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Introduction

The preparation of teachers for an increasingly internationalized, interconnected and globalized world, and for diverse classrooms, has become a key challenge for twenty-first-century teachers and teacher educators. As a highly multicultural nation, Australia has a specific need for teachers capable of engaging with and responding to diversity and assuming leadership in this area. The Australian Curriculum for schooling includes intercultural competence as one of seven general capabilities to be developed, describing it as “an essential part of living with others in the diverse world of the twenty-first century” (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) 2014a). Teachers are expected to value and critically view their own cultural perspective and practices as well as those of others. Three key dispositions—“expressing empathy, demonstrating respect and taking responsibility”—are identified as critical to intercultural understanding, and are developed through the Australian Curriculum (ACARA 2014b). This general capability also links to the cross-curriculum priorities related to “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures”, and “Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia” (ACARA 2014c). Thus, intercultural competence has become increasingly important for teacher education programs. International experiences, embedded within teacher education, are seen as a key way to enhance this capability.

In this chapter, coordinating staff from four universities in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, have collaborated to discuss, ascertain and question the impact of their institution’s own and each other’s international experience programs, in terms of developing intercultural competence of preservice teachers in these programs. One aim of these programs is to equip preservice teachers with “knowledge … to forge an understanding of and solutions to the devastating problems of global society” (Hickling-Hudson 2009, 365), by confronting them with examples of global inequalities, “as texts to learn from, not just about” (Connell 2007, viii, emphasis in original). We begin by summarizing the key concept of intercultural competence and literature relating to international experiences in teacher preparation programs to better understand the features of these programs that enhance intercultural competence in preservice teachers. We then discuss some of the challenges and tensions inherent in such programs when viewed from a postcolonial perspective, with the understanding that these international programs take place in the “global South” (Connell 2007). Next, we move to describe and critically analyze our programs acknowledging the complexity and intricacies of culture and an understanding that “wisdom consists in a greatly increased tolerance toward their divergencies” (Landis and Bhawuk 2004, 451), before discussing characteristics and features that we believe represent best practice, and optimize the potential for international experience programs to promote intercultural competence and the ability to teach for and with diversity.

The key questions that guide this project are:

  1. 1.

    What are the characteristics of an effective international experience program in teacher education?

  2. 2.

    How do teacher educators critically analyze international experience programs, their purpose and effects on preservice teachers’ personal and professional development?

  3. 3.

    What framework can teacher educators use to guide the development of short-term international experiences for preservice teachers?

Intercultural Competence

Intercultural competence is an important contributor and precursor to the ability to teach and respond to diversity (Oguro 2015). Intercultural competence can be thought of as an “effective and appropriate behavior and communication in intercultural situations,” which requires the development of “specific attitudes, knowledge and skills” (Deardorff 2011, 66). A range of models of intercultural competence has been developed, particularly in the context of second and foreign language learning. All encompass knowledge, attitudes, skills and behaviors. Byram (1997, 50–53), for example, suggests five elements for intercultural competence, which include: attitudes of curiosity, openness, readiness to suspend disbelief about others’ cultures and belief about one’s own intercultural attitudes; knowledge of other social groups—their products and practices; skills of interpreting and relating; skills of discovery and interaction; and critical cultural awareness. Deardorff’s process model positions attitudes of respect, openness, curiosity and discovery at the start of an intercultural competence process that also includes knowledge and comprehension of one’s own and others’ cultures; internal outcomes leading to a “reference shift”; and external outcomes of appropriate communication and behavior (2006, p. 256). Also see Moran (2001), and Liddicoat et al. (2003) for summaries of other models of intercultural competence.

Gorski contends that intercultural competence requires more than the acquisition of knowledge and skills, but is a process that works toward “the establishment and maintenance of equity and social justice in education contexts and, by extension, society” (2008, 517). The process is not solely cognitive, but also encompasses affective elements such as “empathy, curiosity and respect” (Perry and Southwell 2011, 454). It is also conative, that is, behavior-related, in scope. Deardorff further suggests that intercultural learning is transformational learning that requires a range of experiences, including service learning in local and international contexts, course work and international professional experiences (2006, 2011).

