Instructional Strategies for Intercultural Teaching

Originally published in November 2024

Our previous research note centred on the challenges that international students face when leaving their home countries to attend post-secondary education in Canada. A central aspect of Laurier’s Strategy involving internationalization is to strive to cultivate global citizens with strong intellectual competencies. Instructors can play an important role in fostering expanded worldviews and reducing barriers to common understanding. As the demographic of our students evolves, it is up to us to evolve with it, creating and sustaining space, and a sense of belonging for all students, regardless of their country of origin.

Supporting Intercultural Learning and International Students

A valuable entry point to enhance your intercultural teaching toolkit is to engage with the Intercultural Teaching Competencies (ITC) framework. The ITC incorporates foundational, facilitation and course design competencies to help bridge cultural, linguistic, or other differences in the classroom, communicate successfully across disciplinary cultures, and establish meaningful relationships with and among students to facilitate learning and promote student engagement.

Foundational Reflections

As you begin working through the ITC framework, consider your own intercultural abilities and awareness. The competency framework begins with self-reflection to support faculty in developing skills that can be modeled in the classroom for all students, regardless of their home country. To begin, consider how you would respond to the following reflective prompts:

Have you explored your disciplinary identities and positionalities in the classroom? How do differences grounded in contrasting disciplinary approaches impact your teaching and learning process?
How can you anticipate, value, and accept differences between your students and their different approaches to learning? What can you do to support cultural safety and trust in your classroom?
How can you best encourage and model perspective taking in the classroom?
How would you model and encourage non-judgmental discussions about cultural, social, and any other difference between and among students?
How will you model tolerance for ambiguity and help learners deal with the uncertainty involved in exploring differences?

Building your personal intercultural competencies through reflection can help to identify where gaps in your knowledge are, and how to manage any biases that you might discover.

Facilitation Tips

Instructors can help address international students' social isolation and support community building by incorporating intercultural learning and relationship-building activities and assessments directly into the course curriculum. Laurier instructors can facilitate transformational learning opportunities through sharing and engaging with diverse perspectives.

Develop self- and social awareness using activities like a Social Identity Wheel.
Encourage students to foster trust during group work by discussing backgrounds and strengths to achieve success.
Facilitate discussions that encourage students to examine diversity in STEM disciplines to develop their scientific identity along with their social identities using a variety of communication styles.
Recognize the barriers students may face in participating in class and consider alternatives to traditional participation assessment strategies.
Be proactive in identifying potential risk factors that might surface during in-class activities.
Provide your students with feedback across cultures in a variety of ways.
Talk with your students about the purpose of attending class and how it will inform their success in your course: Be explicit with how attendance and engagement connect with your course-level learning outcomes, and how their attendance supports community learning.
Sharing what academic integrity looks like in their discipline and the consequences of not adhering to Laurier’s Golden Guide to Academic Integrity recognize you are the first point of contact for all students
Identify what academic norms and professionalization are expected in your class and leverage campus partnerships:
- Reach out to Writing Services, Student Success, and Career Services for in-class presentations and out of class supports for your students
- Book an in-class writing workshop to support skill development in writing assessments
Offer mentorship to students during their transition to new cultures and new disciplines, while recognizing that the transition might be difficult and require multiple supports from multiple stakeholders around Laurier (see supports below)

Curriculum and Course Design Tips

Create course learning outcomes on intercultural competencies (Page, 2021), such as:
- o applying diverse cultural perspectives to concrete examples or case studies
- o identifying skills needed for successful communication in a diverse team
- o describing the impacts of policies or medical paradigms on diverse communities
- o incorporating inclusive syllabus design
Create assessments to facilitate perspective taking, reflect on cultural awareness, or validate diverse linguistic voices and styles in expressions of learning, for example:
- o developing a reflection assignment that invites students to observe and analyze cultural representation on campus (Read more)
- o considering anti-racist approaches in designing writing assignments (Read more)
- o assigning a Complexity Paper, which invites students to research why a topic is complex rather than researching to argue and confirm a position. (Read more)
- o Consider assessments that support translingual writing to develop students’ academic writing voice using their diverse backgrounds.
Diversify course materials and identify knowledge and values from Indigenous and non-Western worldviews and scholars (Read more).

Further supports for International (and all) Students

NO219 Course - The course aims to provide exchange students and first/second-year degree-seeking students with a basic understanding of Canadian cultural literacy. For questions and further information, please contact the North American Studies program office.
Explore events and workshops that can help international students find community outside of your class. Students can also reach out to:
- o Waterloo Campus: Arts Building 2A01 E: laurierinternational@wlu.ca
- o Brantford Campus: One Market, OM 310 E: laurierinternational@wlu.ca
The Laurier Food Bank Parcel Program can provide 5 food parcels per term to cater to the nutritional and dietary needs of students. All students are eligible to use this service, regardless of circumstance or financial situation.
Free Weekly Distro is operated by Martin Luther University College on the Waterloo campus providing fresh and non-perishable food as well as other essential items to all students.
Mini Market – A pay-what-you-can grocery store addressing student food security operated by the GSA on the Waterloo campus.
Freestore and Moveout Program – designed to support students in zero-cost home goods and small appliances. Students can pick up and drop off new and gently used items free of charge in Waterloo and Brantford which is particularly helpful for students moving to a new country to both find furniture when they arrive and to donate back to the community when they move.
Tandem Language Program partners students based on language proficiency and personal interests, blending language skill development and social engagement. Please note that Fall registration is now closed, Winter registration will open soon.

Find more resources tailored to support international students>>

Watch conversations with Internationalization in Teaching award-winner Robert Ame and Staff award for Teaching Excellence Anne-Marie Joy Henry from Laurier International.