Exploring and Assessing Intercultural Competence - Center for ...

Exploring and Assessing Intercultural Competence
initial phase project that will be developed even more fully in a follow-on study. And, whereas
this initial phase involved only three MOs, the full research effort will hopefully involve all
member countries – diverse in languages and cultures, geographically widespread, and
spanning a timeframe of activity of up to 75 years (or, as long as each MO has maintained
reliable alumni records).
In this Initial Phase Project (IPA), the data sought were quantitative (statistics, collective
profiles, etc.) and qualitative (open-ended comments, anecdotes, individual interviews, etc.).
Combined data provided a rich source of information about the research issues cited above and
other outcomes in terms of: the nature of intercultural competence, the identification of attributes
for success in cross-cultural encounters, the degree of competence attained, the effects of the
experience on participants’ ensuing careers and life choices and, finally, participant
contributions in turn to the overarching mission of the Federation. In addition, the project
resulted in producing a more reliable instrument to measure and monitor intercultural
development during and beyond a participant’s sojourn.
Given this ambitious long-term plan for a worldwide research effort, the preliminary steps
undertaken in this initial phase included: defining concepts, developing survey questionnaires,
and several limited focus studies (cf. e.g., Hovey 2001). The results obtained from these will all
help inform MOs in areas of marketing, program design, criteria for participant selection, criteria
for intercultural success, improved assessment, etc., resulting in administrative and educational
improvements. Given FEIL’s approaching 75 th anniversary, to be celebrated on an international
scale in May 2007 in Berlin, Germany, this endeavor seemed both timely and appropriate at this
moment in our history.
2. Theoretical Perspectives
The challenge of any project of this type is to formulate the basic concepts on which the entire
effort was based – e.g., what exactly is “intercultural competence”? and how do we best measure
and monitor it? Our starting point, then, was to return to an earlier notion of “communicative
competence,” a term first advanced in language education (and reinforced through other
disciplines) over 25 years ago. Various abilities had been posited that comprise this competence,
developed so early in life. Everyone develops the communicative competence that forms part of
their native language and cultural system (CC1), while those entering additional language-culture
systems at any other time thereafter, potentially develop a second system (CC2), or even
additional systems (CC3, CC4),, and so on. But once the initial system is fairly well established by
around puberty (reflecting and affecting one’s view of the world), it becomes increasingly
difficult to see things any other way – hence, the power of the intercultural sojourn in providing a
chance at seeing things “anew.”
To transcend one’s native CC1 (and worldview) and enter into an alternative system (CC2), to any
degree, then, requires the concurrent development of “intercultural” communicative
competence (aka: intercultural competence, or ICC). To do this, however, demands nothing
less than reconfiguring one’s original worldview (or better put, “transcending and transforming”
it). ICC, then, is more than a collection of abilities that allow one to function in one and another
system (CC1 and CC2); ICC also results in producing unique perspectives that arise from
interaction of two (or more) systems. Indeed, ICC is part and parcel of developing bilingualbicultural
(or multilingual-multicultural) perspectives; perspectives that no monolingualmonocultural
individual of either of the two individual systems can ever possibly have.
Center for Social Development
Washington University in St. Louis
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