Learning Tolerance Revisited: A Quasi-ExperimentalReplication

Abstract

This paper replicates an earlier project that tested the impact of comparative politics courses on students' levels of intercultural sensitivity. Using a standardized instrument, the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), I pre- and posttest students taking an on-campus East-Central European politics course taken in the fall semester and an off-campus course on the politics of the Czech Republic headquartered in Prague during the month of January. The first study, conducted during the 2003–2004 academic year, demonstrated that comparative politics courses have a positive significant impact on students' levels of intercultural sensitivity, that there is no difference between on- and off-campus courses in terms of these differences, and that students who take both courses experience higher rates of positive change than students taking only one of the two courses. The results of the replication, conducted during the 2005–2006 academic year, confirm the original findings that link strongly comparative politics and intercultural sensitivity.

Keywords:

• comparative politics
• cultural sensitivity
• study abroad
• teaching
• tolerance

This manuscript was originally prepared for presentation at 2007 APSA Teaching and Learning Conference, 9–11 February, Charlotte, North Carolina. The author wishes to thank Eric Lund and Jo Beld for their financial and technical support of this project and Patrick Quade for his assistance with instrument interpretation. The author also wishes to thank the 23 students who participated as subjects in this study.

Notes

Note: ∗p < .05; ∗∗p < .001.

Note: Cell entries are unstandardized Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) coefficients with standard errors in parentheses. ∗p < .10; ∗∗p < .05; ∗∗∗p < .001.

Note: ∗p < .10; ∗∗p < .05.

Note: ∗p < .10.

See www.intercultural.org/idi/idi.html for an extensive overview of the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) and the IDI including a sample profile, interpretative schema, and reports on the validity and reliability of the instrument.

That groups such as global nomads, long-term expatriates, and nondominant minority groups frequently fall into the stage of Encapsulated Marginality is a testament to the sort of conditions and lifestyles required to achieve this level of intercultural development.

The topics covered in the order in which they appeared in the syllabus were 1) the legacies of communism, 2) the dynamics of democratization, 3) constitutional foundations, 4) the state, 5) political society and institutional choice, 6) economic society, 7) elections and party systems, 8) civil society, 9) political elites, 10) identities and interests, 11) public opinion, 12) the European Union, 13) environmental politics, 14) women and politics, and 15) area studies versus political science.

In addition to receiving basic language training, students studied the following subjects throughout the interim: 1) communist and noncommunist histories of Prague, Czechoslovakia, and the Czech Republic, 2) the emergence and impact of the Czechoslovak “dissident” movement, 3) the legacies of communism, 4) environmental issues in postcommunist Europe, 5) the European Union, 6) the Roma minority, 7) women and politics, 8) economic liberalization, 9) the Holocaust, 10) “The Power of the Powerless,” 11) U.S.-Czech relations, 12) electoral politics and political parties, 13) samizdat, 14) political participation, 15) the plays of Václav Havel, and 16) political elites.

The “Czech List” of cultural items included the following: 1) attending an opera, 2) attending a puppet show, 3) attending a church concert, 4) attending a jazz concert, 5) spending an afternoon in a café, 6) attending a sporting event, 7) visiting a museum not on the group itinerary, 8) attending a church service or visiting a church not on the group itinerary, 9) visiting a Czech supermarket, and 10) riding a city-wide tram for its entire route.

The introduction of a second independent variable into a regression model in which the number of cases is small reduces even further the extremely limited degrees of freedom available to produce an effective explanatory model.

Since the small sample size may increase the variance in the t-scores adversely, I performed a one-way post hoc Scheffé test. This test compares differences between all individual data points for the pretest and posttest IDI variables in order to reveal significant patterns that are otherwise obscured by the difference of means test. The Scheffé analysis confirms the results reported in Table 4 and the finding that there is no statistically significant difference between the impacts of an on- or off-campus comparative course on levels of intercultural sensitivity.

For a description of the program, see http://www.stolaf.edu/international/programs/middleeast.html.

This pattern receives additional support from the TIME data in which significant positive shifts occur on the Reversal (p < .05), Acceptance/Adaptation (p < .05), and Encapsulated Marginality (p < .01) scales.