Developing the Intercultural Competence of Graduate Students

This study explores how teaching development programs may facilitate the development of intercultural competence in graduate students and prepare them for communicating effectively in the global workplace after graduation. First, we describe the concept of intercultural teaching competence and ex-amine the skills that graduate students may need to cultivate in order to com-municate effectively in culturally diverse settings. Then, we discuss the find-ings of our qualitative study on the impact of teaching development programs enhanced with intercultural communication components. As a result of train-ing, participants became more aware of cultural and disciplinary differences in communication, were able to adapt their communication style to audiences with different levels of background knowledge, and felt more prepared for in-terpersonal interactions across cultures with undergraduates. Finally, partic-ipants were able to transfer the skills learned to other areas of graduate study and used effective intercultural communication strategies when interacting with globally diverse peers and faculty supervisors. Résumé Cette étude explore la manière dont les programmes de perfectionnement pédagogique peuvent faciliter l’acquisition de compétences interculturelles chez les étudiants des cycles supérieurs et les préparer à communiquer efficacement une fois sur le marché mondial du travail, à la fin de leurs études. Nous décrivons d’abord le concept de « compétences interculturelles en milieu d’enseignement » et étudions les compétences que les étudiants aux cycles supérieurs peuvent devoir acquérir afin de communiquer efficacement s’ils enseignent dans des milieux culturellement diversifiés