You turn inward in order to reflect on your own personal and cultural experience as citizens in local and global contexts. All of us need to be able to reflect on the nature of our own ways of making meaning of things. Are you born with it? Does it come from your individual or cultural experience? What does it say about yourself and your comparison to others?
Then, there’s you as the other. It is important to recognize and understand patterns of behavior and values of people from different cultural contexts. We can be looking at the same landscape and paint it in totally different ways. Minimizing the importance of this difference makes it difficult to accept it as it is.
As you become more mindful about how you respond to the differences and commonalities of others, you practice suspending judgment and being flexible in new and different cultural contexts. For your own self, it is also important to turn inward and find a peaceful place, to be aware of personal limits and be open to seeking support.
After you find a way to be more accepting of the differences, you can initiate and develop relationships with culturally different others. You can shift your perspective, attune your emotions and adapt your behavior in order to communicate and interact effectively and appropriately with different cultural contexts.
EAIE Conference
September 24-27, 2019 in Helsinki, Finland
“Encompassing All Voices”
Schedule
AFS Global Conference
October 9-11, 2019 in Montreal, Canada
Global competence is essential for navigating and succeeding in today’s interconnected world.
Subscribe to get more info!
CIEE Annual Conference
November 6-8, 2019 in Brooklyn, USA
“Opening doors to increase diversity in study abroad”
Schedule
“My group who went abroad had impressive quantitative and qualitative results in terms of intercultural development. Both the IDI and the qualitative data showed that the group had a shift from a predominantly monocultural mindset to a more intercultural (global) mindset. Given these results and considering learners’ feedback about the program, I highly recommend the GCC.”
H. E. Parker, Ph.D.
Assistant Director, Latin America/Spain Programs,
Global Engineering Programs and Partnerships.
Emelyne Burkhard
Celtic English Academy,
UK English language provider serving approximately 1000 students from up to 50 different nationalities annually
Mick has been a long-time friend and advocate of AFS Intercultural, Inc. Last week Linda Stuart had the chance to talk with Mick about his role in the development of the Global Competence Certificate, his keynote at AFS Colombia and his forthcoming book, Intercultural education from the inside out. co-edited with interculturalists Tara Harvey, Ph.D. and Charles Calahan, Ph.D.
Over the past year, Purdue has conducted a study on intercultural learning gains on students doing short-term study abroad. In a telling summary, Katherine Yngve of Purdue shows that students who took the GCC, on short-term programs, had an average 15 pt gain as measured by the I.D.I. which surpassed other intercultural interventions. More information will be presented in this study by Katherine Yngve and Linda Stuart at the AAHLE Conference in Minnesota in June.
In February 2019, AFS/Sentio delivered an interactive workshop at Languages Canada’s 12th Annual Conference – “On Common Ground: A shared commitment to quality and integrity in Language Education” where over 250 faculty, staff and of Canadian universities and language institutions in Winnipeg, MB gathered.
