Developing an intercultural curriculum within the context of the internationalisation of higher education: terminology, typologies and power

Although many academics and policymakers espouse the idea of an intercultural curriculum in principle, the practical implementation of this is problematic for several reasons. Firstly, the ambiguity and uncertainty that often surrounds key concepts complicates the articulation of cogent rationales and goals. Secondly, there may be no clear vision or understanding of what the desired outcome – an 'intercultural curriculum' – should look like and, given the absence of a widely accepted model, how this can be practically achieved. Thirdly, the issue of assessing students within the context of an intercultural curriculum is a challenging one. With this in mind, this paper seeks to critically discuss the meaning of an 'intercultural curriculum' and explore its relationship with the internationalisation of higher education and the specific idea of an internationalised curriculum. It also presents several salient typologies before proposing a new approach, which puts power distribution at the centre of developing intercultural curricula.