ABSTRACT
The basis for this chapter is qualitative research conducted in two small projects in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore in 2003/4 and 2004/5. These projects provided insights into the expectations students had of their teachers as well as those skills and abilities most highly valued by the teachers themselves. They also provided insights into how these characteristics might be developed in academic staff. In both projects extensive literature reviews were conducted spanning internationalisation and Higher Education internationalisation of the curriculum, professional development in Higher Education and transnational teaching and learning. In the first study, which investigated constructions of internationalisation of the curriculum at an Australian university, a small number of sixteen staff and students involved in a business programme taught in Adelaide and Hong Kong were interviewed. The interviews were part of a case study seeking understanding of the relationship between teacher and student understandings of internationalisation of the curriculum through the analysis of a variety of information from a range of sources. In the second study, conducted in 2004/5, questionnaires were sent to over 100 students and staff involved in transnational programmes in Hong Kong and Singapore, and follow-up interviews were conducted with sixty-one students and staff. In this study fifteen essential and desirable characteristics of teachers in this setting were identified (Leask et al., 2005). These research projects provided some insight into the characteristics of ‘the international teacher’.
