When difference creates dissonance: understanding the ‘engine’ of intercultural learning in study abroad

Abstract

Why do some study abroad students improve their intercultural skills, while others revert to less sophisticated ways of making sense of cultural difference? Both intercultural competence theory and transformative learning theory attempt to explain why student intercultural learning occurs, but they only provide partial answers. Building on our previous study assessing intercultural competence in a 2015 field school in India, this article applies the concept of cognitive dissonance to explain the process behind intercultural learning. In the context of study abroad, students experience cognitive dissonance when they encounter cultural differences or similarities that confound previously held expectations about culture. Adapting Maertz, Hassan, and Magnusson’s cognitive dissonance resolution framework, we employ qualitative analysis of students’ written reflections to show how the resolution of cognitive dissonance could act as the ‘engine’ of intercultural learning.

Keywords:

• Intercultural competence
• cognitive dissonance
• study abroad
• transformative learning theory
• reflexivity

Notes

1. Out of the 15 enrolled students, only 1 student was male. In order to protect the anonymity of study participants, gender identity was a variable that was omitted from the analysis. All students will be referred to in the paper by female pronouns.

2. We acknowledge that there are numerous definitions of intercultural competence and there is no consensus on a single definition (see Deardorff 2006, 242); however, it is beyond the scope of this paper to provide a comprehensive review of these definitions. For the sake of consistency, we have chosen to focus on Bennett and Hammer's definitions and models, because these were the frameworks used during the India Field School.

3. In order to protect anonymity, all students were given pseudonyms when data were uploaded to NVivo. However, as the course instructor was also one of the co-investigators, it was possible in some cases for her to identify the author(s) of the written reflections during coding, despite the pseudonyms.

4. Name has been changed to protect anonymity.