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1. When cultures meet
Have a look at this short video which raises some interesting questions about intercultural communication.
What do you think is happening here and what went wrong?
In this video you can see how both sides seem to have different approaches to showing appreciation for food. While the man eating the eel appears to be showing appreciation by finishing off his plate, this sends the hosts the signal that their guest is still hungry and needs more food.
This is a very simple example showing the importance of knowing about other cultures’ values and traditions to avoid misunderstandings. Yet “knowing” might not be enough; we also need to develop our intercultural competence.
2. What is intercultural competence?
Studying in another country has always been seen as a very strong opportunity to strengthen academic records but also as one of the most effective ways to develop intercultural competence.
What exactly do we mean by intercultural competence? Intercultural competence is the ability to interact effectively and appropriately with people from different cultural backgrounds (Bennett, 2009).
Being effective means that you achieve your goals, while being appropriate means to do it in a way that is respectful of other people's values and beliefs. For example, if you are trying to sell a product in a different culture, you will be effective if you manage to sell it but you will only be appropriate if you have adapted to sell it in a way that makes sense for the people of that particular culture.
Intercultural competence is a lifelong process of developing the attitudes, knowledge and skills that will allow you to behave effectively and appropriately in intercultural interactions.
What are those attitudes, knowledge and skills?
Let’s start with attitudes which are foundational and at the core of intercultural competence: respect, curiosity, openness (suspending judgement) and discovery (to tolerate ambiguity and move out of comfort zone).
When it comes to knowledge it is important to gain cultural self-awareness, knowledge of other cultures and an understanding of the world in which we live.
Finally, the skills we need are listening, observing, using patience and perseverance to view the world from others’ perspectives. Critical thinking to view beyond the obvious and the stereotypes is another one of the core skills of intercultural competence.
These attitudes, knowledge and skills will help us be more flexible, adaptable and empathetic which will be reflected in effective and appropriate behaviour across cultures. There are models that help to capture these attributes.
Check out Darla Deardoff’s process model of intercultural competence below. This model is based on five elements: attitude, knowledge, skills, internal outcomes, and external outcomes. Attitudes are foundational for the development of knowledge and skills needed for intercultural competence. The attitudes, knowledge, and skills lead to an internal outcome that consists of flexibility, adaptability, and empathy. These abilities allow individuals to achieve intercultural competence to some degree. At this point, you are able to begin to see from others’ perspectives and respond to others according to the way in which the other desires to be treated. The effective and appropriate behaviour and communication are the visible external outcomes of intercultural competence.
3. Why are models of intercultural competence important for international education?
Models for intercultural competence can help you navigate different cultures successfully and provide international students with the right support. Being appropriate (providing support that works for the students’ values and beliefs) is key for the success of all our programmes.
When managing critical incidents, providing mental health support, designing new programmes or creating new activities in our institutions, it is important to understand the differences between your values and those of your students so you can better serve students and offer solutions that will be effective.
Consider, what is the point of designing the most amazing mental health programme if no international student will use it? You can learn more about culturally appropriate mental health support here.
4. How interculturally competent are you?
Developing intercultural competence is a lifelong process and it involves three key steps: developing self awareness, developing awareness of others and finding strategies to build bridges between the two.
Intercultural competence relies heavily on cultural self-awareness. This impacts our capacity to understand models or frameworks and apply them effectively. To be able to be respectful of others and behave in an effective and appropriate way, we first need to understand who we are, what our values are and what we represent.
Without understanding our own self and why we act the way we do, we can never really appreciate another’s point of view.
Growing this awareness and understanding will help reduce our blind spots and potential pitfalls when interacting across cultures.
Let’s start the journey. Please complete the survey below to better understand where you stand in terms of the attitudes, knowledge and skills needed for intercultural competence. Please complete this individually.
Think about where you are now, and rate yourself using the following scale from 1= Very low, 2= Below average, 3= Average, 4= High, 5=Very High.
When you are done, circle the three areas that you would like to work more on and think of three key actions that can help you with this.
Understanding where you stand in your intercultural journey helps you identify potential areas for growth, blind spots and existing skills to be more effective and appropriate when working with those different to yourself.
This simple survey can also be used with students at the beginning of their programme to gain some clarity on the attitudes, knowledge and skills they need to develop in order to be successful in the New Zealand environment.
5. Understanding culture
As mentioned previously, the first step to becoming more interculturally competent is self-awareness and understanding our own cultural identity/ies.
What do we mean by culture?
Culture is the learned and shared patterns of beliefs, behaviours and values of a group of interacting people that are passed down from generation to generation
(Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010)
It is important to note that we are not born with a particular culture but rather we learn it early in life through our family, friends and institutions. For it to be a culture, it also needs to be shared. One person from a particular cultural group showing certain behaviour does not make it culture. For a behaviour to be cultural, it needs to be shared, expected or accepted by the majority of a group as the right thing to do.
