Cross-Cultural Engagement Training for Faculty
Download
Report
Transcript Cross-Cultural Engagement Training for Faculty
Cross-Cultural Engagement
Training for Faculty: A Model
for Faculty Preparation
CIEE Annual Conference, Shanghai, November 2012
Presenters:
Steven T. Duke, Wake Forest University ([email protected])
David Taylor, Wake Forest University ([email protected])
Michael Vande Berg, MVB Associates
([email protected])
Institutional Profile
• Wake Forest University
• Private, Winston-Salem, NC – 4730 u.g.
• Six semester-long faculty-led programs, with
rotating set of faculty (1-2 faculty per year)
• “House” programs in London, Venice, Vienna
• Direct-enroll programs in Chile, France, Spain
• 15-18 summer faculty-led programs
• ~ 700 students abroad, 50% on faculty-led
Faculty Selection
• Faculty apply to lead semester programs through
the Provost Office
• Faculty propose summer programs through the
faculty Committee on Study Abroad
• The Center for International Studies cannot
hand-pick faculty to lead programs based on
intercultural learning or skills, we need to work
with those who are available and willing to teach
abroad
Faculty Training: Logistics
Wake Forest faculty receive training/orientation
for their responsibilities
• Document on expectations of faculty
• Timeline document for Communications
• Health and Safety training
• Mental Health training
• Student Orientations
• Budgets and financial aspects
Quality Enhancement for SACS
• In 2006, Wake Forest submitted a 10-year
reaccreditation “Quality Enhancement Plan to
SACS (Southern Association of Colleges and
schools): “Beyond Boundaries: Preparing
Students to Become Global Citizens”
• Three study abroad support courses were
created, and offered beginning in Fall 2007
• Goal of preparing students to become global
citizens has focused on intercultural competence
What was Missing for Faculty:
Intercultural Preparation
Faculty realized that they lacked resources and
guidance on best-practices for helping students
with cross-cultural learning
• Faculty Study Abroad Committee always looks
for cross-cultural elements, such as interaction
with the locals, in new programs
• “Why here?” is commonly asked
• But how do we introduce culture? What are the
best practices for cross-cultural engagement?
Our Solution: A Workshop
• WISE (Workshop on Intercultural Skills
Enhancement) was created by faculty for faculty
• WISE is a practitioner’s workshop intended to
help faculty learn strategies and design activities
that can help students develop intercultural skills
and awareness
• A steering committee of six faculty worked with
CIS to design the content and contact speakers
• WISE first offered in Feb. 2009, just six months
after we started the initiative
WISE as Workshop
•
•
•
•
We learned a lot along the way
WISE 2009 had 57 attendees
Wake Forest faculty and staff could attend at no cost
The workshop fee was $295 and included one night
of accommodation plus dinner, coffee and snacks
• WISE 2009 began at 1pm on Friday, ran through
8pm, then Saturday from 8:30 to 11:45 am
• WISE 2010 increased attendance to 75
• WISE 2011 started at 9am on Friday
Content of WISE
• Has changed over time
• The Developmental Model of Intercultural
Sensitivity (DMIS) and intercultural continuum
• Sessions on assessing intercultural competence,
cross-cultural engagement courses, integration
of language learning and cultural training, and
approaches to language in non-language pgms
• Sessions on mentoring while abroad, effective
assignments and activities, challenges of
developing countries, and risk management
• Participants (‘11 and ‘12) had option of taking IDI
Impact on faculty
• Several faculty have implemented new activites
or changed the content of their programs based
on what they learned at WISE
• Kathleen Macfie (UNC Greensboro) came back in
2011 to report on new efforts to have students
self-reflect and blog during their program
• Keith Mobley (UNC Greensboro) create a
journaling template for structuring reflection and
guiding activities; he also focused more time on
group dynamics and processing of activities
Impact on study abroaders
• Brett Krutzsch (NYU) reported: “I returned from
WISE with new information about making crosscultural awareness, cultural adjustment and
identity reflection key components of the study
abroad pre-departure process and with ideas on
how to get others at my institution on board.
We have begun to restructure our pre-departure
curriculum so that our focus is not just logistics,
but heavily about self-reflection and preparing
for cultural immersion.”
