Intercultural competence and related global learning outcomes are increasingly becoming a priority for postsecondary institutions to assess. This chapter discusses the complexities of assessing this outcome.

Assessing intercultural competence

Colleges and universities are increasingly internationalizing their curricular and cocurricular efforts on campuses; subsequently, it is important to compare whether internationalization at home activities may be associated with students' self-reported development of global, international, and intercultural (GII) competencies. This study examined undergraduate students' participation in study abroad and on-campus global/ international activities within nine large public research universities in the United States. Framed within several intercultural development theories, the results of this study suggest that students' participation in activities related to internationalization at home—participation in on-campus global/international activities such as enrollment in global/international coursework, interactions with international students, and participation in global/international cocurricular activities—may yield greater perceived benefits than study abroad for students' development of GII competencies.

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Internationalization at Home Alternatives to Study Abroad: Implications for Students’ Development of Global, International, and Intercultural Competencies

The vexed question of the relationship between ‘language’ and ‘culture’ will be the starting point. I do not propose to ‘resolve’ the question but to consider some ways in which relationships between cultural awareness and language awareness might be conceptualised and then have some impact on language education. By ‘language education’ I refer to the teaching and learning of all languages in a curriculum, whether this be the synchronic experienced curriculum of a learner at a given point in time or the diachronic curriculum of their lifelong learning. I will draw on the Council of Europe's concept and platform for ‘Languages in Education, Languages of Education’ and plurilingual and intercultural education to provide an overview of the issues involved. Finally, I will consider the impact on teaching and learning in practice by suggesting that, in the best cases, language and culture teaching produces, through the development of linguistic and intercultural competence, alternative conceptualisations of th...

Language awareness and (critical) cultural awareness – relationships, comparisons and contrasts

Internationalization has been one of the most powerful and pervasive forces at work within higher education around the world during the last two decades. With remarkably few exceptions, no corner of the globe or institutional type has proven itself immune to the call to “internationalize” in some fashion. In this process, practical applications and conceptual understandings of internationalization have evolved significantly, while the overall stakes in the internationalization game have become noticeably higher. Whereas at the beginning of the 21st century, international orientations, characteristics, and programmatic offerings of a college or university may have been perceived as merely an interesting and appealing component of an institution’s profile, today internationalization is a core issue of concern to the higher education enterprise, touching directly on questions of social and curricular relevance, institutional quality and prestige, national competitiveness, and innovation potential. More recently, for better or worse, institutions also view internationalization as a source of potential revenue. The authors of this chapter have previously asserted that it is “not possible for higher education to opt out of the global environment, since its effects are unavoidable” (Altbach, Reisberg, & Rumbley, 2009, p. 7). Yet, in spite of the powerful influence of the global context, “local realities of wealth, language, academic development, and other factors all affect the extent to which institutions are motivated and able to internationalize” (Altbach et al., 2009, p. 7). This means that leaders in higher education must be prepared to track and understand the broadest global trends in higher education, as well as the internationalization of higher education more specifically, while at the same time attending effectively to the unique needs and aspirations of their particular institutions, local communities, and regional or national contexts. Thus it can be quite challenging in today’s complex and fast-moving environments, which are often characterized by scarce resources and competing priorities, to mention just two common yet critical challenges. The good news is that senior international officers and administrators who are faced with the daunting task of making sense of this complex and shifting landscape have an increasing array of information and resources from which to draw insight and ideas. Internationalization and globalization have been the subject of much analysis over the last two decades. This work has resulted in a substantial body of literature exploring many 1

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Internationalization Within the Higher Education Context

Normal 0 false false false FI ZH-CN X-NONE Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE This paper reviews discourses on multicultural education and the concept of intercultural competencies in the European and Nordic country of Finland. We focus on their present uses and perceptions by decision-makers, researchers, and also student teachers. Some prognosis for the future is made based on a short case study from art teacher education in this context. The case study represents an approach that replaces an understanding of intercultural competencies only grounded in knowledge with an approach, instead, grounded in criticality. In this way, the article represents an attempt to evaluate how intercultural competencies can and should be reconceptualised in global scholarship today.

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Robert Gibson

Papers

The Sage Handbook of Intercultural Competence