The Effect of Living Abroad on the Beginning of Inter-Cultural Competency of Pre-Service Teachers

In 2007, Sandell reviewed data from 31 undergraduate students who had studied abroad. Respondents were in a variety of academic majors and classifications. Subjects reported that their international experiences had an impact on their professional roles, their international perspectives, and their personal development. Oh and Nussli (2014) concluded that US pre-service teachers who study abroad enhanced their empathy for the experiences of English language learners in the US, revised their teaching strategies to foster student success, and became committed to transferring insights to their US classrooms. Colleges of education may try to enhance cultural competency of their pre-service teachers by facilitating study abroad. However, international studies require investments from the individual students and their families, as well as their sponsoring universities. To assess the outcomes of such investments, this project addressed the starting point of intercultural competency of the pre-service teachers and the relationship with their previous experiences of living abroad. After approval by Institutional Review Board, researchers used archived data collected between 2011 and 2017. Subjects were undergraduate students, generally between 18 and 30 years old, with varied academic majors, primarily in elementary education, but also in special education or secondary education, as well as a variety of other academic majors. This study used the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) (Hammer, Bennett and Wiseman, 2003), which measures group intercultural sensitivity and is based on Bennett\u27s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (Bennett, 1986)