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A large portion of our students (~30%) are from countries other than Canada… Here the world’s best students can interact closely with Canada’s best students and both are significantly enriched because of the experience.

________ International Students, Royal Web Weaver (1998)


Foreign graduate students are essential to the teaching and research activities of the Faculty of Science. Approximately 30% of the graduate students in the Faculty of Science are foreign students. These are outstanding students that we compete for on a national and international basis to come to the University of Alberta... Foreign students make up approximately 40% of the Graduate Teaching Assistants… We are very pleased with the strong contribution that foreign graduate students make to the Faculty of Science here at the University of Alberta.

_______ Dean of the Faculty of Science (Foreign Student Handbook 1998/99)

Home, Exile and the Human Face of Globalization

The presence of international students is a growing multicultural phenomenon on the University of Alberta Campus. It also poses a series of pedagogical, curricular, academic, and administrative issues that need to be seriously addressed especially by a department specializing in education. One issue, for example, is how to help international students adjust themselves from their educational experiences back in their homelands to the largely different system of educational practice here in Canada. This adjustment is crucial to their overseas studies. Beneath the happy gala of ethnic and cultural diversity, there may be an invisible torrent of misconceptions, misrepresentations and misunderstandings both on a day-to-day life basis and at deeper intercultural and intercivilizational levels, which may jeopardize a globalized higher education. An investigation of the experience of international students may lead to an improved educational practice that will open up more possibilities and greater space for both university instructors and students to feel more at home in their engagement with intercultural dialogue, an effort which some say will characterize education in the New Millennium.

It is precisely the loss of or desire for that sense of (being) home that perplexes many people in this postmodern and postcolonial era that is exemplified by what M.M.J. Fischer (1992) terms the "transnational population movement (of) not only by merchants or elites but also by proletarianized groups." To a certain degree, the flood of international students into Canada can be taken as a good starting-point to see how the world is being fundamentally changed through globalization of education. Foreign students have brought, along with their personal, familial, social and educational stories, a grand narrative of how the world has become a "global village", at least within the Roman, Christian and Euro-American dream of establishing a global economy and world culture (Spring, 1998). What does the global village look like? How should we, as educators, interpret these current conditions in a way that both "national" and "international", "domestic" and "foreign" students feel we are truly sharing the "global village"? How should we promote the consciousness that what we are doing today means much to the future of this newly shared home? International students have come here for a variety of economic, academic and personal reasons. This phenomenon presents us with the challenge of defining what this new sense of home might be.

Most foreign students, in one way or another, have a strong sense of "exile". Being physically detached from their families, friends and cultures, they become spiritually more attached to the world they have left behind. As Rebecca Martusewicz (1997) states "detachment is at the heart of education. We are what we have left." In this sense, an intercultural dialogue among Canadian and international students is of curricular and pedagogical significance in terms of cultural interpretation and personal transformation.

Fostering Intercultural Dialogue

It was out of the above, among other, considerations that a departmental project of "Fostering Intercultural Dialogue" was initiated at the beginning of 1998. As one of the major institutions specializing in curriculum studies and teacher education, the Department of Secondary Education, University of Alberta, enjoys a fairly long tradition of intercultural dialogue advocated and promoted by Dr. Ted Aoki and Dr. Terry Carson. The department sees issues of cultural difference and understanding as an integral part of its teaching and scholarship. Just as Dr. Carson, Chair of the Department of Secondary Education, wrote:

Historically, the graduate program in the Department of Secondary Education has had a number of its students coming from outside of Canada. Most of these students are visible minorities. While the Department has endeavoured to provide a welcoming atmosphere for international students, we have evidence that many experience educational and cultural disorientation, especially during their first year of residence. These students express some of the same concerns that are reported in Toh and Cawagas’s 1995 study "Enhancing Equity for Visible Minority Students," i.e. their cultural backgrounds are not taken seriously enough, there are instances of cultural misunderstandings, and they have limited participation in class discussions, etc. (Carson, 1998)

And the experience of disorientation on the part of the international students has been a concern to the department, which believes "fostering intercultural dialogue is essential to our mission." (Carson, 1998)

As part of the Department’s effort to address this kind of issues, a group of graduate students, both foreign and Canadian, headed by Dr. Carson, came up at the beginning of 1998 with an initiative "Fostering Intercultural Dialogue." The proposal was submitted to the University of Alberta Employment Equity Discretionary Fund Committee.

According to our proposed plan, the Dialogue was to develop in three steps:

Step 1: Sharing Intercultural Experiences Approximately six informal sessions will be organized around the theme of Intercultural Experiences. The sessions will be open to graduate students, undergraduates and faculty members. International graduate students will be especially invited. Participants will share with each other intercultural experiences both within and outside of Canada. Several of the sessions will be organized around a film from a foreign country that will be selected and introduced by a participant from that country.

Step 2: Culture in Comparison Participants from different cultures will be asked to prepare brief presentations on education related topics from the perspective of their own culture. Topics could include teacher/student relations, pedagogical methods, the educational system, role of the teacher, etc. The presentations are expected to lead, fairly systematically, to some genuine and interpretive understanding of the specific culture in relation to other cultures.

Step 3: Cultural and Pedagogical Studies A graduate seminar, entitled Cultural and Pedagogical Studies, will be organized. Members (graduate students and faculty) will be required to give presentations of cultural, curricular and pedagogical issues related to their own research areas.