Making visible ‘hidden’ intentions and potential choices: international students in intercultural communication

The study reported in this paper examines the experiences of Chinese and Vietnamese international students in engaging in their institutional written discourse at an Australian university. The study highlights the significance of exploring the real accounts of the students as the ‘insiders’ and uncovering students’ individual potential choices and intentions as their ‘seemingly unrecognized’ values in producing their own texts in English as a second language. In particular, based on international students’ reflection on their intentions and potential choices in academic practices, the study signals how the taken-for-granted institutional conventions may contribute to silencing or marginalizing the possibilities for alternative approaches to knowledge and communication within the higher education institutional context.

Nursing educator perspectives of overseas qualified nurses' intercultural clinical communication: barriers, enablers and engagement strategies

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To understand the intercultural communication experiences and associated communication training needs of overseas qualified nurses in the Australian healthcare system from the unique perspectives of nurse educators teaching in accredited bridging programmes. BACKGROUND: Overseas qualified nurses are an integral part of the nursing workforce in migration destination countries. Communication training needs are more complex when there are cultural, ethnic and language differences between nurses, other health professionals and patients. DESIGN: A qualitative, exploratory research design using semi-structured interviews. METHODS: All (nine) organisations involved in conducting the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency approved preregistration bridging programmes for overseas qualified nurses within the state of Victoria, Australia, were involved in the study. Participants were 12 nurse educators employed in these organisations. Thematic analysis was undertaken. RESULTS: Three macro themes emerged about the overseas qualified nurses' intercultural communication: (1) pre-existing barriers and enablers to intercultural communication, for example, nurses' reluctance to engage in communicative strategies that build rapport with patients, (2) transitional behaviours and impact on communication, including maintenance of perceived cultural hierarchies between health professionals and (3) development of communicative competence, including expanding one's repertoire of conversational gambits. CONCLUSIONS: The findings point to the domains and causes of communication challenges facing overseas qualified nurses in new healthcare settings as well as strategies that the nurse educators and nurses can adopt. Communication cannot be merely regarded as a skill that can be taught in a didactic programme. Comprehensive understanding is needed about the sociocultural dimensions of these nurses' orientation, which can impact on how they communicate in their new healthcare settings. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: The findings can act as triggers for discussion with overseas qualified nurses and other health professionals to raise awareness about the aspects of intercultural communication and to debate alternative viewpoints and explanations. They can also inform changes in the structure and content of the bridging programmes.

Designing educational tasks for success in industry: a reflection on the evolution of business communication studies in tertiary education

This paper is the result of a "Rip Van Winkle" experience I had concerning the teaching of Business Communication. The paper focuses on the remarkable expansion in the curriculum of the traditional "Business Communication" or "Business Writing" course offered by many tertiary institutions around the world. Based on 25 years of personal observation and experience in a number of educational settings, the paper will trace the increasing sophistication and complexity of the study of business communication from one that covered little more than lessons in the design of hardcopy memos, letters, and reports to one that now covers a broad spectrum of topics such as "emotional intelligence," "intercultural communication," "effective public speaking," as well as the effects of purpose and audience on the design of a wide variety of business communications.

An example of an effective task that involves a number of on the job activities is provided in the form of a ready to use assignment that is applicable in a number of contexts.

