Combining course assignments to develop intercultural global competences: A cross-cultural assignments for U.S. and Israeli students.
Presentation (Faculty180)
One important goal in higher education is to prepare the students to
live and work in a global world, by developing global and intercultural
competencies (Deardorff, 2011). Past research suggests that costly students
exchange programs are not the only way to achieve this goal and relevant local
global experiences, could be also effective (Soria & Troisi, 2014). However, little
is known about how to develop and implement such experiences.
In this work we will describe a cross-cultural course assignment that was
designed to develop international and intercultural competencies among
American pre-service teachers and Israeli Tourism management students.
Specifically, the goal for the Israeli tourism-management students was to develop their intercultural consultation skills in English, and the goal for the American students was to develop their cultural responsiveness (Gay, 2002) in their assessment skills as well as their intercultural communication skills.
The comparison of pre and post surveys results of 2017 show that whereas the Israelis increased significantly their self-efficacy in intercultural competences [t =-2.231, df = 23 P = 0.03], Americans perceptions of their assessment skills, was not increased [t=-.009, df = 17, P=0.993]. Therefore, in the 2018 assignment we included some changes to increase their knowledge and the deepness of their inquiry. The results of 2018 indicated that this time, both Israelis [t = -2.781, df=14, P = 0.015], and the Americans [t=-4.773, df=23, P=0.000] reported a significant change. The meaning of these results for the development of global competences is discussed.