The international experience programs discussed in this chapter all aspire to develop intercultural competence. Under scrutiny is the extent to which attitudes, knowledge, skills and behaviors are effectively and consistently developed and supported in these programs.

International Experiences in Teacher Education

Ochoa (2010) proposes that teacher preparation should be rethought to encompass different knowledge, skills and pedagogical domains in order to effectively meet the demands of diverse contexts. Education institutions are increasingly looking to international experiences as one way to expose preservice teachers to “different knowledge, skills and pedagogical domains” and to achieve intercultural competency outcomes (Harris 2011; Santoro and Major 2012). Such experiences appear to make valuable contributions, cognitively and affectively, to teachers’ professional (and personal) selves (Atmazaki and Harbon 1999; Buchanan 2004; Harbon 2003; Harbon and Smyth 2015; McGill and Harbon 2002, 2006). For language teachers in particular, in-country experiences serve to improve fluency in the target language as well as enhance cultural competence (French and Harbon 2010; Harbon 2007; Lee 2009; Trent 2013). Such programs have also been shown to contribute to teacher professional identity and formation (e.g., Akkerman and Meijer 2011; Trent 2013).

The four NSW universities participating in this project operate well-established international experience opportunities and are committed to growing these in the teacher education context. Our international experiences are designed to provide participants with personal encounters with cultural and linguistic “others,” as well as the experience of being “the cultural other,” which is an experience that many preservice teachers from dominant cultural groups have never encountered previously (Buchanan 2011). While we have not collected data on participating students’ ethnicities, we believe that our cohorts are largely representative of the Anglo-Celtic background that dominates the teaching profession (Power 2009). For mainstream students in particular, these intercultural experiences may provide good, and first, practice in “being a foreigner.”

Existing studies point to a range of features that impact the effectiveness of international experience programs, including the destination, length of stay, opportunities to interact with local people, and preparation and support for students to manage cultural difference (Van ‘t Klooster et al. 2008), as well as whether the program is embedded with “a carefully developed theoretical framework” (Dantas 2007, 90) and if it incorporates critical reflection and dialogue (Alfaro and Quezada 2010). Cruickshank and Westbrook contend that international experiences contribute to student teachers’ “cross-cultural understandings, empathy and skills, attributes which transfer to their understanding of and skills in teaching in home contexts” (2013,56). To this we would add that international experiences also add to preservice teachers’ knowledge, as they encounter new circumstances and experience things that they had not previously known, or had only encountered vicariously, through reading, hearing or viewing. New encounters can prompt valuable learning moments, in which existing axioms can be brought into question.

However, it is easily assumed that international encounters will, of their own accord, result in transformative outcomes that transfer to home contexts (Dantas 2007). Buchanan and Widodo (2016) observe that an international experience can inadvertently be a normalizing one. They propose that Western pedagogies are often privileged, by both host and visiting personnel, which serves to reinforce Western ways of doing, knowing, thinking and being. Deriving from the existence of English as a global lingua franca, Buchanan and Widodo propose the notion of a cultura franca, in which Western ways become the normalized way of doing things. Apart from being culturally inappropriate and insensitive to host cultures, a cultura franca can shelter visiting teachers from questioning their taken-for-granted ways. Gorski points out the politically charged nature of intercultural education potentially serving to “reify my growing sense of racial and ethnic supremacy by essentializing the lives and diverse cultures of an already-oppressed group of people, then presenting that group to me as a clearly identifiable ‘other’” (2008, 516). International experiences, then, are not unproblematic, especially when viewed from a postcolonial perspective (Rizvi 2007).

Postcolonial Understandings

All education, we contend, has a colonial dimension to it. This is particularly the case in contexts where preservice teachers from the “developed” world (the global North) undertake teaching experiences in “developing” countries (the global South). Connell refers to “authority, exclusion and inclusion, hegemony, partnership, sponsorship, appropriation—between intellectuals and institutions in the metropole and those in the world periphery” (2007, ix). Despite the social justice aims of international experience programs, there is significant potential for relationships that are asymmetrical in terms of power and influence. The relationship between the West and the East is one “of power, of domination, of varying degrees of complex hegemony,” according to Said (1978, 5). At the institutional and individual level, relationships between host and visitors are saturated in unequal power dynamics. While our own preservice teachers live in the geographic South, outside the “metropole,” their relative wealth and access to information, and, in many cases, the white privilege they are accorded (Solomon and Daniel 2015) firmly position them as “Northerners.” Connell (2008, 58, emphasis added) speaks of “Australia’s affiliation with the metropole,” suggesting its connection with the global North while also being positioned in the South. Bang and Medin (2010, 7) remind us that people “live culturally,” and, by implication learn culturally. They also refer to the “need to understand the complexities that diverse ways of knowing create for teaching and learning environments” (Bang and Medin 2010, 7). International professional experiences present an opportunity to bring cultural assumptions into focus and to question them.

