Despite the need to develop business students’ cultural competence in core curricula, little is known about the effects of compulsory training on student learning and development. To address this gap, we combined person- and variable-centred approaches to examine different cultural competence trajectories among 171 undergraduate students enrolled at an Australian university. Semi-structured interviews of 33 students provided deeper insights into student experiences and learning. Our quantitative findings suggest that while we succeeded in improving average cultural competence scores across the cohort, almost a quarter of our students showed no significant improvement. Three different trajectories were found, with students differing both in their starting level of competence and their improvement over time. Students in each trajectory had different levels of readiness for learning in diverse teams, professional identity, ethnocentrism, and classroom affect at the start of the semester, highlighting the importance of personal attributes in learning. Our qualitative analysis also found notable differences in learning, with most students providing surface-level conceptions of competence, and a few moving beyond awareness of others to incorporate self-awareness of one’s own cultural background and biases. Practical implications for educators include the importance of training the trainer and personalizing training to better suit diverse students’ needs.
