ABSTRACT
This chapter explores factors which might influence that quality. It argues that creating opportunities for learners to encounter and engage with diverse others requires critical analysis of cohort demographics, learner behaviours and the messages which permeate the environments in which they learn. Student perceptions of themselves and others around them, and the feelings and identities which may accompany those perceptions, such as safety, connectivity and respect for self and others, are reinforced or challenged within any of the environments they experience at university. The individuals who populate learning environments will determine the opportunities each student might have to develop growth-fostering relationships with diverse others. Students who are unable to flourish in their learning environments are unlikely to be well-placed to engage in intercultural relationship development, even if those relationships might ultimately prove to be highly sustaining.
