Global Engineers, global people? Integrating intercultural learning outcomes in the engineering curriculum

Against a background of continuing globalization, business leaders have repeatedly called for graduates to have ‘global competencies’, particularly communication skills and the ability to work in diverse teams [1,2,3]. Despite these calls, official learning outcomes for engineering programs in Flanders, Belgium, as elsewhere in Europe, rarely go beyond token phrases like ‘operating in an intercultural environment’ or ‘having insight in working in an international environment’ [4,5]. While such ‘placeholder’ terminology may be a sign of a more general wish to instill these qualities in engineering students, it offers no direction as to just how engineering educators should go about attaining or assessing these learning outcomes. Therefore, there is a clear need to identify or develop a valid competency framework for operationalizing learning outcomes in connection with working in an intercultural environment in the engineering curriculum. First established in 2009 after two phases of data collection (2003-7) and analysis, the Global People Competency Framework [henceforth GPCF] is a comprehensive and concrete set of resources and models for both students and educators for nurturing intercultural competence [6]. It was developed out of the intercultural interaction experiences of staff at British and Chinese universities when they were collaborating on a number of joint teacher training projects. Having emerged from a relatively limited context in terms of nationality (British, Chinese) and sector/discipline (education), its suitability for use in different contexts needs to be investigated. This study is the first to do so systematically. In this paper, the authors present ongoing research on the suitability of GPCF for engineering curricula by investigating student reception of the framework and exploring whether there are areas where adaptation would be beneficial.status: publishe