This volume features a collection of papers from the second annual Intercultural Horizons conference held in October 2012 in New York City (USA). The 2012 conference was the second in what is becoming an annual series of meetings, and the present volume therefore is a companion to one issued last year by Cambridge Scholars Publishing (Intercultural Horizons: Best Practices in Intercultural Competence Development, 2012).
The papers included in this volume reflect a diversity of approaches both to intercultural education in the North American setting and to its application in service-learning and related contexts in diverse cultural settings in other nations. Our authors provide faculty and student perspectives, primarily from the level of postsecondary education but including a look as well at intercultural education at the primary level. Many of the papers focus in one way or another on issues of curriculum, teaching and learning in relation to developing intercultural competence in students in North American colleges and universities, particularly though not exclusively through the use of service-learning.
All of the papers touch in one way or another on another important development now affecting almost all institutions of higher education in North America and, increasingly, in other nations worldwide—that of the university’s engagement with the community. During the past thirty years, such engagement has moved from the periphery to the core of many North American colleges and universities. Similar efforts are now emerging among many Asian universities and in Europe as well. The paper in this volume on the Polisocial initiative at the Politecnico di Milano in Italy is a good example of how the theme of university-community engagement is taking hold in a city and nation facing similar intercultural and economic challenges to those in North America—and serves as a preview of themes the International Center for Intercultural Exchange hopes to explore in its future conferences.
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