Co-curricular activity-based intercultural competence development: students’ outcome of internationalisation at universities

Abstract

Institutional internationalisation is regarded as an important aspect in today’s higher education development. This paper first argues that the development of intercultural competence should be considered as an important students’ outcome of institutional internationalisation. It is believed that English teaching and related activities are easily accessible resources which can be fully utilised to promote students’ intercultural competence at universities, and based on this, the author proposes a working model of intercultural competence that consists of three dimensions, i.e. knowledge, action and reflection. To practice this working model, a four-module pattern of co-curricular activity-based intercultural competence training programme is introduced. In addition, some further principles (organisation, participation and evaluation) rising from the author’s empirical practice are discussed. This programme could be, to a large extent, applicable to many higher educational institutions in the global arena.

Keywords:

• Intercultural competence
• activity-based
• co-curriculum
• internationalisation
• higher education

Acknowledgement

The author would like to extend his gratitude to the foundation and the host universities. Thanks also go to the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments. All the remaining faults are the author’s.

Notes

1. Many other different terms, such as international or global education, multicultural education, cross-cultural education, or international understanding education, have been used in many papers. This paper does not intend to classify these terms and it regards them as similar expressions which signify, too much extent, the same concept.

2. The following programme design is based on the author’s own practice at home institution and the observation during his research at University of Bremen and University of Cologne as a visiting scholar.

3. The scope of activity in this paper is quite broad. It refers to any interaction related to intercultural communication. Both indoor activities (e.g. lectures, workshops and training courses etc.) and fieldwork activities (e.g. group studies or visits, projects in college grounds or the local community, etc.) are included. Compared to formal and traditional classroom teaching, intercultural activities might be classified as Second-Classroom Activities, or activities beyond the classroom in Chinese context.

4. SHM refers to the three initial letters of Systematic, Multidimensional and Hierarchical, which constitute the properties of the design model of intercultural activities.