This study discusses the purpose, process and practice of quality assurance in transnational education (TNE) wherein institutions in one country award their degrees to students studying in another. This arrangement raises the issue of how the quality and standards of the degree programmes are assured so that they enable the programmes delivered in one country to be considered as being of a comparable quality and standard to those delivered in another. The study explores how the cross-national implementation of quality assurance is conducted and perceived by those engaged in it and the challenges such activity faces. Using data collected via structured interviews in Sri Lanka and the UK, the study examines the perceptions of participants in TNE collaboration. The analysis is undertaken within a conceptual framework developed from inter-firm relationship and supply chain management theories. The concept of “relational capital”, and its creation through socialisation activity, is proposed as a key factor in understanding TNE. A further body of literature is explored, that of inter-cultural communication and inter-cultural competence. The study contributes to the literature on TNE and internationalisation by identifying a tension between the financial drivers behind TNE and the resource intensive activities required to build relational capital. The findings are developed into a conceptual model for quality assurance in TNE, which can be used in the planning, management and evaluation of TNE and is designed to develop relational capital through the relational and inter-cultural competences of those engaged in such work. Through such a development, it is argued, quality assurance in TNE can move away from a process of enforced compliance with the prevailing quality assurance processes to one driven by a shared quality culture in which capacity building in the partner institutions of TNE can be achieved.

The purpose of this research was to explore how students developed over a four-year international higher education experience, the first longitudinal study of student development through undergraduate careers completed entirely abroad. One hundred six students representing forty-three different countries at an American international liberal arts college in Switzerland participated in this grounded theory study, which incorporated an additional 186 anonymous survey respondents. The study addressed the processes and outcomes of such an education. The work utilized data produced through a number of different formats, including student peer-to-peer interviews, reflective student writing, participant observation, and open survey questions. The research showed that this experience prepared students for seven related cosmopolitan futures, ranging from global activist to glocal elite. In addition to classifying typologies, the study explained how students utilized three separate learning arenas to structure their experience: the intercultural bubble, the larger world of travel, and local communities. Students autonomously employed distinct methods within these learning arenas, using cyclical processes involving agency, constant comparison, risk-taking, and reflection. Students developed both intercultural competencies and worldliness. Key aspects of intercultural competencies included adaptability, open-mindedness, and perspective-taking. Worldliness instead comprised independence, travel savvy, and self-assuredness. Findings suggest that, regardless of a student’s original cosmopolitical orientation, the net effect of the extended international higher education experience was to expand students’ orientations and modes of acting and perceiving toward greater global understanding and appreciation, including aspects of ethical cosmopolitanism. The experience was transformative, albeit in an incremental fashion, building upon students’ previous lives. The research proposed a more evidence-based definition of cosmopolitan education than previous conceptualizations, one that encompasses tensions in discourses around internationalization and globalization. This thesis contributes to the literatures on the internationalization of higher education, international education, education for global citizenship, higher education policy, cosmopolitanism in practice, and the sociology of globalization. The thesis concludes with recommendations for international education researchers, practitioners, and campus leaders.

ABSTRACT This study had a three-fold purpose: first, to assess the attitudes of student affairs administrators working in the Florida College System (FCS) about globalization, internationalization, and their strategies for effecting internationalization efforts at their community/state colleges. This study also investigated the relationship between student affairs administrators' attitudes about globalization and internationalization and what they considered to be the role of student affairs administrators in internationalizing the community/state college. Finally, this study examined the relationship between student affairs administrators' attitudes about their perceived role in internationalizing the community/state college and certain demographic variables. No study has been found which asks these research questions related to the role of student affairs administrators in internationalizing the community college. This quantitative study was conducted with student affairs administrators working at a FCS community or state college. The specially devised survey instrument was administered online and all responses were anonymous. Data analyses, including Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), post hoc Tukey's tests, regressions, and descriptive statistics, were calculated. Survey findings indicated that student affairs administrators working in the FCS have positive attitudes about Globalization and Internationalization, and that these positive attitudes correlate strongly with their perceptions regarding the Role student affairs administrators should serve in internationalizing the community/state college. Respondents agreed that the role of student affairs administrators is central to internationalization of the college, and they generally agreed on what activities were critical to the role of the student affairs administrator. The data showed that student affairs administrators who possess higher levels of fluency in a language other than English are more likely to view foreign language skills as being important to internationalizing the community/state college than those who are less proficient in another language or who possess no foreign language skills. Data also indicated that respondents who categorized themselves as possessing "extensive" or "very good" international activity experience, as compared with their peers who ranked their international activity as being "nominal," exhibited stronger composite mean scores related to student affairs administrators' role in internationalizing the college. This ranking indicated that those who possess more international activity experience also are more likely to have an increased perception of the role student affairs administrators should have in internationalizing their community/state colleges. Colleges desiring to enhance their internationalization endeavors might wish to support opportunities for student affairs administrators to study a language other than English since this variable had a statistically significant effect on student affairs administrators' perceptions of internationalizing colleges. Additionally, more extensive international travel experiences correlated with support for internalization activities, so colleges might benefit from providing opportunities for student affairs administrators to gain international travel experience, especially for those administrators with less higher education experience.

