International education
is big business and international students are a large minority on many of the
U.S.’s most reputable institutions. However, a persistent issue has been the
tendency for international and U.S. domestic students to socialize largely
within their own groups of co-nationals. Utilizing a paradigmatic case study
approach on a large public university, this dissertation consists of three
separate, but connected, studies that feature, respectively, (1) staff and
faculty intercultural learning and contact, (2) undergraduate student
experiences of intercultural contact and friendship, and (3) undergraduate
student assessments of campus spaces and programs for interacting across
culture. These studies integrated frameworks from intercultural competence,
intergroup contact theory, and conviviality. Findings throughout the case study
confirmed that friendship and contact between international and domestic U.S.
individuals was limited, even when the participants were motivated, experienced,
and demonstrated many aspects of intercultural competence. Further, the case
was characterized by administrative efforts to address the issue through formal
classes, workshops, and festivals, while generally overlooking the informal
spaces that students found most integral to their own experiences. These
findings underscore a disconnect between trying to “prepare” individuals for
contact rather than attempting to “create” the spaces and programs for such
contact to occur, i.e., a focus on the individual’s knowledge and skills rather
than the interpersonal and environmental conditions in contact. The findings
culminated in the proposed Programmatic Conviviality Model, qualities which are
theorized to support convivial intercultural contact. I argue that this model
and the realignment to a focus on intercultural contact as a goal, is necessary
for college campuses beyond the immediate case study and that this work is
timely as campuses move back to in-person engagement after almost two years of
COVID isolation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:purdue.edu/oai:figshare.com:article/17064680 |
| Date | 03 December 2022 |
| Creators | Leighton A Buntain (11741606) |
| Source Sets | Purdue University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis |
| Rights | CC BY 4.0 |
| Relation | https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/INTERCULTURAL_CONTACT_COMPETENCE_AND_CONVIVIALITY_A_PROPOSAL_FOR_CAMPUS_ENGAGEMENT_AND_BELONGING/17064680 |
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