Objectives

Thomas’ model of the development process of intercultural competence was applied to doing qualitative interview research as part of a Master’s thesis at the Vienna University of Technology (Herfort & Weiss, 2006). In this study, it is investigated on a theoretical basis if and how Thomas approach may be applied to improving intercultural competence in a blended-learning setting.

Methodology

These questions are answered on the basis of Thomas theory on the development of intercultural competence (Thomas 2006:118).  Thomas defines intercultural competence as “the ability to recognize, appreciate and honour the cultural influence on perception, judgment, emotion and behaviour within oneself and with others and to apply this ability in a productive manner” (Thomas 2006:118). He sees intercultural competence as the final step of a process departing from the individual’s experience, interest, personality and roles in a social network. Thomas describes for stages in the development ofntercultural competence: 1. intercultural confrontation, 2. intercultural experience, 3. intercultural learning and 4. intercultural understanding.

Proposed Concept

It is proposed to do interview research in a blended-learning setting, i.e. by doing part of the learning in an e-learning context, by exchanging ideas and by reflecting on intercultural experience in periodic face-to-face meetings moderated by a trainer. The theoretical part of the e-learning module summarizes the fundamentals of qualitative interview research and of intercultural business communication.

      Prerequisite for this development process to work are an appreciative attitude toward the foreign culture being studied and the intention or the will to improve on one’s intercultural competence (Thomas 2006).

      A small study group is given a research question that needs to be answered by doing qualitative interview research. Members of the group need to be of different national origin, ideally there are also members of cultures that are subject of the training. Preferably, this group is also not homogenous in gender, age and socio-economic status. These students need to have to be able to meet with other members of the team and with the trainer on a regular basis, e.g. every other week.

      The group is provided with data from qualitative interviews with business people from two or more different cultures in a digital format. The data may consist of videos, audio scripts of interviews and text of transcribed interviews. Group members may also be asked to conduct interviews themselves and provide the data for further analysis with their colleagues. Students watch, listen to and transcribe some interviews using a software package for transcription they are supplied with.

      Departing from their research question students proceed to analysing the content of these interviews in a procedure recommended by Mayring (Mayring 1983, 2000). That is, students define categories and illustrate the meaning of each category either by means of definitions or by examples, such as citations out of the interviews. Then the data is encoded using software for qualitative data analysis. These tasks will need discussion of the members of the group which may happen via the internet or on a face-to-face basis. On-line interaction in this process is made possible with software allowing for phone calls and for video conferences in the internet and is facilitated with software allowing for simultaneous viewing and editing of interviews in the encoding process.

      Parallel to evaluating the data students are asked to look for information pertaining to their research question in the field of intercultural business. For a start, basic literature is provided as a link collection and by means of documents to be downloaded by the students. 

      During the entire process students periodically meet in small groups to reflect on their experience with their own culture in interaction with the foreign culture they study. These meetings are moderated by a trained instructor or coach.

Conclusions

The blended learning approach described above includes intercultural confrontation (step 1) as there is a need to interact with people from cultures other than their own. It also provides intercultural direct and indirect experience (step 2) in the process of conducting interviews with people from different cultures and of discussing the data in conversations between people from different cultures, when reading and analysing transcripts of qualitative interviews with business people with intercultural business experience and while gaining knowledge on intercultural issues via information media.

      Intercultural learning (step 3) occurs when students become aware of and seek information on cultural differences and when they reflect on these differences in regular meetings with trainers, enabling them to develop new perspectives on their own and insights into the culture foreign that is foreign to them. Intercultural understanding (step 4) results from realizing the influence of culture in general and of one’s own culture on thinking, perception and behaviour and results in an increase in the number of alternative explanations for behaviour. Finally, the number of the behavioural alternatives the individual can chose from increases.

      According to Thomas these four steps to intercultural competence result in the ability to transfer knowledge about and understanding of one’s own and of a foreign culture to productive behaviour in a wide variety of real world situations.

Significance of Research

Intercultural competence has become a key competence, especially in the European Union. Increasingly, the significance of intercultural competence may be compared to the significance of the ability to work with personal computers.