Promoting intercultural competence in diverse US classrooms through ethnographic interviews

Abstract

To meet the demands of contemporary society, students need to develop the ability to interact effectively with people from different cultures. To advance this goal, a project involving ethnographic interviews was introduced to an intercultural communication course. Participating students’ attitudes toward other cultures were measured on a Likert scale at the beginning and end of the project. The findings show that through the interviews, the students developed greater awareness of their own cultures and of themselves within their culture and deepened their knowledge of other cultures. Yet, the majority of the students did not show greater interest in learning a foreign language at the end of the project. Further, even though the students did learn about other cultures, their responses to becoming more open to other cultures were inconclusive. The article discusses possible reasons for these outcomes and outlines future research directions.

Keywords:

• Intercultural competence
• international students
• US university classrooms
• ethnography
• undergraduate education