A good way to think about culture is using the metaphor of the iceberg (you might find similar metaphors like the tree or the onion to be useful too).
If you have a look at the image of the iceberg you will notice that only about 10% of the iceberg is visible or above the water line. This 10% is the part of culture that most people can see when they visit a country or watch shows about it. This 10% is mostly artefacts and behaviours.
However, 90% of culture is not easily visible and we need to dive deeper to learn more about it. This 90% is usually known as deep culture and consists of values and beliefs. Values and beliefs are connected and influence the behaviours that we can see above the water line.
For example, think about how people usually greet others in Japan. They bow. We can easily see this on TV shows and when we visit the country. What does it mean? Most Japanese people will tell you that bowing is one way of showing respect for elders. Bowing is the visible behaviour and respect for elders is the value underneath the waterline.
6. Draw your culture/s
Do you think you can identify some of those behaviours, artefacts and values from your culture? Take a few minutes to draw an iceberg and place two or three visible behaviours and artefacts on the top and two or three values connected to those behaviours.
Can you think of more behaviours or situations you have observed in Aotearoa, New Zealand that have been influenced by these values? You can explore some of these values and behaviours in Hofstede Insights. Enter ‘New Zealand’. What do you think? These values are imprecise because they don’t capture the diversity of cultures in Aotearoa. But this tool suggests that some values we can find "under the iceberg" that international learners encounter include individualism or self-reliance.
Other values ascribed to Aotearoa’s bicultural/multicultural character include whanaungatanga, manaakitanga, informality, egalitarianism, humility and open-mindedness. These values are connected to some of the behaviours in the "tip of the iceberg" like the expectation of speaking up, learning reciprocally and independently, calling teachers by their first names and having a more informal teacher-student relationship.
Sometimes it can be difficult to identify these values as we grew up immersed in the culture; we can be like fish in the water which means we only become aware of it when we miss it.
Identifying key values and how they influence our behaviour are great first steps in developing cultural self-awareness and it is also important to develop some awareness of others. How do you think these values and behaviours can be perceived by international students who hold different values and beliefs?
Think of two icebergs meeting each other. Most of the time we look at the behaviours of the other iceberg from our own values. Our values are the tinted lens to see the world. Developing intercultural competence will allow us to better understand the other cultures’ values and therefore be more effective and appropriate when interacting with those who are different to us.
It is useful to think back to your own iceberg every time you face an intercultural encounter with one of your students or anyone else from a different cultural background. We will be reading their behaviours from our own values and they will probably be doing the same. Both perceptions of each other will be influenced by our cultural values. Therefore, if students are very quiet in class or are not speaking up, we may perceive this as a lack of motivation when in fact it could be them being respectful of authority. It is important to continuously challenge our assumptions about others to be able to connect with them and support them the best way possible.
According to Anais Nin, “We don’t see things the way THEY are but the way WE are”
(Doyle, 2015)
7. Cultural value dimensions - Some ideas below the water line
As we build our own self awareness and work on understanding others better, there are a few different concepts that can be very handy to help us navigate these differences.
Cultural value dimensions were introduced by Gert Hofstede when he was trying to make sense of the differences among IBM offices around the world. He concluded that some of those differences could only be explained by different cultural values. Hofstede (2010) identified two main values that were causing conflicts: the difference between individualist and collectivist cultures, and the difference between more egalitarian and more hierarchical cultures.
Hierarchical vs egalitarian
Hierarchical vs egalitarian refers to the extent to which the less powerful members of organisations and institutions accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. In egalitarian cultures members of this society have more equal power. In hierarchical cultures members of this society have their own well-defined position in the hierarchy.
Individualism vs collectivism
Individualism versus collectivism refers to the degree to which individuals are supposed to look after themselves or remain integrated into groups, usually around the family. While individualism stands for a society in which the ties between individuals are loose, collectivism stands for a society in which people are integrated into strong and cohesive in-groups which protect them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty.
8. What does this mean for international students?
While New Zealand society reflects diverse cultural influences, its institutions broadly reflect egalitarian and individualistic values (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2010). It is important, therefore, to consider what this means for students coming from more collectivist and hierarchical societies. While students in New Zealand might be expected to be independent and speak if they need help, international students coming from more collectivistic and hierarchical cultures might be afraid of asking for help or taking initiative.
Students from more egalitarian and individualistic cultures will be more likely to speak up, ask questions and argue with teachers and professors, and expect more freedom when living with a homestay. Students from more hierarchical and collectivist cultures will find it more difficult to ask questions to those they see as having authority, they will be expecting to receive instructions and have less initiative in work environments or in the classroom. For these students it will be important to maintain harmony and they are unlikely to ask for help or voice any conflicts with their host family or institution.
Some good ways of collecting honest feedback or identifying issues with this latter group of students would be:
- Make sure it is anonymous and assure students they won’t be able to be identified
- Do it after any grading has taken place
- Use tools like Menti or polls that give you a temperature check without names.
