1、1CROSS-CULTURAL CONNECTIONS: INTERCULTURAL LEARNING FOR GLOBAL CITIZENSHIPALYSSA J. OBRIEN, STANFORD UNIVERSITYANDERS ERIKSSON, REBRO UNIVERSITYAbstractThis paper discusses a curriculum developed to make innovative use of collaborative digital technologiesincluding video conferences, collaborative b
2、logs, writing on a Wiki, and dynamic chatas part of an activity-based research project to foster intercultural competencies among students in globally-distributed teams. We present qualitative and quantitative data that indicate successful implementation of the curriculum for facilitating global lea
3、rning via communication technology tools. By situating the curriculum within current debates in intercultural communication and digital pedagogy, we hope to offer new knowledge on how best to foster multiple perspectives through developing intercultural capital that enables world citizenship. We con
4、clude with a projection on the scalability and sustainability of the curriculum in an international context and an argument for how such cross-cultural connections can foster greater political understanding, ethical awareness, and intercultural competencies in order to bring about improved internati
5、onal and social relations for emerging global citizens.KeywordsGlobal Learning CurriculumDigital PedagogyIntercultural Communication Competence World CitizenshipIntercultural CapitalArticle Forthcoming in “INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION COMPETENCE: Educating the World Citizen” Eds. Mara Alagic and Glyn
6、 Remington (2008) Cross-Cultural Connections: Intercultural Learning for Global Citizenship2Introduction: Curriculum Designed for Cross-Cultural Connections This paper has grown out of collaboration between faculty at Stanford University, California, USA, and at rebro University, Sweden, in a projec
7、t called “Developing Intercultural Competencies through Collaborative Rhetoric”; see our website at http:/ccr.stanford.edu. The work has been supported by the Wallenberg Global Learning Network and the Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning; it involves core contributions from faculty researche
8、rs Christine Alfano, Anders Eriksson, Andrea Lunsford, Eva Magnusson, Brigitte Mral, and Alyssa OBrien. Over the past three years we have attempted to answer a critical educational need: the development and implementation of a curriculum designed to foster what theorists Carl Lovitt and Dixie Goswam
9、i (1999) term “intercultural competencies,” or the increasingly important skill of approaching others with consideration for and sensitivity towards diverse cultural contexts. The impetus for such a curriculum emerged from a very practical goal: how to prevent deep misunderstandings that can lead to
10、 conflagrations such as seen in the recent fury over a series of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad; this incident focused worldwide attention not only on the power of images but also on the violence that can result from miscommunication stemming from narrow perspectives that fail to take into
11、consideration intercultural contexts. In response, the international faculty team worked together on activity-based research to design a curriculum for global learning. To make possible intercultural competency in communication, we developed a curriculum focused on the innovative use of collaborativ
12、e digital technologies among students working in what we call “globally-distributed teams.” Through pedagogical activities implemented via cross-cultural and transnational connections, we challenged students to explore multiple perspectives on texts that embody cultural valuessuch as ads, websites,
13、political speeches, and even everyday items such as clothing. In designing a global learning curriculum and the concrete pedagogical activities for facilitating greater sensitivity and rhetorical understanding in students through cross-cultural connections, our ultimate goal is to make possible grea
14、ter political understanding, ethical awareness, and intercultural competencies in order to bring about improved relations for emerging global citizens. In the process of sharing our work on curriculum development, we hope to offer implications for future global learning classes, for the difficult ta
15、sk of facilitating the development of world citizens, and for the important step of generating intercultural capital development in students across the globe. By “intercultural capital,” we mean knowledge and dispositions that have exchange value and power in the intrinsically intercultural exchange
16、s of new social fields of teaching and learning, work, and everyday life (Luke Hall, 1976), or differentiating between individualistic and collectivistic cultures (Triandis, 1995), while other researchers have focused on describing national cultures in a taxonomic approach to intercultural understan
17、ding (Hofstede, 1990). This categorizing and generalizing research tends to overemphasize the differences between cultures; it reinscribes prevailing stereotypes, as Zhu (2004) concludes in her overview of intercultural research. A curriculum based on this type of research typically advocates deep i
