Venturing into the unknown—a framework and strategies to assist international and Australian students to learn from each other

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Research and Development in Higher Education Vol. 26: Learning for an Unknown Future

July, 2003, 692 pages
Published by
Helen Mathews and Rod McKay
ISBN
0 90 8557 55 8
Abstract 

Internationalisation in higher education institutions is usually focused on the movement of students - attracting international students to study in Australia and Australian students to study abroad. Rhetoric suggests a strong belief shared by both policy makers and educators that merely bringing people from different backgrounds and cultures together in the one location will foster the development of cross-cultural understandings and friendships. However, there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that this is not the case. This paper describes various approaches to and rationales for internationalisation and argues that a broad and varied range of strategies is needed to support the achievement of internationalisation goals. It argues that strategies should involve all staff and students and be designed to develop the ability of all groups involved in higher education to work more effectively with each other in a variety of different teaching, learning and social environments. Several strategies that have been implemented at the University of South Australia are described, all of which are attempts at ‘ground-level’ to put policy into practice by assisting both international and Australian students to venture into the unknown.

Keywords: Internationalisation; higher education; cross-cultural understanding