Intercultural dialogue is the best guarantee of a more peaceful, just and sustainable world.Robert Alan
The increasing diversity across our world presents us with tough challenges, but it also provides us with incredible learning opportunities. The current refugee crisis, recent terror attacks, and interracial tensions within our societies are painful reminders that we cannot escape the complexities of our time. As educators we have an obligation to prepare our pupils and students better for their personal and professional lives by developing their social awareness, intercultural empathy and global competencies.
Together with its partner institutions, Crossing Borders Education (CBE) is dedicated to supporting educational initiatives with a suite of intercultural resources (view) that help to bridge the separation between youth of diverse backgrounds and bring intercultural learning into general curricula. The three intercultural sessions and additional activities of this Intercultural Interactions Program are suggested formats for targeted cross-cultural interactions and short dialogues. They are designed as awareness exercises where the participant’s learning happens predominantly through the direct interactions with their peers next to them.
Many youths genuinely seek inspirational learning. But how often do we actually witness learners from diverse social and cultural backgrounds learning from each other and through those mirrors also learn about themselves? It requires intentional activities to support that deeper level of transformative learning and enable the development of social skills such as empathy, curiosity, critical thinking and global awareness.
On one hand, international students mostly experience their integration process as a daunting challenge and need personally engaging interactions to feel less isolated in the midst of it. On the other hand domestic students often struggle to move beyond their comfort zones and need inspiring opportunities to confront their fears/hesitations. The following activities are aimed to support both sides to experience vibrant real life moments with each other that increase their skills of cross-cultural communication, global citizenship, critical thinking and English language.
With the CBE Intercultural Interactions Program our vision is to bring the development of these key skills to the whole student body—not just interested individuals—and in the process to support the development of a Culture of Dialogue at institutions, enabling learners and educators to respond to the intercultural challenges of our time.
Why include an Intercultural Interactions Program?
Crossing Borders Education is responding with the Intercultural Interactions Program to following trends at educational institutions:
- International students often feel marginalised and domestic students often are interculturally inexperienced, which highlights the need for meaningful cross-cultural student interactions.
- Many educators are asking for a stronger focus on global competencies in order to harness the potential and tackle the challenges of international classrooms and diverse campuses.
- Educational institutions very often acknowledge the necessity of an international focus in their mission statements, while many have not yet translated that objective into curricular.
- Our current world situation puts an imperative on education to equip learners for the diverse and complex societies they will live and work in.
Program Aims:
The Intercultural Interactions Program is designed to serve educational institutions in reaching following objectives:
- To create opportunities for constructive, real and open interactions between youth of diverse ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds.
- To support the inclusion of intercultural sessions into the curriculum, strengthening student’s development of key social, intercultural and leadership skills.
- To help addressing separation between domestic and international students and create meaningful peer-to-peer interactions between groups.
- To support educators in the creation of interactive sessions where students learn addressing cross-cultural tensions in safe and constructive ways.
Program Strategies:
The Intercultural Interactions Program combines following educational and interactive approaches:
- To use intercultural learning as a container to help students develop skills such as openness, empathy and self-awareness.
- To harness the inspiring power of films with real-life intercultural encounters to ease the way for engaging peer-to-peer interactions.
- To connect domestic and international students of diverse ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds in small group activities and open dialogues.
Program Method:
The Intercultural Interactions Program assists students to grow and develop in the following areas:
- Intercultural Understanding: Support participants’ openness to hear and value a variety of perspectives and understand the power of diversity.
- Intercultural Communication: Grow student’s skills and capacities to communicate across cultural differences.
- Global Awareness: Increase student’s awareness to see the interconnectedness of human, economic and world issues.
- Self Awareness: Enhance student’s abilities to communicate about personal challenges and to learn dealing with diversity issues.
Progress made in these areas will increase students’ resourcefulness to operate effectively at our diverse institutions, to work in a global economy and to live in our increasingly interdependent world.
Approach of the Interactive Sessions:
The sessions are designed to serve students and educators in following ways:
Students: The enhancement of intercultural skills happens in these activities mainly through the direct interactions of students of diverse backgrounds. (Note: on study abroad programs we witness often that pro-active students increase their intercultural skills mainly through their personal cross-cultural encounters rather than through reading intercultural theory).
Facilitator: S/he supports predominantly the logistics and context of the student interactions and does not need to be an intercultural expert. Nevertheless, the honesty, depth and dynamic of the session will be strongly supported by the facilitator. S/he can keep an eye on: 1. Safety and openness of the group, 2. Welcoming diverse world-views, 3. Reflecting back to the group (similarities and differences), 4. Sharing own experiences, 5. Summarizing student insights, etc.
How to use the Curriculum Toolkit?
The Intercultural Interactions Program is created for areas such as:
- Subject Studies: General Education, First Year Seminars, Humanities, International Relations/Business, Social Justice, etc.
- Interdisciplinary Sessions: Global Citizenship Programs, Social Skills, Leadership Skills, Communication, Cross-Cultural Communication, etc.
- Extra-Curricula Events: International Student Programs, Orientation Programs, Intercultural Programs, Study Abroad Events, Student Clubs, etc.
Template Structure for Intercultural Curricula Sessions:
Following structure is designed as an example that can be easily custom tailored to the specific curricula needs at your institution.
Session Aims:
- To break the ice between domestic and international students, develop trust and create a safe space for sharing thoughts and experiences.
- To spark intercultural insights in students while they are viewing peer interactions of diverse youth in the film clips.
- To practice cross-cultural communication between the students in the classroom, and in that process also enhance the educator’s intercultural awareness and skills.
Suggested Session Structure:
Facilitator: Brief introduction and logistics (5 min)
Viewing: 1. film clip (5 min)
Small Groups: Students discuss the provided questions (2-4 students) (5 min)
Viewing: 2. film clip (5 min)
Small Groups: Students discuss the provided questions (2-4 students) (5 min)
Viewing: 3. film clip (5 min)
Small Groups: Students discuss the provided questions (2-4 students) (5 min)
Large Group: Students share new insights with the whole group (5-15 min)
Facilitator: Brief summary of raised issues, announcements, etc. (5 min)
TOTAL: 50-60 min
