Teaching International Students: The Value Of Having Experience From Teaching In A Foreign Country

Engineers, representing key competencies in companies, need to be skilled in acting in global settings and thus engineering students should be prepared to work in international organizations. In this paper we problematize around the complexity of teaching in an international education program with students representing different countries, cultures, languages, education systems and pedagogical experiences. We specifically exemplify with insights gained from teaching two different courses in China and compare with how the courses are taught in Sweden.

Two main conclusions are presented. First, teachers that have international classes need to be aware of differences among the students due to their various experiences associated with national culture, different education systems and pedagogic approaches. Secondly, our insights convincingly indicate the importance of having experience from teaching in a foreign country. Therefore universities should continue to strongly encourage teachers to teach abroad to enhance the quality of teaching in international settings. Then teachers can become T-shaped, which conceptually refers to a person that is expert in the (main) pedagogic approaches used in his/her native country, but he/she has also complementary understanding of pedagogic approaches used in other countries.