STUDY ABROAD PARTICIPATION AND UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ INTERCULTURAL SENSITIVITY

1 online resource (115 pages) : PDF

2017

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

The purpose of this study was to examine the intercultural sensitivity of College of Education students who participated in short-term, faculty led, study abroad programs at a large, urban, branch, university in the Southeast. The research questions in this study were addressed using a mixed methods approach. This method provided for the integration of both quantitative and qualitative data. A mixed methods design was selected because it was not possible to randomly assign students to an experimental group (study abroad) or a control group and the research was conducted after the students participated in the short-term, faculty led, study abroad course. Using this design, the researcher attempted to identify a relationship between students’ participation in a short-term, faculty led, study abroad program and intercultural sensitivity.This study’s quantitative and qualitative findings relied on the statistically valid and reliable Intercultural Development Inventory v.3 (IDI; Hammer and Bennett, 2010) to measure intercultural sensitivity. The IDI scores from the sample of College of Education students (N = 24) who participated in the research, was used to run a quantitative analysis, the themes which emerged from the qualitative information added depth to the data and provided students’ recollections of their intercultural experiences.This study provided baseline intercultural sensitivity scores, some demographic characteristics, individuals’ perception of their intercultural sensitivity, and recollections of intercultural experiences of the College of Education participants. The IDI Perceived Orientation (PO) and Developmental Orientation (DO) and mean scores for College of Education students who participated in short-term, faculty led, study abroad program were higher than College of Education students who did not participate in study abroad programs. However, caution is strongly urged in interpretation of the findings due to the small and non-representative sample. Given the low response rate (N = 24) it is recommended that additional studies with larger sample sizes be conducted to ascertain results with greater reliability.

doctoral dissertations

Educational leadership
Foreign study

D.Ed.

Study Abroad

Educational Leadership

Shore, Rebbeca

Shore, Rebecca
Lambert, Rich
Wang, Chuang
Medina, Adriana

Thesis (D.Ed.)--University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2017.

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Edmunds_uncc_0694D_11566

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13093/etd:1131