Virtual event – Zoom
Wednesday, January 17, 2024, 12 – 1:15pm
In what ways do cultural norms inform expectations and experiences within education, recruitment and selection processes, and experiential work-integrated learning? Approximately 900,000 international students attended Canadian post-secondary institutions in 2023 (Richardson & Hussein, 2022) and around 25% of the workforce is born outside of Canada (Statistics Canada, n.d.). However, many international students come from cultures and countries which emphasize different job-specific behaviours and soft skills, warrant different job search processes, documents (i.e. generalized CV vs. targeted résumé), and struggle with Canadian recruitment and selection processes which are rooted within cultural and colonial constructs.
Applying Geert Hofstede’s (1980, 1984, 2010) framework for cultural dimensions to a qualitative study, Brian Rochat’s research explores staff and student perceptions of how culture affects learning and development within international education, workplace preparation, processes, and experiences. The project included international student participants, from 11 different countries and representing 11 programs, registered within a central Canadian Polytechnic, as well as 5 staff. This study was grounded in the epistemological perspective of social constructivism that presumes people are born into cultures that have already constructed meaning about their objects and symbols, and that an individual’s understanding of meaning is shaped by sociocultural influences that manipulate their behaviour, experiences, and thinking (Licqurish and Seibold 2011, 12).
This session will unpack findings relating to intercultural discovery and development within international education, including adjusting to Canadian cultural dimensions of reduced power distance, impacting relations with instructors and managers, increased individualism and reflections of individualistic value systems in recruitment, selection, and work-integrated learning, the importance of social supports, and self-efficacy in language learning.
Attendees will discover and reflect upon ways in which cultural conditioning, norms, values and assumptions shape teaching, learning, and management styles, expectations around workplace behaviours, soft skills, barriers and blind spots.
Guest speaker biography:
Brian Rochat (he/him), Researcher, Work-Integrated Learning Professional, Consultant
Brian Rochat is a work-integrated learning professional and researcher with a specialization in international education, intercultural skills, and workforce development. As a graduate student Brian focused his research on international education, employability, and intercultural skills, resulting in the establishment and publication of a new model, “Axis of Intercultural Discovery and Development in International Education’ which demonstrates the correlation between cultural dimensions established learning, working styles, and cultural constructs, and be used to better understand and mitigate false-negatives in the recruitment, onboarding and talent development processes.
He has a professional background in workforce development, training, facilitation, education, curriculum development, human resources management, diversity and inclusion, and teaching in post-secondary. Brian was born in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) and immigrated to Canada as a child. He spent several years of high school as an outbound international student in South Africa, through which an experiential interest in international education, cultural dimensions, and intercultural skills emerged. Brian sits on several committees including: International Education Committee of Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning Canada (CEWIL), Canadian Bureau for International Education’s Intercultural Skills Working Group, Futureworx (Employability Skills Assessment Tool – ESAT) College Group and presents his research to numerous post-secondary institutions and organizations across Canada.
Registration is not required. Click here to join the event.
Organizer: The City of Winnipeg in partnership with the Human Rights Committee of Council
More info: winnipeg.zoom.us…
2024/01/17 (Wed)