional—it is essential.

Whether you work in schools, universities, or professional learning contexts, you’ll develop the critical awareness, practical strategies, and reflective habits needed to respond to cultural complexity with empathy, clarity, and leadership.

Guided by Dr Shuangyu Li, Reader and Director of King’s Cultural Competency at King’s College London, this course will help you to:

• Understand key concepts in cultural competency

• Reflect critically on your own professional practice

• Develop practical strategies for inclusive education

• Communicate effectively across cultural differences

• Promote inclusive practices within your educational setting

Taking an action-oriented approach, the course will enable you to navigate cultural differences, enhance your communication across diverse contexts, and build inclusive and effective learning environments.

Course format

This course is delivered through the edX learning platform and is designed to be completed in approximately 5 hours, along with 3 hours of self-directed study.

What you'll learn

This course will enable students to:

• Develop practical strategies for inclusive education

• Explore key concepts such as culture, intersectionality, power and positionality

• Communicate effectively across differences in language, culture and worldview

• Use the ACT model, an action-oriented framework for developing cultural competence

• Examine how background, values and assumptions shape interactions and decisions

• Identify moments where unintentional bias or exclusion may occur

• Create welcoming and equitable classroom environments for all

• Adapt teaching, assessment and student support to suit diverse learner needs

• Strengthen skills in active listening, respectful questioning and intercultural dialogue

• Navigate misunderstanding with confidence

• Promote inclusion and cultural competence in your educational setting

• Develop culturally competent leadership and collaboration skills

Entry requirements

No formal requirements. English proficiency recommended (IELTS Level 6).

Further information

King’s College London has partnered with the online education platform edX to deliver self-paced short courses to learners worldwide. Anyone can audit the course materials for free, excluding graded assessments, for a limited time.

For full access to the course, including graded assessments, and to obtain a verified certificate upon successful completion, the USD fee is $199.

The GBP course fee displayed on this page is for illustrative purposes only and subject to change in line with current exchange rates.

Payment for verified access to the course is made directly via edX. Please see edX Terms of Service for further information.