Preparation on cultural differences for all

摘要

Erasmus is probably the most well-known European Commission (DG for Education and Culture) program to support the mobility of students, teachers and staff. There are also many others that support mobility, either worldwide or locally. The main goals of mobility for students and teachers independent of the program are learning and teaching in different cultural and lingual environments, as well as learning languages and benefiting from cross-cultural experiences and cultural differences. Quite often, neither students, teachers nor staff are as prepared for the active participation in different cultural and lingual environments as they are for domestic ones. Institutions primarily take care of the lingual readiness of students and sometimes cultural education is also included but rarely is any preparation done for teachers and staff. If the preparation is done for teachers and staff on mobility it is usually never done for those who are staying at home and working at a home institution with mobile students. The situation is also similar for non-mobile home students. Real life shows that preparing for cultural differences is needed for all of them.