Understanding+meaning+of+intercultural+competence

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** Understanding the meaning of intercultural competence from the perspective of students who participated in a global service learning program ** Yao-Yi Fu, Associate Professor, Indiana University [yafu@iupui.edu]


 * Keywords**: Intercultural competence, Kenya, tourism development


 * Conference track**: Global community engagement and comparative studies


 * Format**: Research/Scholarly paper

This study adopts an intercultural competence instrument developed by Deardorff (2010) in an international service learning course that took place in Kenya. Students and faculty traveled to the Rift Valley in Kenya and stayed there for three weeks. The course involved lectures, class discussions, field trips, and research activities that resulted in a tourism development project for the Rift Valley. The main service learning component of the course was the tourism development project for the region, which was a collaboration between our group and Moi University’s tourism faculty and graduate students in Kenya.
 * Summary**

Students’ self-evaluations from the instrument produced rich data that help to clarify the meaning of intercultural competence from their perspective. Their written explanations of each intercultural competencies show that there is some variation in terms of how they interpreted the 15 knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) constructs of competence. For instance, “respect” was viewed in two different ways by the students. They referred to it mostly as an acceptance or acknowledgement of Kenya’s culture and way of life. Few statements referred to it as a gesture of greeting, hospitality or friendship. Another finding of this study is that greater improvement of intercultural competence was found in students who had less experience with traveling or living abroad than student who had more experience abroad prior to the trip.

This study contributed to the current body of literature by testing the instrument developed by Deardorff (2010). It was found that the instrument helps to gauge students’ development of intercultural competence. The research design of this study also identifies meaning of the competencies from students’ perspective, and it also confirms that the current KSA elements of competence can be viewed differently by students.

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