Seventh Annual Conference, 29 to 31 October, 1995
Milano, Italy
To communicate effectively across cultures, one needs to be aware of differences in greeting rituals, dress, timeliness, etc and be able to decode them - practitioners must be able to understand cultural differences and act accordingly. Therefore the theme 'The Cultures of Education' was highly appropriate. The Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore provided a wonderful venue for the 7th Annual EAIE conference, in the prosperous and bustling city of Milano. Around 1400 participants from more than 50 countries were in attendance.
The conference began spectacularly with a concert in La Scala on Saturday evening. The traditional pre-conference information day on the host country's higher education system was an insight into the changes occurring in the Italian higher education system in the context of changes everywhere in the world. Prof Alberto Martinelli (Università degli Studi di Milano) gave a brief account of how Italian higher education has developed since the beginning of the century. Prof Adriano Bausola's speech at the Opening Plenary warned that 'universities must not give in to the temptation to prudently withdraw, waiting for others to produce new ideas and restore clarity and certainty. What is required of them is to educate, that is to reconstitute society; this is why society's first problem is to educate young people and adults'.
There were two threads running through the workshops and sessions: one was the need for theory of international education and the other the need for cross-cultural awareness. Within each culture there are sub-cultures that we must not ignore, therefore as value systems and rituals of varying countries were examined, so were organisational cultures that may present obstacles to those who are from the same country. Only by examining this issue in depth will there be unity while celebrating diversity.