Hyphenated Australia : putting intercultural identity on the conceptual map

Interculturality and intercultural identity is a local effect of the global movement and mixing of people, and those of intercultural identities constitute the fastest growing sector of the Australian population. In an age of globalisation and diversification, what does identity mean for those situated in-between governing notions of racial/ethnic formations, and how is intercultural identity experienced? For those informed by (at least) two cultures, what does multiculturalism, ethnicity and 'Australianness' mean, and where are these individuals positioned in relation to these structures? These questions have critical implications for the Australian nation. Within Australian discourses, interculturality and intercultural identity, in particular, has historically been excluded, rendered invisible. This dissertation is, therefore, one of facilitating visibility. Using the hyphens as a conceptual tool, I argue that in this age of accelerating globalisation the hyphens both makes visible and is made visible by interculturality. The hyphens is that grey and fluid site of intersection between structures of identity and is characterised by liminality - contestation, uncertainty, fundamentally ambivalence. Experiences of liminality, however, dissolve in any given time, opening up new terrain for creativity. Some of these emerging and creative forms of identity, as instigated by interculturality, are explored. Based on interviews with 20 daughters (and their mothers) from intercultural unions, this dissertation places intercultural identity on the Australian conceptual map and analyses the unique position occupied by those with an intercultural identity in their relationship with governing discursive formations of race/ethnicity, embodiment, nation and culture. In essence, the dissertation is concerned with examining the ways in which discursive identity structures intersect with subjective experience, and with the ways in which those with an intercultural identity negotiate those structures and their social relations. This examination raises the fundamental question: is the modernist notion of the material realities of individual lives reconcilable with the poststructural notion of identity as always located in discourse. This modernist/postmodernist tension permeates the dissertation.

Staging cultures : the potential for intercultural theatre

Recently, 'intercultural' theatre has taken aspects of performance genres from different cultures and has blended them into a new hybrid form. This thesis engages with this issue through performance practice, textual analysis and theoretical critique, and aims to explore the possibilities and boundaries of a practical non-neo-colonial 'intercultural' theatre.

'Research as dialogue' and cross-cultural consultations : confronting relations of power

ln this paper, we discuss methodological issues that emerged as we worked through a small empirical research project, 'Engaging Aboriginal students in education through community empowerment'. Recent national policy statements (see, for example, MCEETYA 2000,. NBEET 1995) argue the importance of education/research that keeps the locus of control within the Aboriginal community as a means to further the goal of self-determination and improve educational outcomes. In keeping with these recommendations, our project aimed to challenge assimilationist frameworks and sought to 'empower' members of the local Aboriginal community through participation in the project. 'Research as dialogue' was a guiding principal and a primary aim was to listen actively to all key stakeholders in the remote community setting, particularly to lndigenous parents, students and teachers, in order to identify current strengths and concerns regarding the provision of culturally inclusive schooling. A proposed second stage of the project is to develop, on the basis of these consultations and in collaboration, community-based education projects that engage non-attending Aboriginal students. Here we discuss the consultative processes undertaken in stage one of the project, and critically analyse the difficulties as well as potential strengths of trying to form collaborative partnerships as researchers across cultural differences and with diverse community groups.

Transnational curriculum inquiry : building postcolonialist constituencies and solidarities

In this paper I explore some theoretical and practical possibilities for building new transnational and transcultural solidarities in postcolonial curriculum inquiry. I argue that building such solidarities requires a rethinking of the ways in which we perform and represent curriculum inquiry, so that curriculum work within a global knowledge economy does not merely assimilate national (local) curriculum discourses-practices into an imperial (global) archive. I draw on the initial stages of research on internationalisation, inclusivity, and innovative knowledge work conducted with colleagues at Deakin University, and elsewhere, which focuses on the possibilities of producing knowledge in transnational virtual spaces. This includes studies of the formation of new (and we hope more inclusive) transnational scholarly communities and constituencies, and of strategies to improve modes of intercultural communication that facilitate transnational knowledge work. I situate part of my discussion of these arguments and issues in the practicalities of establishing Transnational Curriculum Inquiry (TCI), an electronic open-access journal that is both a site for transnational scholarly conversations and a site for inquiry into the ways that electronic publishing procedures facilitate and/or constrain inclusive knowledge work and postcolonialist curriculum inquiry.

