Learning about culture(s) via intercultural digital exchange: opportunities, challenges, and grey areas

ABSTRACT

Twenty-six participants aged 12–18 living in four countries were interviewed about their experiences participating in a digital exchange programme and learning about cultures. Abductive analysis of the transcripts suggests that social media-type learning formats offer particular opportunities for young people to: (1) engage with different cultures and feel a sense of connection to people with different cultural affiliations to their own; (2) expand their view of culture as a complex, multifaceted, fluid phenomenon; (3) consider or reconsider their existing understandings of culture(s) in ways that may involve upending stereotypes; and (4) situate their own lives, identities, and values relative to those of other young people and reflect on how they themselves have been influenced by cultural forces. However, educators should also be attentive to the challenges of what we call the ‘Three O’s’ – overgeneralisation, overconfidence, and othering – as well as several grey areas that require skilful and thoughtful navigation.

KEYWORDS:

• Intercultural education
• intercultural learning
• culture
• digital exchange
• global education

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank other members of the Out of Eden Learn team who provided valuable feedback and support: Carrie James, Sarah Sheya, and Shari Tishman. Sarah Sheya helped to design the graphic in Figure 3. The authors would also like to thank the students and teachers who participated in this study and Out of Eden Learn.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Abundance Foundation, Global Cities Inc., a programme of Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the National Geographic Society.

Notes on contributors

Liz Dawes Duraisingh

Liz Dawes Duraisingh is a Research Associate at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she is also a Lecturer. She co-directs Out of Eden Learn, the intercultural digital exchange programme and design-based research project featured in this paper. She also conducts research that promotes inquiry-driven teaching and learning in schools.

Susannah Blair

Susannah Blair worked at Project Zero on the Out of Eden Learn project as a Research Assistant between 2015 and 2018. Since then, she has worked as a Media and Communication Research Manager at Boston University, and is currently the Project Manager of a design and branding collective that works with social sector clients.

Anastasia Aguiar

Anastasia Aguiar is a student in the Doctor of Nursing Practice in Pediatrics programme at Columbia University. She has worked in the field of youth development as a high school history teacher in the United States, programme manager at an education foundation in India, and education researcher.