Measuring intercultural competence
The industry’s gold standard for measuring intercultural competence is the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), which is based on Bennett’s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (Hammer & Bennett, 2009). The IDI is a 50-item questionnaire in which respondents describe their intercultural experiences in terms of
- their cross-cultural goals
- the challenges they face in navigating cultural differences
- critical (intercultural) incidents they encounter around cultural differences during their study abroad trip
- ways they navigate those cultural differences (p. 117)
The respondents’ descriptions of their intercultural experiences allow evaluators to determine where they are situated along the Intercultural Development Continuum (IDC). The IDC ranges from the monocultural mindsets of denial and polarization all the way through to the intercultural mindsets of acceptance and adaptation. Respondents classified as having an intercultural mindset are those who are best able to shift between cultural perspectives and bridge understandings between different cultural groups.
Of course, not every teacher is going to pay to test students using the IDI both before and after a trip in order to measure progress. So, until a free version is available (come on, Hammer and Bennett!), we have to rely on what’s available on the Internet or develop our own tools. As presented in the section on setting objectives for study abroad, intercultural competency consists of knowledge, attitudes, and critical thinking skills. Knowledge about another culture is generally quite easy to test. Things like historical events and important figures and places can all be evaluated with an easy-to-correct multiple-choice quiz. Getting at attitudes and critical thinking can be more difficult, especially when students are at different levels.
If you’ve been doing regular debriefings with your students throughout the trip (see section on experiential teaching), you’ll have already discussed a number of critical cultural incidents together. In fact, you may have even role played them or invited locals to help deconstruct events and present alternative perspectives. Keeping a list of these events and asking students to write about how their perspectives have changed can be a valuable tool in understanding their attitudes and their critical cultural thinking.