Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

Was Intercultural Competence promoted?By the end of the course, almost all St Mary’s students claimed to have a greaterunderstanding of local and global problems, especially nationalist conflicts. Theircultural self-perception increased as they became more aware that nationalism was animportant issue in Northern Ireland; a few even showed reflection on their personalunderstanding of it. Attitudes to difference may have changed through conversation,too. One in three had begun to accept that cultural differences exist and mayaccount for alternative behaviours and values. Even this limited cultural interactionmoved this group of students toward Bennett’s Stage 4 – his minimum requirementfor intercultural awareness. Before the Project, one third of the students were surethat all young people had similar attitudes to world events – the other two thirdswere “uncertain”, some also of communicating with “others”. After the project, onlya couple remained hesitant about contact. However, enthusiasm for cross-culturalproject work was dampened. Disappointingly, after the module finished, no furthercontacts took place.The Experience of Intercultural LearningBelfast students were given the opportunity to comment on their experience. Themajority (61%) focused on “the chance to learn about their own or another culture”whereas only 7% considered the opportunity to reflect on their own or others’ attitudesas “a main advantage of the Project”. The remainder highlighted the chance towork collaboratively. After citing the time-pressured nature of the activity, the mostfrequent concerns were poor team-work and various communication difficulties.a) Communication IssuesThe reality of an asynchronous Discussion Board was that feed-back was unsatisfactoryand message senders noted that their enthusiasm had often evaporated by the timea response was received and the point of the exchange may even have been forgotten.Time delay, along with infrequency of contact, was frequently mentioned as a difficulty.These factors may account for the reduced involvement of some membersby mid-module. Language difficulties also inhibited discussion and informal rulesrequesting the use of standard English was not adhered to by students; some of theidioms, dialect words and constructions used were inappropriate. For a number ofstudents difference in styles of expression was of greater importance. Most, thoughnot all, of the Northern Ireland students are from “high-context” cultures (Hall,1979; Dunlop, 1995) where communication is typically less explicit in the earlystages when the need to build relationships is felt to be important. Such studentsapproach conversation differently to those coming from “low-context” cultureswhere direct communication is preferred. They were slow to build a rapport withlow-context partners until they had ‘situated’ the latter. The compressed timeframewas a factor but the significance of the absence of verbal and non-verbal cues soonbecame apparent. The addition of a face-to face component such as a video-conferencewould have enhanced the cross-cultural learning experience; indeed studentsfelt “depersonalised” and frequently asked “Can we not have a video link?”238