Can Arts-based Training Enhance Cultural Competence?

1. Can Arts-based Training Enhance Cultural Competence? Prof Helen Higson, Dr Kai Liu 17th June 2011

2. Introduction Intercultural training – an overlooked area in business education - High percentage of International Students - “Educating Global Leaders” Intercultural training in corporate sector - Intercultural training itself become a "growing branch of the coaching and consulting industries" (Szkudlarek 2009) - There is call for “teaching to move away from focusing teaching exclusively on country-specific, predominantly cognitive cultural and linguistic knowledge, toward general cultural sensitivity skills, or “cultural intelligence,” which enables managers to adapt swiftly to new cultural situations" (Blasco 2009: 13)

3. Literature Review • Intercultural training in learning context • - The effectiveness of an individual to work across cultural boundaries increases with the number of their international/intercultural experiences (Herzfeldt 2007) • - It is important to challenge the “deficit” model of intercultural training where the UK approach is seen as the best (Ippolito 2007) • - Building training on individual stories rather than stereotypes (Welikala and Watkins 2008) • Intercultural training in corporate context • - Few intercultural training programmes are skill-based; instead, they are focused on building awareness of the expatriate’s own culture and the culture of the host country (Littrell and Salas 2005) • - Those conventional methods that rely on country-specific knowledge often prove inadequate given the nature of increasingly complicated cultural environments and assignments (Earley and Peterson 2004)

4. Literature Review (contd.) • Arts-based methods for management and leadership development • - Four distinctive processes (skill transfer, projective technique, Illustration of essence and making ) of arts-based methods (Taylor and Ladkin 2009) • - Aesthetic forms have an important role to play in helping to make tacit knowledge of “invisible” concepts, such as “culture” visible (Linstead 2006) • - Theory of the aesthetics of leadership storytelling (Taylor, Fisher, and Dufresne 2002) • - Participating in the arts gives adults experiences, contexts and tools to help them re-experience, revise and reconceptualise multicultural diversity in their lives and communities.’ (Wesley 2007: 13)

5. Using Arts-based methods for Intercultural training • Practising arts can make people communicate deeply even without speak their own language, practising arts together can have a harmonising effects for all the participants, thus allow them to seek common grounds in their communicative process. • It is fun! using arts -based methods often involve physical activities (e.g. theatre practice and dancing) which make the whole process an interesting and entertaining experiences. • It plays a crucial role of "ice breaking" and building rapport among participants. Those skills are probably the most important skills to be acquired to deal with intercultural encounters. • It provides a natural setting (non-academic environment) and level-playing field for home and international students to interact, thus build confidence and encourage reflections among participants.

6. Research Design • Sample • - Undergraduate students in 2009 and 2010 • - Pre-training (N=202) and Post-training (N=84) • Pre-training survey and post-training survey • - Cultural Intelligence (CQ) can be defined as an individual’s capability to deal effective in situations characterised by cultural diversity (Earley and Ang 2003) • - Four factors and 20 items (metacognitive, cognitive, motivational, behavioural)

7. Descriptive Data Analysis (1) Table 1a. Means and Standard Deviations of Measures at Pre-training and Post-training

8. Descriptive Data Analysis (2) Table 1a. Means and Standard Deviations of Measures at Pre-training and Post-training (contd)

9. Descriptive Data Analysis (3) Table 1b. Means/Standard Deviations of Measures at Pre-training and Post-training (composite score)

10. Descriptive Data Analysis (4) Figure 2: Four factor CQ of Home/EU and International students in pre-training and post-training settings

11. Descriptive Data Analysis (5) Figure 3: Four factor CQ of English as first Language in pre-training and post-training settings

12. Descriptive Data Analysis (6) Figure 2: Four factor CQ of students who speak only one language (No) or more than one (Yes) in pre-training and post-training settings

13. Qualitative Analysis What are you expecting to get from intercultural training? “I hope to learn more about different cultures and ways that make it easier to interact with people from a different cultural background” “I want to develop skills in interacting better when (I) am in a multicultural environment” Were Expectations met? “It was quite different to my original expectations; however, it did address the issue of how different people view the same situation in a different manner” “I came out with a better understanding of group work involving team members whose first language was not English”

14. Conclusion • Arts-based methods prove to be an effective way to deliver intercultural training. • The training is particularly beneficial for improving motivational and behavioural factors. • The training works better for Home/EU students than international students.