Cultural Learning of Canadian Students Participating in the “Teaching Across Borders – National Volunteer Center Program”

The need to internationalize teacher education programs requires us to attempt to measure the development of intercultural competencies resulting from participation in international teaching programs. From 2007 through 2009, The National Volunteer Center (NVC) of Chile’s Ministry of Education partnered with the Teaching Across Borders (TAB) program of the University of Calgary to create an international teaching program through which student teachers from the University of Calgary completed a 10-week volunteer English teaching program in Chilean public schools. This study attempts of measure the effect of the TAB/NVC program on these students’ intercultural adaptability. During the 2009 TAB/NVC program all ten program participants were administered the Cross-Cultural Adaptability Inventory (CCAI) both before and after the TAB/NVC program. The results of the participants’ CCAI pre- and post-tests reveal that some subjects made significant progress towards improving their cross-cultural adaptability while others made very little progress. There may be various reasons for this discrepancy but one possibly important factor for those subjects that did not make significant progress towards increased cross-cultural adaptability was the lack of a comprehensive intercultural training and orientation at the start of the program. The research question for this paper is: How much development toward intercultural competence and intercultural adaptability is produced by Canadian students’ participation in the National Volunteer Center’s program