Does service learning affect the development of intercultural sensitivity? A study comparing students’ progress in two different methodologies

Numerous studies have highlighted Intercultural Sensitivity (IS) as a key competence in an increasingly multicultural society. This study examined the extent to which a cohort of first year undergraduate students enrolled on the same Didactics course, and in two different training modalities – Service Learning (SL) and non-Service Learning (non-SL) – developed IS. It was based on a quasi-experimental design of repeated pre-test and post-test measures, comparing the two groups. The sample consisted of 233 Spanish students at higher education institutions, and data was collected using the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI). The SL group displayed significantly higher levels of IS in all factors except in the denial/defence and minimization stages. Results indicated the effectiveness of SL regarding specific subscales within the IDI instrument. The findings add new depth to our understanding regarding which teaching methodologies contribute to the development of IS and to the training of active citizens in Spanish university students. The discussion focuses on the need for intercultural service experiences to promote IS. The results have broad implications for policymakers and educators who are interested in enhancing transformative educational experiences and effective teaching methodologies for developing students’ IS in higher education.     

Birds of a feather end up flocking together when studying abroad. Can a university bridge the cultural differences that challenge friendships between Pacific Island students and New Zealand students?

Intercultural friendship formation is a key challenge for international students studying abroad. In an increasingly globalised world, where people regularly engage with others from different cultures, meaningful intercultural friendships are important. However, culture can pose a considerable challenge that hinders the formation of friendships between people of different cultures. This paper explores challenges and insights into developing intercultural friendships between international Pacific Island students studying in Aotearoa New Zealand and domestic New Zealand Palagi¹ students. Similar to other studies, the findings in this study highlight the key challenges connected to cultural differences. These findings are surprising as New Zealand Palagi students would have gone to primary and secondary schools with Pacific Island students and should have had some contact and interactions with them and be more accustomed to cultural differences. Unique to this study is that these international Pacific Island students recognised that universities are in a prime position to champion and promote systemic interventions to assist both international and domestic students to engage with each other in order to promote cultural understanding. Overcoming intercultural friendship development challenges involves creating meaningful intercultural spaces and campus ‘friendship’ events to increase intercultural interactions, raise domestic students’ cross-cultural awareness, and encourage reciprocal intercultural learning. Such activities are likely to enhance the overall well-being of all students and improve the internationalisation of universities with increasingly diverse student cohorts.     

Developing intercultural communicative competence in foreign language classrooms – A study of EFL learners in Taiwan

Internationalisation has accentuated the importance of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) among language learners in higher education in the 21st century. As in the case of Taiwan, universities worldwide have begun to emphasise intercultural ‘literacy’ in language classrooms. Following Byram’ (1997) ICC model, this study adopts an intercultural approach to language classroom in order to investigate the effectiveness of explicit instruction in developing ICC among EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners in Taiwan, and to discover how this development is related to the background factors of overseas experience and English proficiency. The accompanying research therefore has two purposes: (1) to evaluate the effectiveness of explicit instruction on EFL learners’ development of ICC by employing both self-assessment and other assessment tools and (2) to investigate the relationship between the development of ICC and two background factors. The results show that (1) explicit instruction is effective in raising students’ development of ICC, especially the knowledge and skills dimensions, and (2) English proficiency and overseas experience are significantly related to better acquisition of ICC.     

Evaluating online learning communities

This article reviews recent evaluation studies of online learning communities to provide a systematic understanding of how such communities are evaluated. Forty-two representative studies were selected and categorized into a newly developed taxonomy of online learning community evaluations. This taxonomy is divided into four components: evaluation purpose, evaluation approach, measures for evaluation, and evaluation techniques. The findings suggest that it is inappropriate to conceptualize evaluation of such communities as a one-size-fits-all, generalizable measure of “good” or “bad.” Instead, we recommend a comprehensive, on-going, diagnostic approach to measuring clusters of indicators, or syndromes, of a particular OLC and examining the causal relation assumed by the evaluators between what is measured and the success of OLC as an imputed outcome.

