Title: Intercultural competence: Looking back and looking ahead
Abstract: This study explored the effects of the Equity Buddies Program, an intercultural cross-level mentoring course designed to link more advanced university students, as mentors, with first year refugee-background or immigrant students. It was designed to address the needs of refugee-background and immigrant students as they transitioned into university culture. The data included mentors' written reflections, log books, and a brief demographic survey. Through the processes adopted in the course, it was found that cross-cultural pairing influenced mentors' intercultural understandings, enabled cross-cultural relationships to develop and provided opportunities for students to interact with people of other cultures and religions. Mentors changed their views of others – of immigrants, of refugees, and also of Anglo-Australians. They experienced increased personalised understanding or gained a widened perspective of their mentees who were of cultures different from their own. Mentors stated that over time their interactions evolved into either a mutually rewarding friendship or a comfortable relationship within a learning community that valued collective learning. It is proposed that increased intercultural understanding emerges from an increased emphasis on the creation of meaningful, transactional relationships among culturally diverse students within a supportive academic environment.
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-09-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 10
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