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Intercultural competence has become a critical skill for most professions, but particularly for those that involve working with people from diverse backgrounds. Teachers at all levels need intercultural competence to ensure that every student in their classroom has equitable access to learning and to effectively prepare their students to engage in an increasingly diverse and multicultural world. The United States Department of Education has made broader global skills for students a priority and has charged colleges and schools with providing new learning opportunities and course work to successfully develop these skills in teachers. Similarly, some argue that international travel is integral to teacher preparation, encouraging a sense of “otherness” and developing an appreciation for the role of human difference, addressing misconceptions and stereotypes, and challenging teachers’ understanding of their “professional self.” Additionally, it is well established that the US has a need for enhanced participation and increased racial and gender diversity in the STEM fields, particularly engineering. Teachers are critical to inspire and motivate students to consider pursuing STEM. However, stereotypes and bias can impact how teachers engage with students, and who teachers believe “has what it takes to be an engineer” leading to differentiated support and encouragement to excluded identities. Enhancing the cultural competence of teachers can help mitigate the bias and stereotypes, and help ensure more equitable access for students to being inspired to pursue STEM. To address these issues, two universities collaborated on a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Teachers grant to provide transformative international and intercultural experiences for teachers focused on human-centered design and appropriate technology for developing countries. Integrated throughout this experience was professional learning aimed at developing the cultural competence of the teachers, and coaching to help the teachers integrate this learning, as well as their engineering experiences, into their classrooms. This paper will summarize key findings from the second cohort participants with a focus on how this experience impacted the cultural competence of the participants.
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Inclusive excellence through digital learning: an undergraduate research experience to pilot cross-institutional collaboration between a historically black university and a predominantly white institution
Increasing diversity in higher education and the workforce requires undergraduate students to learn to work together effectively to address scientific and social issues. Our goal is to learn how best to facilitate teamwork among students from Historically Black Universities (HBU) and Predominantly White Institutions (PWI) to promote collaborative learning. We analyzed the evolving knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes of participating students as they developed close working relationships through a ‘study-within-a-study’ design where student pairs (one from an HBU and one from a PWI) conducted their own research project while we analyzed how these students interacted with their partners. The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) rubric of Intercultural Knowledge and Competence was used to develop a set of codes for assessing transcripts of student meetings. AACU defines six attributes of this rubric including cultural self-awareness, cultural worldview frameworks, empathy, verbal and nonverbal communication, curiosity, and openness. Our pilot results suggest that students willing to engage collaboratively with others from different cultural or educational backgrounds can display attributes of intercultural competence, while those not willing to engage in the collaborative process may not exhibit such competence. We also learned that students require the same initial preparation necessary for the assigned project.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1845979
- PAR ID:
- 10543944
- Editor(s):
- van_Driel, Barry; Palaiologou, Nektaria
- Publisher / Repository:
- Taylor & Francis
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Intercultural Education
- ISSN:
- 1467-5986
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1-19
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- undergraduate STEM construction competence HBCU PWI intercultural collaboration.
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: 693KB Other: PDFA
- Size(s):
- 693KB
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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