A paper from the Internationalisation of Pedagogy and Curriculum in Higher Education Conference 2011.
The increasing cultural diversity of universities among both staff and students creates specific challenges in communication particularly for staff in 'frontline' positions. Many colleagues are equally interested in developing cultural awareness and curious about other cultures for other reasons.
Colleagues however often express the need to have information which enhances understanding of specific cultural differences yet training usually takes a more 'culture-general' approach. Culture-specific information may be made available to international students on or before arrival.
There is an inherent danger of oversimplifying and essentialising cultures in such attempts but equally a need to respond to persistent demands for better specific cultural knowledge from staff and to improve the student experience.
This paper describes how Sheffield Hallam have used University International Week as an opportunity to establish informal interactions between frontline university staff and international students to explore and explain aspects of their cultures to be able to ask about cultural differences they have observed and to identify aspects of their own culture which they feel are significant unavailable or worthy of attention. The aim is to offer a starting point for intercultural learning and by recording the voices of students and staff and undertaking an analysis of these interactions to generate resources for further intercultural learning and discussion. There is scope to apply appropriate theoretical approaches to explore factors which may facilitate or impede intercultural communication and develop inclusive institutional responses to cultural diversity.