Critique of "cultural fit" in relation to the recruitment of Indian information technologists for the Y2K project in Australia

In this study of intercultural communication, I investigate the multi-faceted meaning of the expression " cultural fit " in the sense that it is used by recruiters when shortlisting Indian information technologists to fill skills shortages for the Y2K project in Australia. The data is in the form of ten videotaped interviews in Bangalore and the recruiter commentary on those tapes in Melbourne. A crucial decision to be made by recruiters in any shortlisting process is " How will the candidate fit into the workplace?" This question becomes more problematical when applied to overseas-trained professionals. I take a critical approach, drawing principally on the research traditions of linguistics where studies of intercultural communication and workplace interaction intersect, employing chiefly the tools of Critical Discourse Analysis and Interactional Sociolinguistics and the more abstract notions of Bourdieu. A bridge between these different discourse approaches is provided by Sarangi & Roberts < 1999 < who show the connection between the larger institutional order and interactional routines, through an elaboration of frontstage talk and backstage talk following Goffman < 1959 < . An analysis of the interviews < frontstage talk < reveals "cultural fit" to involve a knowledge of institutional talk, in particular, directness. The recruiter commentary < backstage talk < draws attention to issues of intelligibility, body language, technical expertise and workplace values. the study shows that Indian Information Technologists have "partial fit" in that they possess technical fit but do not demonstrate, or lack the opportunity to demonstrate in the interview, Australian workplace values such as small talk, humour and informality. The recruiter judgments were fleeting and apart from checking for intelligibility, were made on the basis of candidates' body language thus highlighting its importance and its relative absence from the discourse approaches mentioned above. This study shows clearly that there is room for more communicative flexibility on the part of all the stakeholders.

Critical ethnography of the cross-cultural adaptation of HRQoL instruments

The thesis examines current approaches to the adaptation of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) instruments for cross-cultural research. The major conclusion is that nearly all existing HRQoL adaptation is based on simplistic processes that ignore relevant underlying disciplines including cognitive psychology, sociolinguistics, cultural anthropology, translation theory and survey research.

Cross cultural perspectives of teachers : a study in three countries

In a shrinking world where globalization has blurred the boundaries across nation states and cultural divides, limitations on intercultural communication can readily give rise to glib generalizations and lack of understanding of diversity. Acknowledging the key role of teachers in shaping the views of future generations, this paper reports on the first stage of a research study on the intercultural understanding of teachers in Australia, Japan, and Thailand. Overall, the teacher participants had diverse cross-cultural experience, differing both in extent and nature of the contact. The methodology used a common survey instrument, except for its language of presentation. However, instead of using a traditional comparative approach to contrast responses of the three target groups, the study asked teachers to provide their perceptions of prevailing world views of people in their own AND the other two countries. The reciprocal nature of the observations provides a powerful methodology to explore perceived intercultural similarities and differences. The article also considers problems associated with response set in investigations of this kind. Three scales are considered — change through intervention, symbolic inner self, and independent thought and action — and the data reveal some similarities but also some striking differences in perceptions across countries. The differences signal a lack of intercultural understanding which is being explored further in a second, qualitative stage of the research. The findings indicate the need for increasing shared programs, exchanges and other opportunities for reciprocal relations that foster genuine dialogue, partnership and intercultural understanding between countries.

Komunikasi budaya silang, kompetensi, pengajaran dan pembelajaran : satu analisis

This paper examines several issues related to intercultural communication competence and shared reality or inter-subjectivity when teaching in multicultural classrooms in Australia. Using the research method of personal narratives and autoethnography, it examines the challenges faced by lecturers and students in the classroom such as the use of different vocabulary, slang, idiom and keywords and the prior culture-specific knowledge required of both the lecturers and students. The paper also discusses how these challenges can be identified and addressed and how to prepare for future situations more effectively and in advance. It will be examined within the contexts of culturally responsive teaching, communicaiton competence, the hidden curriculum, instructional scaffolding, understanding and being open to other cultures and acknowledgement of the richness and relevance of multicultural students' varied experiences and social realities, from the point of view of the academic discipline of communication studies.