UNDERSTANDING AND ASSESSING INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE: A SUMMARY OF THEORY, RESEARCH, AND PRACTICE (TECHNICAL REPORT FOR THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE
PROGRAM EVALUATION PROJECT)
C ASTLE S INICROPE,J OHN N ORRIS,&Y UKIKO W ATANABE
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa超强记忆力训练
INTRODUCTION
In its broadest n, intercultural competence can be defined following Fantini (2006) as “a complex of abilities needed to perform effectively and appropriately when interacting with others who are linguistically and culturally different from onelf” (p. 12, emphasis in original). Throughout the literature, rearchers and theoreticians u a range of more or less related terms to discuss and describe intercultural competence, including intercultural communicative competence (ICC), transcultural communication, cross-cultural adaptation, and intercultural nsitivity, among others (Fantini, 2006). What all of the terms attempt to account for is the ability to step beyond one’s own culture and function with other individuals from linguistically and culturally diver backgrounds. Colleg
e foreign language and study abroad programs play a unique role in offering students the opportunity to develop their intercultural competencies. The acquisition of such competencies may be important not only for individual enrichment and communicative proficiency but also for providing future educators, professionals, and leaders with the capabilities necessary for promoting successful collaboration across cultures.
In this report we summarize theory and rearch on intercultural competence, paying particular attention to existing approaches and tools for its asssment. We also review examples of the asssment of intercultural competence in the specific contexts of general education and college foreign language and study abroad programs. It is our hope that the resources will provide a uful basis to foreign language (and other) educators as they ek to understand and improve the intercultural competencies of their students.
Second Language Studies, 26(1), Fall 2007, pp. 1-58.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS FOR INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE
Background
Historically, a major focus on intercultural competence emerged out of rearch into the experiences of westerners working abroad (e.g., Peace Corp volunteers) in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. This early rearch was typically motivated by perceived cross-cultural communication problems that hampered collaboration between individuals from different backgrounds. In the late 1970s and 1980s, the contexts for intercultural competence rearch expanded to include study abroad, international business, cross-cultural training, expatriates living overas, and immigrant acculturation. During the formative years, rearch on intercultural competence utilized asssments of individuals’ attitudes, personalities, values, and motives, usually through short lf-reports, surveys, or open-ended interviews. The purpo and focus of ICC asssment using the tools centered around four main goals: “(1) to explain overas failure, (2) to predict overas success, (3) to develop personnel lection strategies, and (4) to design, implement and test sojourner training and preparation methodologies” (Ruben, 1989, p. 230).
Today, intercultural competence rearch spans a wide spectrum, from international schools to medical training, from short study abroad programs to permanent residency in foreign cultures. The purpos of rearch also range widely, from the lection of appropriate participants for nding abroad to cross-cultural mediation to the determination of learning outcomes associated with a variet
y of educational experiences. As the focus and purpo of intercultural competence rearch has expanded, approaches to its description and asssment have evolved as well, from short attitude and personality surveys to more complex behavioral lf-asssments, performance asssments, portfolio asssments, and others. At the same time, nearly twenty years after Ruben (1989) declared the “need for conceptual clarity” (p. 234), a multiplicity of frameworks and approaches to defining and asssing intercultural competence persists today. Thus, although the broad range of theories and models provides language educators with a variety of approaches to understanding and investigating intercultural competence, it also complexifies the task of communicating about related ideas in a systematic and consistently interpretable way.
By way of example, Table 1 prents 19 terms that have been utilized as alternatives for discussing intercultural competence. Though often ud interchangeably with the most frequent
labels of intercultural competence,intercultural communicative competence, intercultural nsitivity, and cross-cultural adaptation, each alternative also implies additional nuances that are often only implicitly addresd in rearch.
Table 1
Alternative Terms for Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) (Adapted from Fantini, 2006, Appendix D)
transcultural communication international communication ethnorelativity
cross-cultural communication intercultural interaction biculturalism
cross-cultural awareness intercultural nsitivity multiculturalism山木培训价格
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global competitive intelligence intercultural cooperation pluralingualism
global competence cultural nsitivity cross-cultural adaptation cultural competence effective inter-group communication
international competence communicative competence
Hammer, Bennet, and Wiman (2003) attempted to overcome some of the murkiness of ICC definitions by drawing a major distinction between intercultural nsitivity and intercultural competence. From their perspective, intercultural nsitivity is “the ability to discriminate and experience relevant cultural differences” whereas intercultural competence is “the ability to think and
act in interculturally appropriate ways” (p. 422). Their distinction between knowing and doing in interculturally competent ways offers a fitting prelude to the themes that have emerged from most contemporary work on ICC. In the following ctions, we introduce four major frameworks for conceptualizing intercultural competence. Additional theoretical frameworks for intercultural competence are described briefly as well, but the main focus in this report is on tho approaches that have rved as bas for asssments developed to gauge intercultural competence. Following the overview of theoretical frameworks, we then turn to their operationalization in rearch and asssment in Section 3.
Ruben’s Behavioral Approach to Intercultural Communicative Competence One of the earliest comprehensive frameworks was Ruben’s behavioral approach to the conceptualization and measurement of intercultural communicative competence (Ruben, 1976; Ruben & Kealey, 1979). In contrast to the personality and attitudinal foci of previous approaches,
Ruben advocated a behavioral approach to linking the gap between knowing and doing, that is, between what individuals know to be interculturally competent and what tho individuals actually do in intercultural situations.
