Teaching international classes

Project introduction and background information

Teaching in the International and Multicultural Classroom is a project that takes place each year. Wageningen University as part of Euroleague for Life Sciences - ELLS was host of lecturerers and staff to explore issues and challenges that lecturers and students frequently encounter in multicultural classrooms in the very first year that this project started. During the project trainings day participants are actively involved working on: learning, communication and cognitive style differences; different expectations with respect to a variety of cultural value dimensions; and different expectations and approaches to integrating the development of intercultural competence into today’s increasingly international and multicultural classrooms.

Objective and expected outcomes

• Be able to respond more effectively and appropriately to challenges encountered while teaching in international and multicultural classrooms
• Understand and be able to apply experiential and developmental theory to managing cultural difference in the classroom
• Understand more about their students’ and their own culturally based responses to differing value orientations
• Understand more about learning, cognitive and communication style differences
• Have experienced themselves what students typically experience in international and multicultural contexts
• Be able to apply several concrete steps at their own institutions in order to increase the intercultural competency of lecturers and students.

Results and learnings

• Highly interactive
• Featuring a diverse and varied set of exercises including video clips, simulations, teacher practice sessions, and case studies
• Being encouraged to share and exchange experiences in international classrooms
• Explore the challenges encountered, and work together to come up with solutions and best practices.