Immigrant students and global education

Research on immigrant students in higher education often articulates a deficit narrative emphasizing the challenges immigrant students face in comparison to their native-born peers. In education for global competence, however, immigrant students’ life experiences give them a potential advantage. This study investigated whether project-based learning designed to take advantage of immigrant students’ intercultural life experiences could contribute to the development of global competence among undergraduate students. Developing and teaching a collaborative, project-based course where undergraduate students researched the intercultural experiences of their immigrant peers, researchers measured specific learning outcomes using quantitative and thematic analysis of student research papers and reflective essays. The study concluded that project-based assignments designed to take advantage of immigrant students’ intercultural experiences could yield significant contributions to the global education of immigrant and non-immigrant students alike.

International experiences and the development of intercultural sensitivity among university students

International cultural immersion experiences are deemed one of the most effective ways to prepare multicultural and global citizens. The purpose of the study was to determine: (1) first-year and final-year university students’ levels of Intercultural Sensitivity (henceforth IS); (2) if there was a relationship between IS and experiences of intercultural contact; and (3) the variables that might predict the development of IS. A longitudinal method and a correlational-predictive design was used. The sample comprised 1645 (52.5% women and 47.5% men) undergraduate students from 8 public universities and one private university in Andalusia (Spain) with a mean age of 23.29 (SD = 4.99). The Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) was used to measure IS, and the Intercultural Experiences Inventory (IEI) was administered to explore students' intercultural experiences. Findings highlighted that there is little change in the IDI scores among first-year and final-year students, and most students were found to be in the intermediate stages of intercultural development (the minimization stage according to Bennett’s model, characterized by the widespread belief that everyone is quite similar). The lack of development found in the students’ IS could have something to do with the lack of opportunity to reflect and think about cultural differences. Positive correlations were found between IS and mobility experiences and intercultural friendships, and negative correlations were found with the number of intercultural interactions and language knowledge. Having mobility experiences, being female, and having friends from other cultures were predictive variables of IS. Finally, the educational implications are discussed.

The Proximal Zone of Intercultural Development (PZID)

This article presents results of a comparative analysis of intercultural experiences between French and Singaporean participants. France and Singapore were chosen as research fields because of their difference in terms of the management of cultural otherness: a universalist cultural model for France and a pluralist cultural model for Singapore.Based on an online questionnaire addressing the intercultural experience of the participants, a quantitative analysis allows us to identify singular differences between the French and Singaporean participants . A particularity of the Singaporean context leads us to think about the concept of the proximal zone of intercultural development (PZID) that we will develop in this article.

Being Chinese in Lived Intercultural Experiences: A Discourse Analysis of Chinese Undergraduates’ Perceptions of Chinese Culture

The current study investigates a group of Chinese undergraduates’ perceptions of Chinese culture. It examines the discourses that the students drew on to assign meaning to Chinese culture and how the students used these discourses in constructing their Chinese cultural identity. A qualitative study was conducted collecting written self-reflective reports on critical intercultural incidents from 39 Chinese undergraduates at a university in Beijing. Questions designed to evoke reports from the students had them describe incidents in their past intercultural experiences that made them acutely aware of themselves “being Chinese” and specify aspects of Chinese culture that they felt such awareness could be attributed to. A discourse analysis reveals the multiplicity and contextuality of the students’ notions of Chinese culture. The findings raise important considerations for contemporary Chinese undergraduates’ cultural identity and their much debated “identity crisis.”

Questioning Questions in Autobiographies of Intercultural Encounters

In this article, the author analyzes the discursive forms of the Autobiographies for Intercultural Encounters Young Version (AIEY), which has been developed by the Council of Europe (COE) to encourage young learners to become aware of their intercultural experiences. She tried to analyze both AIEY's questions and 100 ten-years-old children's answers. The aim is to understand the kind of discourse that the AIEY encourages about intercultural encounters and the extent to which it could have affected the pupils' answers.