The teacher-learner contract assumes added complexities when delivered by the global North to the global South. First, the traffic tends to be one way. Relatively few preservice teachers in the global South are invited, or have the means, to teach in the global North. Moreover, the relationship between the preservice teacher and the experienced host teacher, assumed in the home country as one where the host teacher has greater power, is at times upended or challenged in an international context. In at least some international professional experiences, preservice teachers are deemed to be experts by local teachers with many years’ experience (Major and Santoro 2016). As teacher educators, it is easy for us, too, to be lulled into a presumption of superiority, smugly armed with our collaborative and student-centered pedagogies, that we expect our preservice teachers to model.

Yet one aim of our programs is to instill in our preservice teachers a capacity and ability to acknowledge, and intelligently and empathically make sense of local knowledges and pedagogies, and to build these into their teaching as practicable. In this regard, our international experiences confront us with a genuine conundrum. If we wish to embrace or at least acknowledge local pedagogies as valid, that then requires us to recognize the knowledge and experience that the local teachers and systems bring to the “pedagogical table”—something we do not always readily do, especially when these run counter to the prevailing education discourses from our own contexts. It is a constant concern that our “Southern forays” arguably serve the needs of our preservice teachers more than those of the communities in which they teach, in a manner highly redolent of colonialism.

Conduct of the Study

This chapter emerges from a collaboration entailing a series of conversations, over 18 months, between the organizers of four major international programs (also termed “in-country” and mobility programs) for preservice teachers in NSW, Australia. Each of these four university programs offers short-term international experiences to groups of preservice teachers in different contexts in different years, depending on availability and other impacting environmental and security factors. The aim of our continuing conversations is to share the views that underpin our programs, and thereby open them to scrutiny and challenge. As per Connell (2007), we sought to learn from, rather than simply about, one another’s experiences.

In the table and analysis that follow, we have attempted to provide a sense of our programs. The descriptions are necessarily short and may not fully encapsulate the detail and complexity of each program (Table 9.1).

Table 9.1 Overview of International Programs at Four Universities
Full size table

Critical Analysis of Four Programs

To assist in the analysis of our programs, we adopted the PEER model, which was developed by Holmes and O’Neill (2012) to provide a process to guide and enhance tertiary students’ experiences of engaging with a “Cultural Other” (709) during their tertiary studies program. The PEER Model is underpinned by Byram’s (1997) concepts of intercultural competence, in particular developing “critical cultural awareness” and an understanding of cultural relativity (cited in Holmes and O’Neill 2012, 709). Although not designed in the context of an international experience, the PEER model provides a useful heuristic to describe, compare and evaluate our programs as it encompasses elements identified in the literature as features of effective international experiences. The PEER Model comprises four elements:

1. Prepare—for an intercultural encounter by undertaking activities to identify assumptions, prejudices and stereotypes, and understand perspectives about cultural difference;

2. Engage—with a cultural “other” over a sustained period of time;

3. Evaluate—intercultural encounters using concepts from the Prepare stage to enhance understanding;

4. Reflect—critically on intercultural encounters and related evaluations to identify changes in perspectives, communication and competence.

Through ongoing conversations over the course of 18 months, we critiqued our programs in relation to how well each addressed the four elements and enabled preservice teachers to engage in each. We also shared journal articles and developed our understandings of postcolonialism and Southern Theory (Connell 2007), which sharpened our critical gaze as we scrutinized our own and each other’s programs. What follows is a discussion of our programs in relation to each element of the model.

