Australian higher education is increasingly understood in terms of preparing students to be 'work-ready' graduates, and 'authentic' assessment (Gulikers, Bastiaens & Kirschner, 2004) seen as a means to that end, particularly in the case of vocational degrees. This poses a challenge for students studying generalist Humanities/Arts (BA) degrees, with broader social narratives tending to downplay the value of the Humanities in the contemporary Australian workplace. In addition, BA students exemplify Australia's diverse profile (ABS Census, 2021), bringing different languages, cultures, knowledge repertoires, disciplinary interests and aspirations, yet often their social, linguistic and cultural potential is undervalued. This paper reports on an applied linguistic study which investigated BA students' experience of a work-integrated learning program (WIL) in an Australian university, over two semesters. The purpose of the WIL program is to expand students' understandings of themselves and their future career directions. The program brings an intercultural orientation to teaching and learning (O'Neill, Scarino & Crichton, 2019) to support students in their diversity as they develop their career narratives through guided research and reflection, in collaboration with community and industry partners. These partners represent various sectors and organisations, many of which focus on areas of social responsibility, such as social housing, migrant and refugee support, youth work and care providers.
Drawing on intercultural learning pedagogies (O'Neill et al., 2019), the study involved a narrative intervention (Crichton & O'Neill, 2016), exploring students' experience of co-creating a supportive learning framework within the program, and co-designing assessments that they found meaningful and relevant, with input from community and industry partners. Narrative data were collected from students, community and industry partners and the researcher/teacher of the program, through reflective journaling and interviews. A thematic narrative analysis (Riessman, 2008) of preliminary data demonstrated that students were initially uncertain of how to go about articulating their disciplinary knowledge, expertise and interests to people both within and beyond the university context. However, through their involvement in the narrative intervention and co-design of assessments, student voices were foregrounded and their understandings of what was considered 'authentic' - that is, what they considered meaningful and relevant for their future options for life and work - were captured in their terms. Their lived experience may have been characterised by socio-economic challenges and a sense of exclusion, and their possible selves (Mattingly, 1994) and potential career directions may be underestimated by themselves and others, yet findings show that an intercultural orientation to learning, expanded their understandings of self and their opportunities. Given the pressing need that the study of the human condition and social responsibilities – in other words, the Humanities - seeks to address, better understandings of ways to develop, evaluate and enable students through inclusive higher education with an intercultural lens is crucial in the contemporary social and professional worlds in which they will live and work.