If we go back to our two icebergs we can see how someone from a more collectivist culture might perceive the individualist culture as “selfish” or “every one to their own”. We can also see how someone from a more individualist culture may perceive the collectivist culture as “too nosy” or “overprotective”. Again, this is very important to keep in mind when we are supporting students struggling to adapt to their host families, and to exercise the humility and open-mindedness highlighted in Deardorff's Process Model for Intercultural Competence.
Being able to identify how our own culture and values are influencing our perception of students' behaviours will allow us to find other ways of intervening in critical incidents and providing student support that are more suitable (and appropriate) for that particular student.
9. Where do you stand? Map your values
Let’s continue with developing our self awareness and awareness of others. Where do you think you stand on these value dimensions? Are you more individualistic or collectivist? More egalitarian or more hierarchical? What about the international students you work with?
Value dimensions in action
Culture shapes the way we see the world, how we make decisions, how we interact with others and even how we learn. The value dimensions we just described have a strong influence in how international students behave at schools and universities and how institutions behave towards students. Let’s have a look at one possible scenario.
In a recent internal review, an institution found some concerning data and comments around responsiveness to the diverse learner community. Staff comments showed disappointment with students' behaviour and plenty of complaints that included “international students never engage”, “students just do not answer any questions” and “international learners do not show initiative or wish to participate in group conversation”. One comment even said “I feel the presence of so many international students is affecting our domestic students' performance”.
The students’ survey shows international students don’t feel like they are being given enough direction or support. Students report “feeling lost”, “not understanding what the teachers expect” and “teachers are not serious enough”. There were also some comments from international students about “local students are really disrespectful of the teachers”.
Some reflection questions:
- What is actually happening in this scenario?
- What could be some value dimensions and other cultural reasons behind the behaviours?
- What suggestions or tips could you give the students and teachers to be effective in their new environment?
- How could you support students in being more appropriate at school?
- How could you support teachers in being more appropriate with their students?
Investigating contributing factors
- This scenario shows how students and teachers have different understandings and expectations of how to interact, participate and engage in the classroom. It also suggests a lack of intercultural insight from both sides and an inability to suspend judgement and retain curiosity about cultural differences.
- Some of the misunderstandings could be attributed to hierarchy vs egalitarian differences (e.g. international students feeling local students are disrespectful of the teachers and/or teachers are not being “serious enough” and/or egalitarian-minded teachers feeling international students are not showing sufficient independence). Some other reasons could be different communication styles (Explore more in Effectively engaging with international students) or different learning beliefs (Explore more in Working with the teaching profession).
- Both students and teachers would benefit from intercultural competence training which helps raise their awareness of cultural differences and offers techniques for suspending judgement. Learn more about the DI.V.E. tool here.
- Preparing students with cultural information before they arrive in New Zealand and supporting them in the early stages of their sojourn to reflect on cultural differences will increase students' ability to navigate cross-border dynamics.
- Professional development in intercultural competence is crucial for anyone working in international education and with diverse classrooms. There are plenty of tools and activities that can support teachers with this task (Some examples can be found in Working with the teaching profession).
10. Conclusion
Developing our intercultural competence is a lifelong process and requires developing a set of attitudes, knowledge and skills as seen on Darla’s Deardoff model. Working in international education gives us an opportunity to engage with differences on a daily basis and it is important we work on improving these competencies to better engage with and support international students. Remaining curious and always exploring what might be “under the waterline” is the best way to go about it.
Assuming good intentions and using D.I.V.E. to suspend judgement will help us be more effective and appropriate when engaging in intercultural relations.
10. References
AFS. (2015). Concepts and theories of culture for AFS and friends. https://d22dvihj4pfop3.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2019/02/13110939/ConceptsandTheoriesofCultureforAFS_Friends.pdf
Bennett, J. M. (2008). Transformative training: Designing programs for culture learning. In M. A. Moodian (Ed.), Contemporary leadership and intercultural competence: Understanding and utilizing cultural diversity to build successful organizations (pp. 95–110). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Deardorff, D. K. (Ed.).(2009). The SAGE Handbook of Intercultural Competence. SAGE Publications.
Deardorff, D.K. (2012). Framework: Intercultural Competence Model. In K. Berardo, K. & D. K. Deardorff (Eds.). Building Cultural Competence: Innovative Activities and Models (pp.45-49). Stylus.
Deardorff, D., & Jones, E. (2012). Intercultural competence: An emerging focus in international higher education. In D. K. Dearforff, H. de Wit., J. D. Heyl., & T. Adams (Eds), The SAGE Handbook of International Higher Education (pp.283-303). SAGE Publications.
Doyle, S. (2015, April 8). Before Lena Dunham, there was Anaïs Nin – now patron saint of social media. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/apr/07/anais-nin-author-social-media
Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G.J. & Minkov, M. (2010).Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind: Intercultural Cooperation and Its Importance for Survival (3rd Edition). McGraw Hill.