Preparation (PEER Aspect #1)

The preparation phase for each institution is thorough with all programs providing seminars or workshops to clarify expectations about the roles and responsibilities of preservice teachers, hosts and accompanying lecturers. Common elements of preparatory seminars include information about the country and community, general housekeeping, travel arrangements and practicalities such as keeping healthy and safe; mobile phone access; banking and currency; suitable clothing; and so on. In addition, all programs offer some kind of academic preparation (both face-to-face and online) that includes engagement with ideas and information about teaching in English; understanding culture, the host country and community, the local language; and intercultural competence. We trust that these preparations will equip our students with a critical eye for examining their own cultural and pedagogical assumptions, and to question their critiques of “Others.” However, only UTS has a mandatory, credit-bearing subject that participating preservice teachers must pass. In other institutions, participation is expected but not monitored, and preservice teachers receive no credit for the international experience unless they are completing an accredited practicum placement or undertaking a related elective, as is the case at Notre Dame and CSU. Accompanying staff and preservice teachers may have limited contact prior to departure, and there is no assessment of preservice teacher preparation for their experience.

One reason for this disconnect around the academic program is the lack of workload for staff engaged in the programs, except for those in administrative roles. A related issue is the limited preparation of supervising staff. All programs assume accompanying staff to be interculturally competent and able to coordinate and supervise the international experience. No specific training is provided beyond pragmatics of the site, and, informally, on some cultural issues known to previous supervisors or the coordinator. Supervising staff are recruited via expressions of interest, and although expected to participate in predeparture seminars, are not required to have any particular specialist knowledge or experience.

An identified feature of effective international experiences is clear, theoretically grounded outcomes (Dantas 2007) to ensure that preservice teachers and staff understand the purpose of the program and are prepared to maximize both the tangible and intangible benefits of participating. While our programs may have theoretically grounded outcomes, these are not consistently addressed through rigorous and compulsory academic study to prepare participants. We cannot expect preservice teachers to engage critically with their own cultural assumptions or understand others’ cultural practices if they are not provided with the tools to do so.

Engagement (PEER Aspect #2)

Preservice teachers engage with the cultural “other” predominantly via their in-country teaching experiences in schools and, in some cases, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). They work closely with groups of children and alongside local teachers. Engagement also occurs via the experience of living in the community over a sustained period. Shopping, eating and moving about in the community results in further interface, with the opportunities for both insight and confusion that this affords. Many critical incidents arise from the experience of living in a new cultural and linguistic context. The role of accompanying staff in relation to engagement is complex and multiple, ranging from professional practicum observations and feedback to daily debriefs and presentations. In all programs, regular briefing/debriefing sessions are held to support the synthesis of new learning, share experiences and deal with issues or challenges.

We see accompanying staff as playing a significant role in mediating the engagement of preservice teachers with cultural others in the international context. The regular discussion and filtering of new understandings requires a deep exploration of perceptions and attitudes, knowledge and skills. Accompanying staff need to be able to ask questions, guide discussion and encourage critique. This is largely dependent on the skills and experience of group leaders. The lack of training and preparation of accompanying staff leading international experiences results in inconsistency. If not well versed in the aims of the experience, it is unlikely that the accompanying staff will be able to effectively assist preservice teachers to engage mindfully with the “other.” In addition, the structure of programs can make it difficult to achieve a focus beyond the demands of preparing for the next day, as days are often long and debrief/discussion opportunities may be limited. Moreover, student teachers are likely to be preoccupied with successfully concluding their accredited professional experience. It is also very demanding for a sole accompanying academic to fulfill the various roles required on international experiences, particularly if they are also charged with writing reports for an accredited professional experience.

Evaluation (PEER Aspect #3)

In the PEER Model, evaluation describes the preservice teachers’ evaluation of their experiences during the engagement phase. This is done via journals and field notes. Only CSU has a mandatory requirement that preservice teachers keep a journal to record critical incidents during the experience. Other programs encourage this but do not make it compulsory. Instead, there are informal opportunities to reflect on and evaluate preservice teachers’ responses to experiences. As described above, regular debrief sessions which include preservice teachers presenting to each other (University of Sydney) provide evaluation opportunities during the experience for preservice teachers to learn from each other, gain insight into themselves as individuals and cultivate their ability to function more effectively in an unfamiliar cultural setting.

