Assessing Inter-Cultural Communicative Competence (IC3) Through Action Research

Educators are to implement best-practice curriculum and instruction that meet the needs of a diverse population and prepare students for an ever-changing global milieu. With the end of the bipolar Cold War order, followed by spiraling conflict since 9/11, the world faces an uncertain crossroads. In one direction, there are paths leading toward fragmentation. Bonded communities of ethnicity, nationalism, and culturally-bound knowledge reinforce boundaries and fears of unknown others. While bonded communities have the potential to build association and democratization, the flip side is that their knowledge and relations are exclusivist and communitarian. In another direction, there is evolutionary learning that unites diverse peoples. Political philosophers, human ecologists, and botanists see this happening in borderlands or “ecotones.” These are regions where two diverse ecological communities meet, be they a wood and a meadow, or two different cultures, two religions, black and white, male and female, oneself and another. New speciation occurs because of interaction at such ecotones. Standing in proximity to new cultures, one observes and digests new learning and thought processes. One may take that new knowledge back into his or her bonded community to inform perceptions and broaden knowledge. Although western civilization “has a long and dark history with respect to edges” where the unknown is to be “thrust back and ultimately eliminated,” the alternative is to explore the fecundity born of inter-cultural borderlands (Coles, 1992; Dula, 2006; Lopez, 1986).

            One such alternative, IC3 (Inter-Cultural Communicative Competence), is a web-based and face-to-face learning resource and pedagogy for university students at the borderlands or ecotones. In particular, this is a place of learning among countries whose governments have identified the other as “enemy.”  Presently, IC3 links students of the United States, Vietnam and Iran – enemies past and present – through cultural and language lessons embedded in ten development issues common to both post-industrial and developing countries. These topics include identity, food and water security, primary and reproductive health, education, poverty reduction, economic change, trade, development partnerships, art and culture, and globalization.

            Each of three integrated language lessons (listening/speaking, writing, and reading) for each of ten chapters (based on these ten development topics) across three levels of difficulty begins with an inter-cultural question. Students discuss this within their own language and culture. They then move to a virtual borderland or ecotones of learning. First, they engage language lessons that build on their shared inter-cultural problem (Vietnamese studying English, or Americans studying Vietnamese). Then students go online to post to each other their “best answers” for that lesson’s inter-cultural question. They analyze and compare responses from the other cultures. All participants post their discernment of “generative themes” from inter-cultural dialogic problem-solving. They follow the same steps for viewing and dialoguing on a foreign film series that tracks these development concerns. Finally, students meet face-to-face at the end of the academic year to discuss their inter-cultural learning and applications.  (See Appendix I).

At this experimental stage of IC3 implementation, action research study engage faculty from four academic departments at An Giang University (AGU) in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta and Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) in Virginia. As they construct and introduce the IC3 learning platform at their respective institutions, AGU and EMU faculty design an action research study to explore the effect of the IC3 on inter-cultural competence and listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills of undergraduate students. While this paper addresses only the initial implementation of Vietnamese and English materials at AGU and EMU, work is also underway to expand IC3 to include Farsi-, Spanish- and Chinese-speaking lessons and universities.