Promoting and Assessing Intercultural Learning for Preservice Teachers

• In Event: 34.064 - Preparing Teachers With Global Competencies for Intercultural Teaching: Internationalizing Curriculum and Pedagogy for Equitable Educational Opportunity

Abstract

Objectives
This presentation explores the outcomes of an education abroad program for pre-service teachers. The year-long program (pre-departure semester, semester abroad, re-entry semester) and related course work engaged participants as post-student teaching interns that afforded opportunities to deeply consider their development as culturally responsive teachers.

Theoretical Framework
Cushner (2011) refers to intercultural competence as “the critical knowledge and skills that enable people to be successful within a wide range of culturally diverse contexts” (p.606). This includes promoting pre-service teachers’ perceptions and skills that enable them to effectively collaborate with people of different cultural groups. Our conceptual frame for considering intercultural competence is the developmental model of intercultural sensitivity (DMIS) which can identify where someone is situated along a continuum from ethnocentric to ethnorelative by capturing one’s orientation to cultural difference (Hammer & Bennett, 2003). Ethnorelative developmental stages are “ways of seeking cultural difference, either by accepting its importance, by adapting perspective to take it into account, or by integrating the whole concept into a definition of identity” (Bennett, 2004, p. 63, italics in original).

Modes of Inquiry and Data Sources
To purposefully engage students in discourse, reflection and action planning regarding their intercultural learning, the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) (Hammer and Bennett, 2003) and the myCAP (my Cultural Awareness Profile) (Marx & Moss, 2011; Wilder & Boer, 2015) were administered to participants prior to the beginning of their year-long program and following their semester abroad. Both validated instruments produced reports that afforded explicit opportunities to engage participants in dialogue underpinning their intercultural learning. Additionally, participants were administered the Intercultural Development Inventory—a measure of an individual’s orientation to cultural difference. The IDI assesses intercultural competence—the capability to shift cultural perspective and appropriately adapt behavior to cultural differences and commonalities. Intercultural competence has been identified as a critical capability in a number of studies focusing on overseas effectiveness of international sojourners. The IDI is a 50-item questionnaire available online.

Findings
Empirical results from the study reveal gains in participant scores on both the IDI and myCAP. Participants’ developmental orientation scores on the IDI increased by an average of 24 points across the cohort (n=16), indicating that cultural competence was more developed after their semester abroad than prior to departure. Likewise, following the international internship semester abroad, myCAP data indicated participants were less likely to see others as more cultural than themselves, more likely to see themselves as member of a cultural group, more likely to realize their culture influences on how they communicate with others, and more likely to state they have had experiences as a cultural outsider.

Scholarly Significance
According to Cushner (2011), studies show that both preservice and inservice teachers are “stuck on the ethnocentric side of this scale and may not have the requisite disposition to be effective intercultural educators…” (p. 5). Our presentation will highlight strategies that were successful in helping participants develop ethnorelative orientations to cultural difference.

Authors

• David M. Moss, University of Connecticut

• Helen Marx, Southern Connecticut State University