It is clear that the evaluation element in our programs has not been conceptualized or designed to enable this level of ongoing evaluation during the engagement phase of the program. Moreover, a lack of student evaluation makes it difficult for us to evaluate both the preparatory stages of this process and the intercultural immersions themselves. While ongoing self-evaluation is supported informally in all the programs, and formally in one, the focus for evaluation lacks clarity and does not clearly connect to program outcomes or content.

Reflection (PEER Aspect #4)

In the PEER Model, reflection occurs after the engagement phase of an intercultural experience, and requires deep thinking about how ideas and views have changed as a result. Reflection should also connect to the preparatory phase and engage with readings and concepts introduced at this stage of the program. As previously noted, only CSU has a formalized reflective element, in the form of a critical incident journal, which preservice teachers submit two weeks after their program ends. These critical incident journals are where engagement with deeper issues to do with the challenges, tensions and ambiguities of international experiences may be grappled with and revealed.

In the other programs, reflection takes the form of post-trip evaluations provided by participants about aspects of the program, rather than formalized reflections by participants on their own learning from the trip. All programs include post-trip evaluation opportunities, including online surveys (CSU), meetings (all), and invitations to send feedback to the coordinator (UTS, ND). While post-trip reflection/evaluation sessions form a crucial aspect of the ongoing program planning and development, most do not produce “hard” evaluative data, and consequently there is relatively little for staff to reflect on. There is a danger that post-trip gatherings may become a superficial social reminiscing of the experience, rather than a systematic evaluation that permits comparisons between programs or enhances linkages to student learning or to other programs.

Our critical conversations reveal that our programs lack a clear distinction between evaluation and reflection, and clear processes to support each. Student participants anecdotally indicate that their short-term international experiences are valuable and have positive outcomes, but we currently have no way of ascertaining how enduring such sentiments are. Nor do we know about the impact of international experiences on ongoing teaching strategies, practices and philosophies. Preservice teachers are not, as a matter of course, required to evaluate their experiences in a supported and structured way during their sojourn. Nor are they required to reflect deeply about their growth and learning in relation to program goals, content and outcomes after the program concludes. All our programs could be strengthened by the addition of more rigorous exploration of, and dialogue about, the difficult and challenging knowledges and experiences that are frequently part of engaging with communities in the global South.

Discussion

What follows is a discussion framed around our three research questions: about international experience programs, about teacher educators and their analysis of such programs, and about a framework perceived suitable to guide teacher educators.

  1. 1.

    What are the characteristics of an effective international experience program in teacher education?

As stated in the literature review, the benefits that accrue from international programs such as the ones we describe above are well documented (Akkerman and Meijer 2011; Atmazaki and Harbon 1999; Buchanan 2004; French and Harbon 2010; Harbon 2003; Harbon 2007; Harbon and Smyth 2015; Harris 2011; Lee 2009; McGill and Harbon 2002, 2006; Santoro and Major 2012; Trent 2013). However, the extent and ways in which such programs, specifically the ones presented here, are explicitly developed for the purposes of encouraging a more globalized, interculturally competent teacher, need further interrogation. While we may contend that intercultural competence is a by-product of international programs, these programs currently provide little hard evidence to illustrate how this is developed before, during and after the experiences.

Our data demonstrate that there are a number of similar features characterizing these international experience programs. The program aims are contextually based and heavily influenced by the university’s own program and teacher educator coordinator. Change in the preservice teachers’ intercultural competence/general world knowledge is one common aim, with an emphasis on allowing the reflection afforded by the experience to impact on the preservice teacher’s view/understanding of self. We hope, through the processes that informed this chapter, and our international professional experiences henceforth, to make ourselves and our students more aware of the cultural assumptions and blind spots we bring to the intercultural settings in which we find/impose ourselves, using Southern (Connell 2007) and postcolonial concepts. We also seek to understand more fully the pedagogical and cultural practices of host schools and communities to develop intercultural competence and enrich pedagogies.

  1. 2.

    How do teacher educators critically analyze international experience programs, their purpose and effects on preservice teachers’ personal and professional development?

