100 C HAPTER 6 Reflective Learning and Its Role as an Accompanying Measure for Intercultural Skills Gain in the Workplace Rosalyn Baldonado Eder Employability has become a buzzword in higher education in recent years. To ensure a smoother transition from university to workplace setting, many higher education institutions have integrated work placements or internships into their program curricula. Aside from increasing the students’ employment chances after graduation, work placements or internships also offer students the opportunity to gather meaningful experience during their course of study and thus contribute to their professional development. The quality of work placements is therefore crucial; at the placement or internship sites, students should ideally be able to test, evaluate, reject, validate and modify their existing knowledge as well as accommodate and assimilate new ones in work and other situations as and when the situation calls for it. Transnational placements, or internships/traineeship abroad, however, present further challenges to students – not only do they need to deal with the daily practices of their chosen professions, they also need to pay attention to the social and cultural contexts which they are constantly confronted within as well as outside the workplace. Ladegaard and Jenks (2015, p. 2) argue that the “workplace is a site where the notion of a connected and disconnected world is perhaps most evident” as employees engage in (un)familiar cultural and linguistic practices in carrying out their tasks and responsibilities. Very often employees do not have sufficient knowledge of cultural norms and values or little training in dealing with particular workplace issues that arise from such differences. Regardless of size, location or nature, the workplace is a crucial site for socialization where institutional roles are played out and employees – including interns – engage in various forms of social and cultural practices within established norms and conventions, both in work- and non-work related activities. In transnational settings, these socio-cultural contexts could have implications for power and gender issues, language and communication approaches, or