This study reports on students' and teachers' perspectives on a programme designed to develop Erasmus students' intercultural understanding prior to going abroad. We aimed to understand how students and their teachers perceived pre-departure materials in promoting their awareness of key concepts related to interculturality (e.g.,…

In modern societies, where higher education serves as a significant vehicle of integration, the inclusion of immigrants within the realm of higher education is not a foregone conclusion. This is the result of cultural, economic, and social gaps. In some cases, the integration process is blocked prior to the stage of academic studies. This…

This article examines a rather neglected context of intercultural education: intercultural communication education (ICE). ICE can be found in different fields such as business, applied linguistics, intercultural communication and health education, amongst others. The authors start by reviewing the latest and ongoing changes…

This article looks at access to higher education in Germany. For a number of reasons, explained in this article, higher education is presently an elite system that privileges ethnic Germans while preventing Turkish-Germans from gaining sufficient access into academe. If Germany is to become a fully functioning multicultural democracy with equal…

This paper looks at the development of two similar academic disciplines in Japan, i.e. firstly practiced comparative education and recently flourishing intercultural education. The major focus of this paper is to analyse how these educational studies have been brought to, and practised in, Japan. Both comparative education and intercultural…

This paper reviews the findings of a participatory research project conducted with Nepali high school and university students. It examines the feelings and motivations of those students who leave the country in pursuit of higher education, and those who intentionally, or due to circumstances, stay in Nepal. An analysis of the latter is…

I use the metaphor "zebra crossing" in my reflective narrative to describe my plight and struggle as a non-white person growing up and working in Johannesburg, South Africa, during the apartheid era. This article considers and compares the notions of culture, diversity and identity as I now work in a tertiary institution in Melbourne, Australia. I…

While the economic benefits created by international education export are well documented, few systematic and qualitative analysis studies have been conducted to examine how academic staff perceive the presence of international students in their institutions. Using interview data from 80 academic staff from different disciplines in one higher…

This qualitative study utilizes critical ethnography methods to illustrate Palestinian refugee perceptions of higher education in Jordan. Participants addressed their assimilation to the Jordanian national identity as a means of obtaining education. Content and access to education were more important than assimilation, maintenance of ethnic…

Through a qualitative approach of narrative inquiry, this paper examines how Quebec's distinct society identity interacted with objectives of a Multicultural Education course in Montreal. The authors, one of whom was a teaching assistant in the course and the other a student in the course, interviewed seven students and the professor. The…

The present paper aims to briefly describe the manner in which intercultural education is perceived in the Romanian school system, as well as the solutions that are being proposed (mainly in the form of activities) for reconsidering and strengthening interculturality as a dimension of education. We report on the results of semi-structured…

The "interculturalization" of educational institutions designed for, and sometimes by, indigenous peoples has reached the realm of higher education. In Mexico, "intercultural universities or colleges" are being created either by state governments, NGOs and community organizations or by academic institutions. In this paper, one of these…

Until recently, the few attempts to develop intercultural competence in German higher education institutions were limited to the initiative of individuals and were mostly targeted at selected groups, e.g. students participating in international master's programmes. Only recently have German universities started to acknowledge the fact that…

Structure and agency of cultural diversity in (international) higher education have to be addressed with a critical perspective on international mobility and practices of international academic teaching. In order to overcome naive assumptions about intercultural developments on the individual and the organizational level, sociological analysis…

Problematic aspects of intercultural communication are considered in the context of: an increasingly internationalized market for higher education; the globalization of knowledge; the compatibility of distinct national higher education cultures; and the capacity for successful cross-cultural cooperation. This is exemplified by reference to a…