Developing Intercultural courses in a vacuum: Some emergent pedagogical issues

This paper explores some intercultural communication pedagogy issues arising in my particular HE context. Despite lofty international aspirations, Manchester has as an under-elaborated internationalisation philosophy and no philosophy to speak of regarding interculturalisation and the development of student and staff attitudes, understandings and skills in intercultural communication. Indeed, it is only recently (as an outcome of a review of u/g provision) that our institutional discourse has begun to use cultural awareness, global awareness, and global citizenship. But even so, intercultural concerns do not have a secure place in the institutional agenda. Thus, as a context, I would characterise Manchester as a 'vacuum' vis-à-vis IC pedagogy. However, in this vacuum (which I sense is far from unique), there have been some (largely bottom-up) intercultural communication course developments. I have been involved in these three in particular: • Computer-Mediated Intercultural Communication (CMIC), an interculturalisation-at-home initiative for the BA Language, Literacy and communication programme; • Going Global: Intercultural Communication for International Experience, an initiative seeking to consolidate interculturalisation-through-study-abroad through elective study by any outgoing study abroad student; and • Language Education as Intercultural Practice, an interculturalisation-as-professional- competence initiative for Masters-level experienced TESOL practitioners as part of their academically-situated, continuing professional development. In this paper, I briefly examine these three courses and then identify: a) key characteristics of the emerging IC pedagogy they embody; and b) some of the challenges of developing IC courses in this unsupportive HE context.