Intercultural learning among community development students: positive attitudes, ambivalent experiences

Abstract

This article considers the orientations to diversity on campus, socially and in professional practice, of community development students at an Australian university. After outlining the curriculum foci of community development courses at Australian universities, it explores the ambivalences in students' generally positive orientations to diversity, but simultaneously complex attitudes to experiences of intercultural engagement, using qualitative and quantitative data. Community development students generally hold more positive outlooks in terms of engaging with diversity, compared to other first year students, including in their orientation to culturally mixed group work as part of their studies. However, while students are keen on the idea of mixed group work, they find the experience challenging. They are also reticent to see problems in terms of cultural differences, or to 'see culture' generally, a factor which has implications for contact and social identity theory. The article also considers the place of cultural identification in the interaction processes.

The influence of internationalised versus local content on online intercultural collaboration in groups: A randomised control trial study in a statistics course

“…As studies have indicated that the number of posts is indicative of conversation quality (Author B & Author C, 2009;Hou & Wu, 2011;Schellens & Valcke, 2005), this means that internationalisation did not necessarily lead to deeper or more engaging conversations for all small groups. Indeed, the findings demonstrated that other factors, such as academic performance and cultural background, also influenced individual and group-level participation, which is in line with previous work (Fozdar & Volet, 2012;Popov et al, 2012;Strauss et al, 2011). These findings also build on previous qualitative work by the authors, in which we identified wide variations in student reflections of social and cultural tensions during collaborative activities based on academic performance level (Author A et al, 2017).…”

“…Similarly, research has demonstrated that many students prefer to work with peers from their own cultural background (Author B, 2013;Moore & Hampton, 2015). Reasons for these preferences could be that cultural distances between group members make collaboration challenging (Fozdar & Volet, 2012) and induce uncertainty (Strauss, U, & Young, 2011). One further frustration viewed by students in intercultural collaboration is the perception of unequal participation (Author A, Author B, Author C, & Author E, 2017;Popov et al, 2012).…”

Overcoming cross-cultural group work tensions: mixed student perspectives on the role of social relationships

“…Previous literature has highlighted that tensions exist in cross-cultural collaboration (Fozdar and Volet 2012;Harrison and Peacock 2009;Moore and Hampton 2015). In this article, we have added to the understanding of these tensions by considering the role of social relationships in cross-cultural group work.…”

Culturally Mixed Group Work and the Development of Students’ Intercultural Competence

“…However, some claim that simply placing students into groups with others from different backgrounds may not necessarily lead to intercultural interaction (Moore & Hampton, 2015). Social tensions among different group members (Takahashi & Saito, 2013) can arise, which may be due to lack of shared experiences and backgrounds (Fozdar & Volet, 2012). If intercultural interaction does occur, it can be problematic or require careful management (Leask, 2011).…”