Latent interculturality in health professions education: hidden cultural tensions within apparently homogeneous contexts.

Abstract

This scholarly perspective examines intercultural tension that can emerge even in health professions education (HPE) settings assumed to be culturally homogeneous. Although discussions of intercultural education have often focused on visible differences such as ethnicity, nationality, and religion, HPE may also involve friction rooted in divergent assumptions about authority, communication, professionalism, hierarchy, and appropriate participation. This article introduces latent interculturality to address this problem. Latent interculturality refers to culturally patterned differences in values, norms, and role expectations within communities regarded as homogeneous, where the cultural basis of these differences is not ordinarily recognized. When differing expectations come into tension, the resulting friction may instead be attributed to individual attitude, motivation, maturity, or professionalism. Within HPE, expectations transmitted through professional socialization and the hidden curriculum may become established as professional common sense. High-context communication can amplify this process by leaving expectations implicit, whereas professional closure can stabilize particular expectations and give them evaluative force through supervision, assessment, and gatekeeping. Neither condition is necessary for latent interculturality to occur; rather, they help explain why culturally patterned mismatches may remain unrecognized and become institutionally consequential. The analysis identifies three educational responses: recognizing latent interculturality, calibrating professional expectations without over-accommodation, and fostering intercultural understanding through dialogue. These responses require attention at the individual, relational, and institutional levels. Latent interculturality thus provides a relational and group-level lens for understanding educational friction that might otherwise be reduced to individual deficiencies and for reconsidering the professional expectations through which learners' conduct is interpreted.