University training and education for interculturality in student mobility in Hong Kong

Abstract

Hong Kong is currently witnessing an increased interest in student mobility: the government is trying to attract more incoming students from all over the world while Hong Kong students themselves are urged to be more and more mobile. As such, wider access to scholarships, increased admission quotas, relaxed employment restrictions are the measures that the Hong Kong government is planning to implement. In order to stimulate the efficiency of outgoing mobility, Higher Education Institutions (HEI) in Hong Kong now endeavour to prepare students to become global citizens, skilled professionals, who are able to be leaders in international and intercultural contexts. A review of the University of Hong Kong (2006: 15) states that: “A central goal is to instill in students the ability to adapt to new situations. Graduates will operate in a world characterized by rapid change and they must be able to keep pace and comfortably take on leadership roles”. The importance of intercultural awareness – the ‘key’ to a globalised world – prior to, during and after stays abroad has been highlighted by many scholars in various contexts (Abdallah-Pretceille, 2003; Byram & Dervin, 2008; Patron, 2007) as intercultural learning does not happen automatically. My objective in this paper is to explore, by means of questionnaires and analyses of curricula, how HEIs in Hong Kong prepare students for stays abroad. To my knowledge, no review of this kind is available in the literature. Based on Dervin’s model of intercultural paradigms and his own analysis of the Finnish context of intercultural training (2008), my paper examines the objectives, approaches, materials and suggested assessment methods proposed by the institutions in terms of preparation prior to mobility. My hypothesis is that existing courses are limited to essentialist descriptions of national cultures and identities, which leave little space to the impact of (inter-)subjectivity in communication. A proposal for training Hong Kong students “interculturally” based on a hermeneutical and intersubjectivist approach will end my presentation. Keywords: Student mobility – Intercultural competences – preparation prior to mobility