WISE 2013 as Conference
• Beginning in February 2013, WISE will turn into a
professional conference
• We recognized the need to include more
perspectives and voices than workshop allowed
• WISE 2013 received 16 proposals, of which 12
were accepted, plus 12 invited presentations
• More voices will be heard, and more folks who
work abroad will present
• Faculty who teach abroad and study abroad
professionals are invited to attend
WISE 2013
• Website: http://cis.wfu.edu/wise
• Held February 1-2, 2013, in Winston-Salem, NC
• Mick Vande Berg will do pre-conference
workshop on January 31, 8 am - 5 pm
• Film screening on January 31, 7 pm
• Held in the Marriott Hotel, which has an
excellent conference center
• Registration is open, early bird thru Nov 30
Next Steps at WFU
• Goal to work more actively with faculty, to look
at their program activities and coach them more
consciously about cross-cultural activities
• Hold group faculty discussions 2-3 times per
semester to discuss common study abroad
challenges
• Work with 2-3 faculty to implement research
elements into their summer 2013 programs,
such as the IDI and observation of student
competency (not self report of impact)
Resources on display
Resources on display
• WISE brochures
• WISE programs and three-ring binders (2011 and
2012)
• Syllabi of WFU’s Cross-Cultural Engagement
courses
WISE: an historical context
• A century of study abroad
• Three stories about student learning
First story: students learn through being
exposed to diversity and difference “out there”
• Students abroad learn through contact with the
new and different.
First Story: Students learn through educators
informing them about the new and different
• Teachers deliver information about new places
& people to willing recipients:
information transfer
Our second story: students learn through
“immersion” in the new and different
Second story: educators structure the learning
environment so students are immersed in their
experiences with diversity
Common Immersion Strategies
• Lengthen duration of diversity experience
• Directly enroll students in university courses
• Take steps to maximize student contact with host
nationals
• Take steps to improve students’ second language
proficiency
• Have students do “experiential” activities:
Internships, etc.
• House students with families or
host students
But story 2 has problems: most learners
don’t respond as predicted to being “immersed”
Considerable disciplinary evidence undermines
the third story’s account of human learning
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The History of Science (Kuhn)
Experiential learning theory (Dewey, Piaget, Kolb)
Organizational Behavior (Hofstede, Trompenaars)
Psychology (Piaget, Lewin, Kelly, Savicki)
Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (Fink, Weimer)
Cultural Anthropology (Boas, Hall, La Brack)
Linguistics (Sapir, Whorf)
Intercultural Relations (Bennett, Bennett, Hammer)
Neuroscience (Zull)
Cognitive Biology (Maturana, Varela)
Vande Berg, M., Paige, R. M., & Lou, K. H. (Eds.) (2012). Student learning abroad: what our
students are learning, what they’re not, and what we can do about it. Sterling, VA: Stylus.
Georgetown study* and other empirical research
challenge effectiveness of “immersion” practices
Which immersion conditions predict Intercultural
development?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Duration of experience abroad: SMALL IMPACT
Homestays: NO
Direct enrollment in host university courses: NO
Unfacilitated “Experiential” activities: NO
Maximizing contact with host nationals: NO
Improving foreign language proficiency: NO
Pre departure cultural orientation: SMALL IMPACT
Homestays—when students engage w/ host fam. member:
YES
• Cultural Mentoring on Site: YES
Vande Berg, M. (2009). Intervening in student learning abroad: A research-based inquiry. (M. Bennett, Guest Ed.)
Intercultural Education, Vol. 20, Issue 4, pp. 15-27.
*Vande Berg, M.; Connor-Linton, J.; & Paige, R. M. The Georgetown Consortium Study: Intervening in student learning
abroad. Frontiers: the Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad. Vol. XVIII, pp. 1-75.
*
Our third tale: How we frame an event
determines “what it means”
Third tale: Learning starts as we reflect on our own
ways of framing, and on our and others’ differing
ways of creating knowledge
• “We know what we perceive; we don’t know what
we don’t perceive. Since there is no way that we
can know what we don’t perceive, we assume that
we perceive ‘correctly.’” (Marshall Singer)
• “We do not see, that we do not see.” (H. Maturana
& F. Varela)
• “People don’t learn from experience; they learn
through reflecting on experience.” (Thiagi)
Third tale: immersion in difference, reflection
on framing, & frame shifting = learning
• Learning does not occur, then, simply through
exposure to, or immersion in, experience
• Instead, we begin to learn as we
become aware of how we typically
frame our experiences:
“We don’t see things as
they are, we see things
as we are.” (Anias Nin)
We help our students develop by focusing on four
basic intercultural skills
Increasing cultural and personal self awareness;
Increasing awareness of others within their own
cultural and personal contexts;
Learning techniques for “bridging cultural gaps”—
which is to say, interacting with culturally different
others in effective and appropriate ways;
Cultivating emotional intelligence—developing the
capacities to identify, manage, communicate and
apply emotions effectively and appropriately.
WISE: Embracing the third story’s account of
student learning
• Recognition that the most important
predictor of student learning is the extent
to which educators are interculturally
developed.
• Not only a focal point for discussing the
intercultural needs of students, but a
model for the intercultural training of
faculty and staff
• Awareness of the critical importance of
assessing the intercultural development
of students, faculty and staff