Incorporating cultural and intercultural learning into study abroad is imperative, as it enriches and adds a layer of reflection to the student experience. This learning should consist of preparation before leaving, intentional activities regarding intercultural competence abroad and, most importantly, reflecting on what has been learned and your own feelings and thoughts from the experience, for example how your experiences have changed their perspectives on the world.
The IDC (Continuum of Intercultural Development) describes the learning and attitudes that can be had when thinking about cultural differences and similarities. The IDC continuum puts five mindsets on a continuum, from those that are more monocultural (only thinking about their culture and not accepting differences from others) to those that are more global. The five mindsets represented are denial, polarization, minimization, acceptance, and adaptation. The graph below depicts the process transition from one mindset to another during intercultural development.
When we are in the denial mindset, we do not have the ability to understand others or respond well to cultural differences in values, beliefs, perceptions, emotional responses, or behaviors. By comparison, reaching the level of adaptation represents that a cultural perspective has changed. The level of adaptation allows the person to connect about differences and navigate them as well.
According to the EAIE (the European Association for International Education), the assumption that being immersed in another language is enough, without doing other things, to know, participate in and understand, even in a relative way, a culture, is deficient. We need to continually reflect and, ideally, be guided by an instructor in our intercultural development. Cultural learning is so important that today there are programs to study this subject abroad as a student.
One study looked at the effect of participating in structured activities and reflecting on cultural differences and oneself afterwards. It found that the level of intercultural competence was much higher in the program in which students did intercultural learning activities, combined with their studies. These activities included exploring assumptions based on appearances, a discussion of cultural differences between the United States and other cultures and explain it, a reading of the IDI on learning abroad and a discussion of recent developments in Zambia.
If we want to give our students the ability to learn about the world, develop their intercultural competencies, and reflect on themselves, we need to put some structure into our programs to guide the experience of learning about another culture (and about ourselves) during study abroad. Of course, this doesn’t imply that we should do everything for students; Ideally, a program simply creates a pedagogical context for the student to grow in interculturally, by itself.