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Intercultural CompetenceGail Samdperil and Christina Gunther

Sacred Heart University

Today’s Objectives

1.Identify problems with cultural awareness perception in the college

environment

2.Analyze high-impact learning tools and take-away a framework of

cultural awareness activities (for both faculty and students)

3.Adapt activities to diverse educational departments

A Definition

Intercultural Competence

“The ability to relate and communicate effectively when individuals involved in the interaction do not share the same culture, ethnicity, language, or other common experiences.”

Forum on Education Abroad, 2016

Engaging Cultural Diversity

The development of intercultural competence involves gaining a more complex understanding of how one engages cultural diversity.

Reproduced from the Intercultural Development Inventory Resource Guide by permission of the author, Mitchell R. Hammer, Ph.D., IDI, LLC. Copyright 1998, 2003, 2007, 2012 Mitchell R. Hammer, IDI, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Knowing our own Cultural Habits

Deeper cultural self-understanding (how one make sense of

and respond to cultural differences in terms of one’s own culturally learned perceptions, values and practices)

Examples:

Time as a cultural construct

Individualistic vs communal societies

Knowing Cultural Habits of Others

Deeper cultural other-understanding (different ways people

from other cultural groups make sense of and respond to cultural differences).

Examples:

Waiting in Guatemala

Greeting each other

Why is ICC so Important?• Healthcare - lack of cultural competence affects health outcomes

• Education - Increasingly diverse classrooms. Some teaching strategies may not engage all students as fully as possible

• Business - with increasing globalization, worldwide interaction is becoming commonplace

Field of Intercultural Competence

5+ decades of scholarly work

Intercultural Competence Model

Continuous Growth and Development

When people receive intercultural

training it aids them in acquiring the

skills that can help them navigate new

cultures successfully, as well as helps

them to recognize and understand

their own cultural beliefs and values.

Paige, 1993

Our Student Data

• Students believe they are culturally competent, however, data

showed that they fall into a polarization category (N=27)

• Polarization is a judgmental view in terms of “us vs them”

• The students’ perception is quite different than the reality

“Given the integral involvement of faculty in shaping the

student experience, interculturally competent

professors and instructors are in an excellent position

to help students develop their own competency in this

realm and facilitate students’ global preparedness.”

Deardorff, 2012

Faculty Role

Interculturally Competent Faculty

1. Understand the complexity of intercultural competence (ICC)

2. Design their courses to go beyond knowledge transmission and address intercultural learning as an outcome

3. Able to successfully teach students from a wide variety of backgrounds

4. Be prepared to provide feedback to students in their intercultural journeys

14 Dimensions of Diversity

YOU

“Cultural Programming”

How do you get faculty to this point?

background & beliefs

teaching practices

begin with informal

conversation

Need faculty buy-in

(meet faculty where they are)Paradigm shift

How truly open am I to those from different cultural, socioeconomic, and

religious backgrounds?

Can I describe my own cultural conditioning? For example, what cultural

values impact how I behave and communicate with others? Describe.

Do I engage in active reflection on my teaching practice and on my

interactions with those from different cultural backgrounds? Do I seek to

understand why something occurred and what lessons can be learned from

the situation? How?

Am I able to be flexible in responding to students’ learning needs, seeking to

understand those needs from their cultural perspectives? In what ways?

Reflection Questions for Faculty

Deardorff, 2012

BARRIERS TO DEVELOPING CULTURALLY

COMPETENT FACULTY

• Lack of diversity in leadership and workforce.

• Systems that are poorly designed to meet the needs of diverse faculty and staff.

• Poor communication between leadership and faculty of different racial, ethnic, or cultural backgrounds.

* Faculty are not being encouraged to develop their own intercultural competence

Once Faculty are on their way to ICC…..

Process -

Oriented

Approach

Results -

Oriented

Approach

Promote

Critical

Reflection

The curricula should:

• increase awareness of racial and ethnic disparities in education and the importance of sociocultural factors on beliefs and behaviors

• identify the impact of race, ethnicity, culture, and class on decision-making

•implement high-impact practices to identify beliefs and behaviors

• develop skills for cross-cultural assessment, communication, and negotiation

Training Tools

Let’s try it:

● Photography: my community, my culture ( NY Times Culture Shot)

In Closing

Whether student or faculty, becoming interculturally competent is a developmental, lifelong process.

• For faculty guiding their students in the development of these competencies, a process-oriented approach includes the incorporation of learning activities such as critical reflection and analysis into students’ coursework.

• Faculty should reflect on the intercultural aspects of their teaching practice.

Deardorff, 2012

Thank you!

Contact us with any questions:

Gail Samdperil -samdperilg@sacredheart.edu

Christina Gunther -guntherc@sacredheart.edu