The broad benefits of international student mobility are now well understood globally and learning abroad is a major focus of most higher education institutions’ internationalisation strategies. The growing recognition of the broad... more
The broad benefits of international student mobility are now well understood globally and learning abroad is a major focus of most higher education institutions’ internationalisation strategies. The growing recognition of the broad individual and national benefits has led many nations with traditionally low rates of outbound student mobility, including Australia, to adopt policies and practices that promote learning abroad. This report provides an overview of international learning abroad trends, with a focus on intra-degree outbound mobility. It aims to examine different policy approaches – including government and institutional policies and practices – that encourage more students’ engagement in international experience during their higher education programs.
This chapter offers a refocusing of the concept intercultural communicative competence (ICC) through the tenets of Gee’s (2005) discourse analysis and Lave and Wenger’s (1991) notion of legitimate peripheral participation. The concept of... more
This chapter offers a refocusing of the concept intercultural communicative competence (ICC) through the tenets of Gee’s (2005) discourse analysis and Lave and Wenger’s (1991) notion of legitimate peripheral participation. The concept of the ‘intercultural moment’ is introduced as a means of understanding how L2 learners enact particular identities or subject positions and build “sign systems and knowledge” (Gee, 2005, p. 2). The approach is demonstrated through an analysis of language use by three study-abroad students in Germany. The analysis demonstrates that the development of ICC must take into account the ways that L2-learners’ identity as L2 learners is enacted. It is suggested that intercultural moments can serve as much to impede or thwart the development of ICC as foster it. In addition, the analysis seeks to show that L2 learner interaction necessarily involves others, and that the social action of the L2 learner helps to bring about particular discourses that are themselves only possible because the L2 learner is part of the interaction (Kramsch, 1998). The chapter concludes with proposals for employing similar analyses of L2 learners’ intercultural moments as an approach to classroom teaching and learning.