解读粤港配对小学生网上研习:跨文化教育的视角

跨文化教育的核心思想是接受并欣赏文化差异,文章通过分析实施跨文化教育的具体要求以及在我国香港和广东的重要意义,重点探悉粤港配对小学生网上研习中对于跨文化教育的支持,从而总结跨文化教育实施的成功经验和不足之处,旨在为今后的跨文化教育实施给出建议。     

基础教育场域中的跨文化教育与管理——上海市三所接受外籍学生随班就读学校的个案研究

伴随着上海国际化大都市发展进程,越来越多的外籍中小学生选择随班就读于上海市中小学校。文中通过对国家、上海市及各区县、相关学校制订的招收外籍中小学生的政策、规定,申请入读程序和就读方式的整理,选取其中三所学校做个案研究,希望对处于摸索阶段的基础教育场域中的跨文化教育与管理有所启示。     

关于建构中小学教师跨文化培训体系的几点设想——基于上海市中小学接收外籍学生随班就读的管理现状

伴随着上海市基础教育国际化的悄然走近,中小学教师跨文化培训呼之欲出。本文在总结国内外教师跨文化培训研究现状的基础上,结合上海市中小学外籍学生跨文化管理实地调研的相关结果,对开展中小学教师跨文化培训提出了＂跨文化教师培训需分层部署,多方协调,注重借鉴,辐射推广＂、＂紧紧围绕‘培养文化移情能力,形成多元文化平等共存的自觉意识’和‘增强跨文化敏感度,提高跨文化交际能力’这两大基础开展培训＂以及＂跨文化教师培训课程可采用必修、选修和校本研究的形式＂等设想。     

Intercultural language teaching as a catalyst for teacher inquiry

This study investigated how two teachers of languages, facilitated by university researchers, developed their practices with regard to intercultural language teaching. Taking a qualitative case study approach, we collected data from classroom observations, interviews, debriefing conversations, and guided reflective pieces written by the teachers. Findings indicate that the opportunities for teachers to inquire into their own practices shifted these teachers' approaches to language teaching to accommodate a curriculum expectation to develop students' intercultural communicative competence in plurilingual contexts. The study offers valuable insights for teacher education into the ways teachers' inquiries can support teachers’ responses to curricular change.     

WASMOD模型参数敏感性与相关性分析

对水文模型参数进行敏感性和相关性分析,可以减少率定参数的数量、提高模型运行效率,并可以为优化和改进模型结构提供依据.本文采用局部分析法和相关系数法讨论了WASMOD模型中的五个参数对目标函数的敏感程度以及参数之间的相关程度.研究发现,在黑河流域上游山区的径流模拟过程中,WASMOD模型中影响降水形态的温度参数a1对目标函数最为敏感;其次是影响地表径流的参数a6和影响融雪过程的温度参数a2;基流参数a5最不敏感.模型参数之间的相关性不是很强,这也说明,模型结构已得到很好的优化;为保证模型的模拟效果,模型参数的数量不能减少.     

Water and heat transport in hilly red soil of southern China: Ⅱ. Modeling and simulation

Simulation models of heat and water transport have not been rigorously tested for the red soils of southern China.Based on the theory of nonisothermal water-heat coupled transfer, a simulation model, programmed in Visual Basic 6.0, was developed to predict the coupled transfer of water and heat in hilly red soil. A series of soil column experiments for soil water and heat transfer, including soil columns with closed and evaporating top ends, were used to test the simulation model. Results showed that in the closed columns, the temporal and spatial distribution of moisture and heat could be very well predicted by the model,while in the evaporating columns, the simulated soil water contents were somewhat different from the observed ones. In the heat flow equation by Taylor and Lary (1964), the effect of soil water evaporation on the heat flow is not involved, which may be the main reason for the differences between simulated and observed results. The predicted temperatures were not in agreement with the observed one with thermal conductivities calculated by de Vries and Wierenga equations, so that it is suggested that Kh, soil heat conductivity, be multiplied by 8.0 for the first 6.5 h and by 1.2 later on. Sensitivity analysis of soil water and heat coefficients showed that the saturated hydraulic conductivity, Ks, and the water diffusivity, D(θ), had great effects on soil water transport; the variation of soil porosity led to the difference of soil thermal properties, and accordingly changed temperature redistribution,which would affect water redistribution.