Intercultural communication in engineering studies: a key competence in global labour markets

Intercultural communication is not only a necessary tool for most international workplaces, but also for higher education so as to better prepare students for their future jobs. To test how intercultural competences might be taught in engineering programmes in Spain, a country where many young people have to emigrate in order to find work, an experimental group of engineers was trained in the acquisition of intercultural competences, and compared to a control group in the same field. Students exposed to the intercultural content performed significantly better on later intercultural assessments. Pedagogical implications show that teaching intercultural skills in monoculture contexts is feasible.