18、mmersion (Jandt, 2004) or learning as much about another culture as possible before initiating intercultural communication (Victor, 1992). We found that this approach to developing intercultural competencies leads to the pitfall that researchers Ronald and Suzanne Scollon (1995) describe as partial
19、attention to specific cultural factors (such as ideology, discourse patterns, and facial features) at the expense of other interpersonal and cultural factors that influence the site of transnational exchange and understanding. In developing our curriculum, we felt the need to instruct students in wa
20、ys of understanding diverse subject positions as opposed to reinscribing stereotypes. Cross-Cultural Connections: Intercultural Learning for Global Citizenship4More recent intercultural theory insists on attention to the cultural context of the researcher, with awareness of the Eurocentric focus of
21、the research paradigm (Moon, 2008). Current approaches to intercultural theory need to address three key issues, as Asante, Miike, and Yin (2008) point out: “(1) Eurocentric intellectual imperialism in cross-cultural communication research; (2) the neglect of indigenous perspectives in culture and c
22、ommunication inquiries; and (3) communication equality and mutuality in intercultural contexts” (p. 2). Thus, current approaches to intercultural communication involve a degree of defamiliarization, or making strange the subject position and assumptions that seem “natural” but in fact are culturally
23、 constructed and bound by geography and social position. Glyn Rimmington and Mara Alagic (2008) use the metaphor “cage painting” for this reflective inquiry where the participants gradually become aware of their own cultural perspective and the cultural perspective of the other during a process of t
24、hird place learning. Seeking a tool to enable understanding of diverse subject positions and the questioning of Eurocentric biases, we turn to rhetorical theory, since rhetoric is aimed at investigating the specific context in which communication occurs (Lovitt, 1999). We contend that instruction in
25、 rhetoricthe ancient discipline that aims to teach, in Aristotles words, “coming to sound judgment“ on any issueis essential for addressing intercultural contexts. In building a foundation for our curriculum, we rely on rhetorical theory for ways of understanding visual and verbal texts with attenti
26、on to audience and cultural contexts in our cross-cultural connections. Specifically, five key terms in rhetorical theory are important for our curriculum: audience, persona, decorum, doxa, and kairos (Herrick, 2005). A key element in the rhetorical situation is the audience to whom the message is d
27、irected. The rhetorical audience is composed of people capable of being mediators of change (Bitzer, 1968). As students analyze what Sonja Foss terms rhetorical artifacts (2004), they must keep the audience in mind, and as they analyze collaboratively with students from other cultures they must keep
28、 the collaborating audience in mind as well. In the collaboration students portray themselves in certain ways; they show an image or persona that might not be the same as their person (Booth, 1961). The distinction between person and persona also is true for the many images studied in the collaborat
29、ion. The celebrity in the ad purposely puts on a persona that is different from her real person. The third term, decorum, stands for conventions for politeness and non-offensive behaviour. In both the artifacts studied and the collaborative group work certain norms of behaviour are presupposed. An i
30、mage might want to astound us by breaking the conventions of propriety or decency. In the collaboration, different norms of how we should speak to one another come to play. The hidden assumptions for the conventions are highlighted by the rhetorical term doxa, the things taken for granted in a group
31、, or by primary and secondary audiences. Doxa therefore stands for the cultural blindspots our collaborating partners discover. The final term kairos is Greek for the qualitative moment in time where the communication occurs (Crowley, 1999). Cross-cultural communication is always situated in a speci
32、fic time at a specific place, and thus Cross-Cultural Connections: Intercultural Learning for Global Citizenship5the learning that occurs will lead to situated knowledge. Our curriculum seeks to help students understand the precise ways in which knowledge is situated through attention to the audienc
33、e, persona, doxa, kairos, and decorum of all communication.In order to make possible curricular activities that will facilitate intercultural competencies via a rhetorical approach, we have developed new methods of using technology in pedagogy. To that end, we also take into account the latest theor
