Intercultural competence as an aspect of the communicative ...

which represents a degree of complexity of one’s view on the importance of cultural
context in judging what is important to know and value, and Knowing – a degree of
understanding and awareness of various cultures and their impact on our global society
and level of proficiency in more than one language. For the intrapersonal domain there
are Identity – a level of awareness of one’s unique identity and degree of acceptance of
one’s ethnic, racial, and gender dimensions, and Affect – a level of respect for and
acceptance of cultural perspectives different from one’s own and degree of emotional
confidence when living in complex situations. Thirdly, the interpersonal domain consists
of Social Responsibility – a level of interdependence and social concern for others, and
Social Interactions – a degree of engagement with others who are different from oneself
and the level of sensitivity. Finally, two additional domains are Well Being and Global
Citizenship. The first one consists of items that mostly relate to one’s own importance and
affirmative stand, while the latter domain consists of items that mostly correlate with the
ideas of ‘global citizenship’. These domains do not include new questions but are
comprised of the questions included in other subdomains. The grouping of the questions
into (sub)domains is given in Appendix 5.
The theory behind the Inventory is in keeping with the more recent models of
culture discussed here – those which see culture as more dynamic and variable, where
‘meaning is continuously being constructed through human interaction and
communication’ (Paige et al. 2003: 176).
The questionnaire has gone through several versions from 2007 when it was first
administered. The 2010 version includes a section on student life, with a focus on
community, curriculum and co-curriculum. This last intervention was done with an
intention of facilitating discussions on what can be done in terms of actions, programs or
courses to improve the progress students are making in becoming global citizens and
developing global perspectives. However, for the purpose of this study, this section was
not included in the questionnaire as it focused on the sociocultural characteristics of a
college campus which was not applicable to our setting.
For this study the questionnaire was translated into Serbian to avoid any
misunderstanding and possible language problems for the large number of participants
with a wide range of English language proficiency. Also, this part focused on ICC as the
participants drew on their knowledge of and interest in other cultures, so no direct ICCC
was expected, which was another reason for the translation.
133