It is not uncommon for an individual to be exceptionally well-verd on the theories
of cross-cultural effectiveness, posss the best of motives, and be sincerely
concerned about enacting his role accordingly, yet be unable to demonstrate tho
understandings in his own behavior. (Ruben & Kealey, 1979, pp. 19-20)
For the reasons, Ruben (1976) argued that to understand and asss individuals’ behaviors, it would be necessary to employ “measures of competency that reflect an individual’s ability to display concepts in his behavior rather than intentions, understandings, knowledges, attitudes, or desires” (p. 337). Ruben theorized that obrving individuals in situations similar to tho for which they are being trained or lected would provide information for predicting their performances in similar future situations.
Bad on findings in the literature and his own work, Ruben (1976) identified ven dimensions of intercultural competence:
1.Display of respect describes an individual’s ability to “express respect and positive
regard” for other individuals.
2.Interaction posture refers to an individual’s ability to “respond to others in a descriptive,
nonevaluative, and nonjudgmental way.”
3.Orientation to knowledge describes an individual’s ability to “recognize the extent to
which knowledge is individual in nature.” In other words, orientation to knowledge
describes an individual’s ability to recognize and acknowledge that people explain the
world around them in different ways with differing views of what is “right” and “true.”
4.Empathy is an individual’s ability to “put [himlf] in another’s shoes.”
5.Self-oriented role behavior express an individual’s ability to “be flexible and to
function in [initiating and harmonizing] roles.” In this context, initiating refers to
f开头的英文名requesting information and clarification and evaluating ideas for problem solving.
Harmonizing, on the other hand, refers to regulating the group status quo through
mediation.
6.Interaction management is an individual’s ability to take turns in discussion and initiate
and terminate interaction bad on a reasonably accurate asssment of the needs and
desires of others.
7.Lastly, tolerance for ambiguity describes an individual’s ability to “react to new and
ambiguous situations with little visible discomfort”. (Ruben, 1976, pp. 339-341) For asssment purpos, Ruben operationalized the ven dimensions with obrvational procedures and rating scales. The were subquently employed and further developed by additional rearchers (e Section 3.1). Ruben’s call for a behavioral model and the asssment of behavioral outcomes, that is, describing an individual’s competence bad on obrved actions, can also be regarded as a precursor to performance asssments of ICC (e Section 3.2). In sum, from Ruben’s (1976) perspective, ICC consists of the “ability to function in a manner that is perceived to be relatively consistent with the needs, capacities, goals, and expectations of the individuals in one’s environment while satisfying one’s own needs, capacities, goals, and expectations” (p. 336), an ability that is best assd by obrving an individual’s actions rather than reading an individual’s lf-reports.
European Multidimensional Models of Intercultural Competence: Byram and Risager Bad on their experiences in the European context, Byram (1997) and Risager (2007) have also theorized multidimensional models of intercultural competence. In Teaching and asssing intercultural communicative competence, Byram (1997) propod a five-factor model of intercultural competence comprising the following:
1.The attitude factor refers to the ability to relativize one’s lf and value others, and
includes “curiosity and openness, readiness to suspend disbelief about other cultures and belief about one’s own” (p. 91).
2.Knowledge of one’s lf and others means knowledge of the rules for individual and
social interaction and consists of knowing social groups and their practices, both in one’s one culture and in the other culture.
3.The first skill t, the skills of interpreting and relating, describes an individual’s ability
to interpret, explain, and relate events and documents from another culture to one’s own
culture.
4.The cond skill t, the skills of discovery and interaction, allows the individual tovgl
acquire “new knowledge of culture and cultural practices,” including the ability to u深圳环球雅思
existing knowledge, attitudes, and skills in cross-cultural interactions (ibid, p. 98).
5.The last factor, critical cultural awareness, describes the ability to u perspectives,
practices, and products in one’s own culture and in other cultures to make evaluations.
Byram further clarified that the interaction factor (skills of discovery and interacting) includes a range of communication forms, including verbal and non-verbal modes and the development of linguistic, sociolinguistic, and discour competencies.
Building on Byram’s theoretical foundation, Risager (2007) propod an expanded conceptualization of intercultural competence. She argued that a model for intercultural competence must include the broad resources an individual posss as well as the narrow competences that can be assd. Risager claimed her model to be broader in scope; however, it is noteworthy that the 10 elements she outlined are largely manifested in linguistic developments and proficiencies:
1.Linguistic (languastructural) competence
2.Languacultural competences and resources: mantics and pragmatics
3.Languacultural competences and resources: poetics
4.Languacultural competences and resources: linguistic identity
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5.Translation and interpretation
6.Interpreting texts (discours)
成都雅思教育管理有限责任公司7.U of ethnographic methods
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8.Transnational cooperation
9.Knowledge of language as critical language awareness, also as a world citizen
lf confident
10.Knowledge of culture and society and critical cultural awareness, also as a world citizen.
(Risager, 2007, p. 227)
Extending ideas from the foundations, Byram and other European rearchers (Kühlmann, Müller-
Jacquier and Budin) have collaborated to combine existing theories of intercultural competence as the basis for developing their own asssment tool. Named INCA (intercultural competence asssment), the rearch project has adopted a multidimensional framework. Their overall model consists of two ts of dimensions, one for the asssor and one for the examinee, with three skill levels for each dimension: basic, intermediate, and full. From the asssor’s point