The literature is clear that educative transformation in cultural competence, specifically in preservice teacher education, requires critical reflection (Halse 1999; Banks et al. 2005). In order for preservice teachers to learn from their experiences, for there to be a conversation between what they knew and what they have come to know, formalized critical reflection is required to gain new insights. Our conversations highlighted the need for such critical reflection, and enabled us to consider and develop further our erstwhile fledgling theorizations. Freire argues that “authentic liberation—the process of humanization … is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it” (1972, 79). We aspire to be part of the process of liberation—our own and others’—through education and critical reflection. In critically examining our programs, we also hope to prompt further debate on these matters, as we endeavor to challenge the “terms of trade,” to “work away at the core assumptions within the western episteme” (Tikly 2009, 42), and to have “dialogue with ideas produced by the colonized world” (Connell 2007, xi, emphasis in original).

It is essential that we examine our own presumptions within our programs to highlight how the programs themselves might be improved. As intimated in the literature review, we find it difficult during our sojourns to abandon our cultural assumptions, including our pedagogical ones, and at times struggle to engage with our host communities as equals. These are tensions that need to be shared with preservice teachers so they understand that engaging in international experiences is not unproblematic. Such ideas can be developed at all stages of an international experience, through the academic program during preparation, and ongoing reflective conversations during and after the sojourn.

  1. 3.

    What framework can teacher educators use to guide the development of short-term international experiences for preservice teachers?

One component of the programs that became apparent in the critical analysis was the need for a strong theoretical framework. A well-developed framework, such as the PEER framework (Holmes and O’Neill 2012), aids in the development of new programs, as well as in the evaluation of existing ventures. Embedded within that framework should be explicit, measurable learning goals and outcomes consistent with the purpose and objectives of the particular program. Student (and staff) reflection can inform the framework, thus ensuring that it is imbued with purpose and goals (Alfaro and Quezada 2010; Quezada 2011). Reflection and reflective practice are often seen as central to maximizing learning in international programs (Pence and Macgillivary 2008; Willard-Holt 2001). In rendering the learning more visible and purposeful, through solid preparation, sound engagement, thorough critical evaluation and, most importantly, through reflection and reflective practice—international experiences can more explicitly meet the needs of preservice teachers and institutions.

Conclusion

In summarizing and distilling our conversations to identify core elements of effective international experiences in teacher education, we offer the following recommendations. Effective international programs are typically embedded into course structures and have clearly articulated outcomes underpinned by a strong theoretical framework. They are supported by fully credited academic coursework designed to develop intercultural knowledge, attitudes and skills. This includes predeparture elements and ongoing reflective opportunities during the in-country stage and as a formal post-trip requirement. In addition to these student-focused elements, effective programs support accompanying staff to participate in professional learning about intercultural competence, about the challenges and tensions of international experiences, and about critically reflective dialogue and how to facilitate it. Workload is allocated to staff leading international experiences to recognize the high level of professional activity, engagement, and commitment required. These actions would enable further attention to developing rigorous academic programs that incorporate postcolonial and Southern perspectives, and use these to encourage preservice teachers to reflect on their own and other cultural practices and epistemologies. In this way, international programs would become more effective in sensitizing preservice teachers to social justice issues, increasing their efficacy as interculturally competent educators.

A further key impacting factor that became evident concerns the “embeddedness” or otherwise of these short-term international teaching experiences in the preservice teachers’ degree programs (as indicated in Spenader and Retka’s 2015 study). The committed academics who coordinate the programs and accompany the preservice teachers are mostly operating in their own time and on top of their workload allocation. Beyond that, preservice teachers’ learning is not typically captured, disseminated or accorded credit within their degree courses. We believe that further institutional support for embedding and recognizing these programs will offer the greatest impact on our subsequent ability to capture their value and capacity.

Teaching in a new cultural milieu removes preservice teachers and staff from the backdrop of their “cultural camouflage,” with all its comfort and familiarity. It is a circumstance in which the “ordinary is disrupted” (Dantas 2007, 77) by someone else’s ordinary. Our conversations have performed a similar function, bringing us face-to-face with our programs’ assumptions and omissions, as well as their strengths. We are but beginners in this quest, we have yet more to learn in terms of the effects of our programs on host communities and schools. We anticipate furthering our investigations in this regard, and informing our views with what we hope will be honest discussions-among-equals with our hosts.