Developing Intercultural Capability in Business Faculty Members and their Students

Abstract

Internationalisation at Home, a work-in-progress priority project funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, aims to internationalize the learning and teaching practices of Business higher education through intercultural capacity building of faculty, students, and the curricula. The initial phase of this participatory action research project involved consulting stakeholder groups (business professionals, faculty members, domestic students, and international students) to assess needs for sociocultural competence development in Business classes and workplaces. The integration of the stakeholder-generated critical incident scenarios with an internationally recognised intercultural training resource (the EXCELL Program) led to the design and delivery of a professional development workshop offered to Business faculty members at two Australian universities. Afterwards, senior faculty members established learning circle meetings to support colleagues to adapt workshop resources and embed cultural diversity awareness and intercultural competence development in the Business courses they teach. In this paper, the authors report and discuss the processes and outcomes of the professional development workshop and the learning circle meetings, including the curriculum renovation actions initiated by participating faculty members. We will discuss the project findings to date in the context of preparing university graduates to be effective crosscultural communicators in workplaces and society.