Point: Counterpoint

Where Credit Is Due

Recognizing the Benefits of Intercultural Experience

By Margaret D. Pusch

In advertising study abroad programs we generally tout the overall experience of learning from living in another culture as its own reward. Students are often said to get as much from the intercultural experience as they do from their academic work. This assertion has been supported by research, although research findings are mixed both in terms of methodology and results (see sidebar below).

Reasons why the experience of study abroad is considered to be valuable include the following:

• Students have the opportunity, perhaps for the first time, to become active, reflective learners and draw on daily experiences to expand and deepen what is learned in formal studies.
• Students learn to compare the ways that key global issues are approached in different cultures (this can be assessed and may be attached to academic study).
• Students can practice a language (this can also be and often is assessed).
• Students develop the ability to thrive in and adapt to a culture different from their own.
• Students engage in a life-altering experiences, ones that challenge their fundamental assumptions about the world.
• Finally, students learn to be self-sufficient, to thrive in a foreign country, and to become resourceful when the resources are not so obvious.

One of the goals I have not found listed in study abroad catalogs is the effect of the integration of experience in another culture into the student's academic program and life experience upon return from the host country. We all know that students change majors, alter their educational directions and friendship networks, and often redefine their life goals as a result of living abroad. This does not always occur in ways that are the most beneficial because they receive little guidance during the process. While sensitive study abroad advisers or faculty may be open to this kind of exploration, students do not know how to ask for it.

To be sure, students learn a great deal from experiences outside the classroom even when they stay on American campuses for their entire educational careers. But I suggest that the cross-cultural experience gained from studying, living, and functioning effectively in another culture requires a developmental process that is unique and can never be achieved by remaining at home. Moreover, it is not an experience limited to the young; it is part of the process, as Milton Bennett states, of moving from ethnocentrism to ethnorelativism. (See Milton S. Bennett, “Toward Ethnorelativism: A Development Model of Intercultural Sensitivity” in Michael R. Paige, Education for the Intercultural Experience; Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, Inc. 1993.)

Documenting Culture Learning

The “Bennett Model” has six stages in the development of intercultural sensitivity: Denial, Defense, Minimization, Acceptance, Adaptation, and Integration. Within these stages may be subsets that further refine the stage. Students themselves testify that significant personal change is possibly the most important part of their stay in another culture. Exploring how they have changed and the developmental process they have experienced rarely occurs. How might this be documented so that credit is responsibly awarded?

There are a number of ways to document culture learning, the growth of intercultural skill, and the internal shift in students perspectives. The idea of journaling comes up repeatedly when the issue of documenting informal learning is discussed. This can be done systematically so that the student learns from his or her journal and uses it as a reference for further work. Credit-bearing courses on culture learning provide direction for journal keeping.

Overall, what is most important is to help students notice what is going on around them and to consciously attend to what behavior and events mean and how they are impacted by them.

Papers can be assigned to help students reflect on their experiences as they go through them and help them explore how their perspectives, attitudes, skills, and knowledge have changed as a result of their experiences. A comparative paper might be required that explores a particular component of society as it is revealed by mundane events not normally explored for their deeper significance. In this way, the implicit can be made explicit and thus available for examination and learning.

We know from research conducted with training Peace Corps volunteers that explicit information, while interesting and useful, does not contribute to intercultural effectiveness. (See Robert B. Textor, ed., Cultural Frontiers of the Peace Corps; Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press, 1996.) It is the less visible, implicit aspects of culture that must be learned and navigated if one is to become interculturally competent, and it is the ability to manage one's reactions to cross-cultural experiences that contributes to success in cross-cultural situations.

In addition to preparing students to function well in the international arena, clear educational advantages result from raising informal learning abroad to a conscious, formal level of comprehension:

• What the student learns from living in another culture is “marked.” Students are not left to muddle through what they think may have occurred but are given assistance and guidance. Learning is identified in a way that allows integration and conscious application of the acquired skills and knowledge in other settings.
• There is an opportunity to resolve hidden, negative feelings either for the host country or for the student's native land. Discovering how these feelings grew allows educators to recommend ways to help students exit their overseas experience with at least some balance in judging either culture and recognition of why they have these reactions (with the possibility of resolving some of them).
• Students can be prevented from “shoeboxing” the entire study abroad experience, pulling it off the shelf only for special occasions, and helped to find ways to apply what they have learned.
• Students can focus on learning about implicit culture, the level at which most conflict occurs between people from different cultural backgrounds.
• Documenting informal learning allows those of us who “market” study abroad to evaluate whether claims that study abroad includes a life-changing experience are valid and to further document the quality of this experience and what it teaches.

We know very well that living and studying abroad has a significant impact on students. Treating that impact, and the learning it engenders, as worthy of credit is the next step in dealing with the full range of educational benefits available in the study abroad portion of international education.

In a 1994 book published by CIEE, Educational Exchange and Global Competence, several authors produced lists of characteristics of a globally competent person. Angina H. Wilson described five such characteristics and how they could be demonstrated: substantive knowledge, perceptual understanding, capacity for personal growth, ability to develop international interpersonal relations, and the ability to be a cultural mediator. In that same volume, I suggested five broad competencies: mindfulness, cognitive flexibility, tolerance for ambiguity, behavioral flexibility, and cross-cultural empathy.

These characteristics do not emerge in classrooms. They grow as people function in a foreign culture. If we truly believe that these characteristics are important enough to be encouraged in students going abroad, then we need to look carefully at how growth in these areas can be measured--not only to permit students to acquire credit but to raise the development of these characteristics to the level of importance that academic credit bestows.

MARGARET D. PUSCH is Associate Director of the Intercultural Communication Institute. Her remarks are adapted by the editors from a paper presented at the Council on International Educational Exchange conference on Implementing a New Agenda for International Educational Exchange, Monterey, CA, November 1996.