This presentation was delivered at the TIS International Conference - Internationalisation of Pedagogy and Curriculum in Higher Education: Exploring New Frontiers Jun 2011.
Amsterdam is an international and multicultural hub. The higher education institutes in the city especially those providing professional education therefore aim to equip their students with the competences to function successfully in such a setting. However how successful they are at this is not easy to decide.
This is mainly due to the fact that intercultural competences of students are not assessed in a systematic and consistent way. That the world of work is not particularly explicit about the exact nature of these competences certainly plays a role. Small and medium sized enterprises miss out on considerable potential market share because of the limited intercultural awareness of their staff. This has not convinced them to address the issue in a fundamental way.
During the presentation the situation in Amsterdam will be placed in a European and global context. This provides the basis for a discussion that incorporates the views of the participants.