Background: To be able to meet social harmony in a continuously globalizing world, intercultural competencies are important to possess as an individual. Thus, it is also important for Certified Prosthetists and Orthotists (CPOs) and other health care providers since they meet many diversities in connection to their work. Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate Danish CPOs’ experience and perception of their intercultural competencies in the treatment of immigrants. Method: This study is a qualitative interview study using a phenomenological approach. Semi-structured interviews are used to collect the data from five CPOs working in Danish clinics. A content analysis, with an inductive approach, is used for the analysis. Findings: From the analysis of the participant interviews, seven sub-categories were found and further divided into three categories: Treatment, work environment, and development of competencies. These contribute to describe the main category and the aim of this study. Conclusion: The Danish CPOs, who participated in this study, experienced that they did not treat immigrants differently than non-immigrants. However, they experienced that some challenges could be connected to the treatment of immigrants, such as communication difficulties, but they all had a perception, that they used specific tools and strategies to accommodate these challenges. Furthermore, they all experienced that their intercultural competencies had improved with experience, but most of them were also interested in further development of their competencies.

In my diploma thesis I deal with intercultural competencies, which are a relatively new phenomenon. It started to evolve on the grounds of the influence of globalization and internacionalization. I have made an overview of the changing life of organizations, especially in the area of Human Resource Management, which grows into international extent. I have considered the reasons leading to the growth of the (significant) needs of interculturally educated employees. Recent development of social, political and economical reality indicate the fact, that this need will be more and more urgent in the future. Because of the reducing importance of borders between nations and among economics the contact among members of different cultures in personal and work life is still more frequent and intensive. In the order to be efficient in cooperation with individuals from different cultural environment it is necessary to understand each other, capture the way of partner's thinking and behavior, forbearance and knowledge of cultural specifics. Training focused on development of intercultural competencies is thus an inevitable requirement of employee's preparation to long-term residence abroad and its completion is the precondition of smooth course of adaptation in a foreign country. Therefore, I pay attention to the...

La didactique actuelle des langues étrangères nous incite à suivre les principes d’une approche actionnelle prônant un apprentissage et un enseignement des langues par les tâches (Task-based Learning) ou encore par la résolution de problèmes (Problem-based Learning). La Perspective actionnelle est abondamment suivie mais moins visible dans le domaine de l’interculturel et de sa didactique. Or, si l’on part du principe que l’apprentissage des langues étrangères représente le cadre idéal de l’apprentissage interculturel, il faut se poser la question de savoir comment y développer et transmettre, au-delà des connaissances socioculturelles, des compétences interculturelles. Ce travail de recherche présente la mise au point d’un dispositif didactique, intitulé « étude de cas à visée interculturelle », assurant la double réalisation de ces objectifs et sa mise en application sur le terrain, au cours de quatre années d’expérimentation dans l’enseignement supérieur. Cet outil didactique a pour vocation de faire émerger les compétences interculturelles chez les apprenants, dans le cours de langue, par la réalisation de tâches mobilisant des compétences et des ressources, qui au delà des seules compétences langagières communicatives, activent des compétences générales et interculturelles. Il intègre ainsi le double changement paradigmatique de la didactique des langues et cultures et de la didactique de l’interculturel en puisant respectivement dans l’approche actionnelle et l’approche herméneutique. Cette recherche-action nous mène à la création d’une approche, dite « Perspective co-actionnelle interprétative » réunissant les avancées paradigmatiques des deux domaines. / The current teaching of foreign languages encourages us to follow an action-based approach, advocating the teaching and learning languages by tasks (task-based learning), or by the resolution of problems (problem-based learning). The action-based approach is widely followed, however, less apparent in the domain of the intercultural and its teaching. Yet if you start from the principle that the learning of foreign languages presents the ideal framework for intercultural learning, one has to ask how to develop and transmit within it, beyond sociocultural skills, intercultural competencies. This research project presents the development of a didactic device, termed Case Studies for the Intercultural, ensuring the double realisation of these objectives and their implementation on the ground, throughout the course of four years of experimentation in higher learning. This didactic tool has the purpose of drawing out intercultural competencies among the students in language classes, through the realisation of tasks mobilising skills and resources which activate general and intercultural competencies beyond mere skill of linguistic communication. It thereby integrates the double paradigmatic shift of the teaching of languages and cultures and of the teaching of the intercultural by drawing respectively on the action-based approach, and the hermeneutic approach. this research leads us to the creation of a new approach, the so-called Co-actional Interpretative Perspective, uniting the paradigmatic advances in the two fields.

The thesis is focused on ESP, English for Specific Purposes, namely English for tourism. Another specific feature is that it focuses on one particular student and the preparation of an individual course for him. In this thesis the student's needs are analyzed, the course syllabus is developed and teaching materials are prepared. After the study of the theoretical literature, the needs of the particular student are analyzed in terms of language needs, language skills and intercultural competence. The analysis is carried out through a guided interview and synthesized in a case study. A one-semester course syllabus design is the result of the analysis. In accordance with the syllabus, the lesson plans containing specific topic, aim, language skills, language sub-skills and teaching materials are created.