Intercultural Journeys


Book Description

Focusing on the actual experiences of L2 students who travelled from their homes to foreign lands as part of a faculty-led, short-term SA program, the author explores the linkage between intercultural awareness and sensitivity, language development (e.g., sociopragmatic awareness), and identity reconstruction in young adult L2 learners.







Cultural Journeys in Higher Education


Book Description

This book focuses on student cultural diversity in HE and assesses how cultural difference affects students' education and social experience. The authors use interviews to look at these issues from both the perspective of international students, and culturally diverse home populations.




Developing Intercultural Competence in Higher Education


Book Description

This book presents students’ reflections on their intercultural student experiences, and utilizing the UNESCO Story Circle methodology, illustrates how such reflection can aid the development of intercultural competence (IC). The volume features a broad range of first-person narratives that showcase the diversity of student experience encountered whilst studying abroad in a variety of cultural and institutional settings. Engaging with issues in relation to identity negotiation, stereotypes, cultural difference, and communities of support, the text demonstrates application of the UNESCO Story Circle approach in developing IC. Further, vignettes are analyzed and guiding questions are offered to structure readers’ reflection and discussion to facilitate further honing of intercultural competencies. The volume promotes IC amongst individual educators, trainers, international students, and community members and provides guidance in addressing international students’ wellbeing more broadly. This text will benefit scholars, academics, and students in the fields of higher education, multicultural education, and intercultural communication. Those involved with international and comparative education as well as student affair practice and higher education administration will also benefit from this volume.




Journeys Towards Intercultural Capability in Language Classrooms


Book Description

This open access book presents an account of five teacher educators who, over a two-year period, undertook a research project with five teachers of languages other than English in pre-secondary schools in New Zealand. Their collaborative aim was to develop students’ intercultural capability in the context of learning a new language. The school participants were typical of many in New Zealand’s pre-secondary sector; the teachers had limited language-teaching experience and limited prior knowledge of how to develop the intercultural dimension in their language classrooms, and the students were largely at the beginning stages of learning a new language. The book discusses the findings obtained using a range of data collection methods, including classroom observations, reflective interviews with teachers, and focus groups with students. It documents instances of breakthrough and growth for teachers and students and reveals the problems and tensions. Lastly, it reflects on the lessons learned in the course of this project and speculates on the roles that teacher education needs to play if the goal of intercultural capability is to be better achieved in language classrooms, both in New Zealand and internationally. Of interest to a wide range of stakeholders in the area of education, the book allows readers to gain an understanding of the opportunities of working with teachers through an action–research model, alongside the challenges that this brings and ways in which intercultural capability may be strengthened.




Navigating Your International Doctoral Experience (and Beyond)


Book Description

Focused on understanding the journey of international doctoral and early career scholars, this key book provides insight and guidance for those whose country of origin differs from where they have chosen to pursue a doctorate. Drawing on the experiences of PhD students, it harnesses invaluable insights to support a deepening appreciation of a chosen subject of study, manage research and make the most of what intercultural interactions can offer within a doctoral experience. Each carefully considered part uses research-informed evidence drawn from a wide range of experiences and observations, providing various, and at times contrasting, perspectives. This book has been written to: Offer new insights into the PhD abroad experience Equip international scholars for their doctoral journey Help the reader optimise institutional support with help from supervisors and other staff members Filled with evidence-informed suggestions and advice, this book offers support to doctoral scholars and early career researchers as they navigate their international doctoral journey. The ‘Insider Guides to Success in Academia’ offers support and practical advice to doctoral students and early-career researchers. Covering the topics that really matter, but which often get overlooked, this indispensable series provides practical and realistic guidance to address many of the needs and challenges of trying to operate, and remain, in academia. These neat pocket guides fill specific and significant gaps in current literature. Each book offers insider perspectives on the often implicit rules of the game – the things you need to know but usually aren’t told by institutional postgraduate support, researcher development units, or supervisors – and will address a practical topic that is key to career progression. They are essential reading for doctoral students, early-career researchers, supervisors, mentors, or anyone looking to launch or maintain their career in academia.




Intercultural Communication and Language Pedagogy


Book Description

Learning a new language offers a unique opportunity to discover other cultures as well as one's own. This discovery process is essential for developing 21st-century intercultural communication skills. To help prepare language teachers for their role as guides during this process, this book uses interdisciplinary research from social sciences and applied linguistics on intercultural communication for designing teaching activities that are readily implemented in the language classroom. Diverse language examples are used throughout the book to illustrate theoretical concepts, making them accessible to language teachers at all skill levels. The chapters introduce various perspectives on culture, intercultural communicative competence, analyzing authentic language data, teaching foreign/second languages with an intercultural communication orientation, the intercultural journey, the language-culture-identity connection, as well as resolving miscommunication and cultural conflict. While the immediate audience of this book is language teachers, the ultimate beneficiaries are language learners interested in undertaking the intercultural journey.




Principles of Intercultural Communication


Book Description

Now in a second edition, this book guides students in developing Intercultural Communication Competence through its accessible style and unique theoretical framework of ten interconnected principles. Thoroughly revised and updated with new case studies and examples and a sharper focus on practical application, the book engages students in active learning by showing them how these principles come to play in their intercultural journeys. It features detailed case studies that are accompanied by guiding questions that help students link theory to their daily lives. At the end of each chapter, the "Side Trips" discussion prompts encourage students to think more critically about the issues as they are presented. Suitable for upper-level or graduate intercultural communication courses within communication and linguistics departments.




Intercultural Mirrors


Book Description

Intercultural Mirrors: Dynamic Reconstruction of Identity contains (auto)ethnographic chapters and research-based explorations that uncover the ways our intercultural experiences influence our process of self-discovery and self-construction. The idea of intercultural mirrors is applied throughout all chapters as an instrument of analysis, an heuristic tool, drawn from philosophy, to provide a focus for the analysis of real life experiences. Plato noted that one could see one’s own reflection in the pupil of another’s eye, and suggested that the mirror image provided in the eye of the other person was an essential contributor to self-knowledge. Taking this as a cue, the contributors of this book have structured their writings around the idea that the view of us held by other people provides an essential key to one’s own self-understanding. Contributors are: James Arvanitakis, Damian Cox, Mark Dinnen, James Ferguson, Tom Frengos, Dennis Harmon, Donna Henson, Alexandra Hoyt, William Kelly, Lucyann Kerry, Julia Kraven, Taryn Mathis, Tony McHugh, Raoul Mortley, Kristin Newton, Marie-Claire Patron, Darren Swanson, and Peter Mbago Wakholi.




Researching Intercultural Learning


Book Description

International perspectives on intercultural learning are presented within a framework of cultures of learning related to education and language learning and use in academic contexts. Intercultural learning involves learners travelling to learn in a place where other cultures of learning are dominant and to which they are usually expected to adapt.