“Listen to Me!”: Student Voices as a Catalyst for Changes in Study Abroad Program Development to Facilitate Intercultural Competence

• In Event: Experiences and Reflections of International Students

Proposal

The rapid rise of international migration around the world has prompted not only an urgency to become interculturally competent citizens but also the need for a deeper understanding of this competency. It follows, then, that intercultural competence development plays an ever-growing role in higher education in preparing our students to live and work in this shrinking world. As a result, intercultural competence research has received much scholarly attention in the past few decades, and with it has come critical advances in the concepts and theories underlying its complex nature.

Intercultural competence is broadly defined as “the overall capacity of an individual to enact behaviors and activities that foster cooperative relationships with culturally (or ethnically) dissimilar others” (Kim, 2009, p. 54). Although there is no consensus on the definition of intercultural competence, the concept can apply to anyone who interacts with people from different backgrounds (Deardorff, 2011). With a clearer definition of the concept of intercultural competence, this complex construct that involves more than one component can be measured (Deardorff, 2006).
A growing area of academic inquiries benefiting from intercultural competence investigations is that of study abroad programs, the number of which have risen in higher education in the U.S. in recent decades. This surge in study abroad program offerings may be the result of institutions’ claims of their objective of internationalizing students and producing global citizens. With an increase in the number of study abroad programs available to university students, drawing participants to them is becoming more competitive, pressing program developers to create appealing programs that have attractive, attainable goals.

One of the most crucial outcomes of study abroad programs is the cultivation of intercultural competence, reflected in participants’ views of the host cultures and their accounts of intercultural experiences which are often analyzed qualitatively. Despite its strong relevance in the contemporary U.S., empirical research in the intercultural competence process as it relates to educational settings such as a study abroad context is limited but growing. However, one area of research that is underrepresented is comparative studies of study abroad programs to multiple countries.

The purpose of this study, then, was to examine the role the study abroad experience played in the development of students’ intercultural competence during their interactions on a short-term study abroad program to Japan and Korea. Student voices and reactions gleaned from journals kept by the participants throughout the course of the program were qualitatively analyzed for this study, providing a better understanding of the on-going development of their intercultural competence.

Findings from comprehensive qualitative analyses of journal entries revealed that intercultural competence of study abroad participants indeed developed and was maintained through exchanges and interactions with others and with the cultural environment. The individual and collective interactions of the program participants may have served as a catalyst in shaping their intercultural competence and ultimately altered subsequent behaviors, as clearly evidenced in their journals. However, although intercultural competence was nurtured during the entire course of this study abroad program, it should not be an assumed result of mere interactions and activities in a host country. The present study supports the claim that immersion without intervention does not necessarily or effectively increase intercultural competence.

The present study contributes to the pool of intercultural competence research by extending the paradigm to the growing field of international education abroad. Our findings emphasize the importance of the voices of study abroad sojourners, those students in global learning contact situations. Leaders of study abroad programs and program developers would benefit greatly from a deeper understanding of study abroad participants’ intercultural learning experiences through their voices to help promote the learning of new social skills and adapting to new cultures, ultimately leading to their becoming more culturally competent global citizens.

Authors

• Jeongyi Lee, Kennesaw State University

• Kathryn Negrelli, Kennesaw State University