34、etical conversations around digital pedagogy, such as Cynthia Selfe and Gail Hawishers call for studies on how technology can address global needs (1999). Our research attempts to meet this call through suggesting how cross-cultural connections fostered by digital technologies can improve intercultu
35、ral communication competencies and deepen the understanding of audience and context to facilitate improved international relations and generate intercultural capital. To this end, we draw on the work of scholars such as Chris Abbott (2000), who has argued persuasively for a re-evaluation of the use
36、of digital technologies in the classroom based on their increasing prevalence as a mode of communication within an international context. In addition, our practical applications of communication technologies in education have been largely informed by scholars such as Robert Godwin-Jones (2003; 2005)
37、, whose work centers on fostering productive collaborative exchanges through video conferencing, collaborative blogging, and writing on a Wiki. As Godwin-Jones suggests, asking students to engage with real audience through digital technologies increases their investment and sense of personal account
38、ability in their computer-based tasks. Moreover, the work of Renate Fruchter (2003) on globally-distributed teams provided a foundation for our development of a protocol for small-group collaboration practices. The theoretical foundation for the project thus comes from three research fields. Recent
39、research in intercultural communication points to the need for communication across cultural barriers instead of reinscribing cultural stereotypes. This need for communication across cultures leads us to rhetoric, the discipline that studies communication in specific cultural situations. Such commun
40、ication is possible through information and communication technologies, or ICTs. The use of ICTs for building a curriculum is studied in digital pedagogy. The three research fields of intercultural communication, rhetoric, and digital pedagogy thus combine to offer us a strong theoretical base for o
41、ur curriculum in cross-cultural connections.Methodology: Curriculum to Foster Intercultural Competencies We contend that comprehensive knowledge of other cultures languages, histories, governments, nonverbal patterns, and values is not feasible; instead, through the practical art of rhetorical analy
42、sis, writing, listening, and collaborative presentation, students develop intercultural capital in the form of discerning how Cross-Cultural Connections: Intercultural Learning for Global Citizenship6best to work across differences, how to understand even the most minor movements, and how to interac
43、t in the site of cultural exchange.To support this claim, we designed and tested a methodology and a set of classroom practices that we could share with teachers at a range of educational settings. In developing our curriculum, our research methodology sought to meet the following initial research q
44、uestions: How can we teach students to communicate with intercultural audiences in rhetorically effective ways? How do technologically-rich learning spaces facilitate or inhibit collaborative activities for globally distributed students and instructors? How can students best negotiate and learn abou
45、t intercultural perspectives through projects that rely on technology-mediated communication and digital collaboration? As we progressed in our curriculum development, our research questions developed in complexity to encompass the following new lines of inquiry: How can we extend effective intercul
46、tural collaboration practices beyond in-class settings to implement our findings for wider impact? How can we maximize students self-directed learning through improved use of ICTs such as portable collaboration tools and a cross-cultural communication infrastructure for their work in pairs and teams
47、 across countries? How can we best share our knowledge concerning essential factors for effective technologically-mediated intercultural collaboration gained from year one with a broader community? To address these research questions and construct a curriculum at the intersection of intercultural co
48、mmunication, rhetorical theory, and digital technologies, we developed a methodology based upon activities designed to apply the collaborative use of digital technologies for global learning in hands-on pedagogical settings. These technologies included webcam-enabled video conferencing, collaborativ
49、e blogs for rhetorical analysis of controversial texts, webforums for peer review of research on rhetorical texts of cultural significance, and a Wiki for collaborative writing. Our methodology locates intercultural competencies within collaborative activities that can be used in a range of courses. It challenges students to examine political perspectives and cultural assumptions in order to produce positive change in social, cultural, and international relations.Our methodology can be delineated and mapped against our goals and outcomes, as follows:Goal 1, Exploration: R
