Everyday life exists of meeting familiar and unfamiliar faces. Unfamiliar faces, habits, beliefs and cultures are what constitutes ‘The Other’. Travelling and working abroad makes us much more aware of ‘The Other’. In the ‘Understanding the Other’ series of blogposts you learn more about the deeper, underlying layers of other cultures. In the process you become more aware of your own culture and life choices, opening the door for personal development and improving your social interactions with other cultures and lifestyle, either at home or abroad. This is part 8: The importance of reflection. Image by Unknown.
Educational guidance
Although it is important to keep in mind that significant learning effects can only take place when the student learns under stress, some support is needed to prevent the experience from being mis-educative, meaning arresting or distorting the growth of further experience Dewey 1938: 25 cited in: Giles & Eyler 1994).
Balance between independence and social support
Research shows that the learning of cross cultural competencies requires a delicate balance between providing students with support to ‘bridge the gap’ between the schemas of the host home and host country, and letting them deal on their own with the mental tensions that will arise, in order to boost feelings of independence (Hansel 1988). This said, self-actualization learning patterns can only begin when ‘lower-level’ needs, such as feelings of safety, belonging and esteem are fulfilled. Hence, more cross-cultural training may well be needed to establish a foundation for students traveling to culturally challenging low-income countries.
Reflection during travel
However, prior to traveling to the host country, it can sometimes be difficult to make students receptive to training regarding the tacit concepts of cross-cultural competencies and personal development. As a result, reflective learning during and after the experience becomes important for the student to fully understand the experience and benefit from it. There are several benefits of reflective learning:
First, reflective learning exercises can help students to make sense of concepts which seem to be rather vague prior to the overseas experience, such as the concept of culture and ‘dry’ historical phenomena such as communism (Doppen 2010; Forsey et al. 2012).
Second, reflective learning can point students to competencies and personal development topics which they tend to overlook such as identifying and analyzing best practices or international business opportunities.
Third, reflective learning could help students to more realistically assess their learning of competencies, for example with the help of Bennetts developmental model of intercultural sensitivity. The Developmental Model of intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) links changes in cognitive structure to an evolution in attitudes and behavior toward cultural differences, moving from highly ethnocentric to highly ethnorelative stages. Ethnocentric is defined as using one’s own set of standards and customs to judge all people, often unconsciously. Ethnorelative means the opposite; it refers to being comfortable with many standards and customs and to having an ability to adapt behavior and judgments to a variety of interpersonal settings. Ethnocentric stages include denial, defense and minimization. These are followed by more ethnorelative stages such as acceptance, adaptation and integration.
Reflection on management competencies is perhaps in particularly important for foreign interns who worked in organizations with a high power distance. This exercise may compensate for the limited feedback they might have received from colleagues and supervisors.
Reflection after travel
A reflection assignment can not only benefit the student during his educational travel, but also during the re-entry phase in the home country. This is the time when a student synthesizes his or her experience in the host country into everyday life, reflecting on the similarities and differences with home and any personal changes that may have occurred.
There is always a danger that returning students fail to leverage their new insights due to the pressure of a familiar environment and role expectations. Kiely (2005) mentions the ‘chameleon complex’, which describes the struggle between perspective transformation and action. Students can grapple with the contradictions inherent in trying to act upon their expanded views and the opinions of friends, family and co-workers which can be in conflict or unsupportive. Also, there is often not much opportunity for further reflection when students return, as they plunge straight back into their studies, or a new job, with the added pressures of readjusting to their old environment.
Reflection exercises
One tool to help students make sense of this chameleon complex is to encourage them to write about their experiences. Interpretation exercises in the re-entry phase can highlight any major mental tensions or dilemmas and their implications for the student’s choices about the future. The student should be encouraged to articulate these dilemmas, which may be highly personalized: they could be related to cultural values, modernization, career choices or awareness about global issues (such as war, corruption and poverty).
Reflection is also likely to be particularly beneficial for students who have traveled from high to low power distance countries and from collective to highly individualistic countries, as their return home entails a transition back towards more traditional and survival related values.
While designing cross-cultural training or reflective learning exercises, teachers need to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of their audience. Students who are more relationship-orientated are likely to be more receptive to cross-cultural training and reflective learning exercises than others. By contrast, students with a technical background are more task-oriented and more prone to linear thinking which makes them potentially less receptive, and attentive, to, people-oriented and non-linear, ambiguous, information. In order to ’build a bridge’ the teacher needs to interpret the teaching materials in a way that appeals to the audience, i.e. presenting the material more in a linear and task-oriented way with examples that are closer to the experience of these students (Bancino & Zevalkink 2007).
By adopting such a pedagogical approach, learning becomes an inviting challenge where the schemas of the educational programme differs from the audience schemas but not so much that the students withdraw and stop learning. Learning occurs under conditions of manageable stress, which requires a relatively open and receptive attitude. Only then can we expect to develop students’ dynamic competencies. However it does need to be kept in mind that more fundamental changes, related to stable competencies (e.g. personality traits such as openness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, agreeableness, and extraversion), are only likely to occur occasionally.
Related books (which include all references)
