Developing Students’ Intercultural Competence
Patrick Zou () and
Liz Shek-Noble ()
Additional contact information
Patrick Zou: University of Canberra
Liz Shek-Noble: University of Sydney
Chapter Chapter 107 in Proceedings of the 17th International Symposium on Advancement of Construction Management and Real Estate, 2014, pp 1047-1056 from Springer
Abstract:
Abstract This paper explores the efficacy of online e-learning environments for developing students’ intercultural competence (IC) in the context of Australian higher education. It begins by defining the key attributes and prescriptors of IC, and argues that Taylor’s theory of perspective transformation (Adult Educ Quart 44:154–174, Int J Intercult Rel 18(30):389–408) is the most plausible explanation for why and how people become interculturally competent. E-learning is put forward as a platform for developing students’ IC, due to its interactive and multimodal approach to learning. Last, the paper outlines several strategies for developing students’ IC in an e-learning context. We recommend a bi-directional approach whereby students and lecturers work to become more knowledgeable and flexible towards other cultures. The findings of this paper will contribute to existing literature on IC by demonstrating how online e-learning environments can help to develop positive attributes of flexibility, curiosity, openness and acceptance of diversity in students. Although the paper uses Australian higher education as its example, the findings should be applicable to higher education in a global arena.
Keywords: Higher education; E-learning; Flexibility; Intercultural competence; Perspective transformation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-642-35548-6_107
Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783642355486
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-35548-6_107
Access Statistics for this chapter
More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().