Start Date

7-6-2013 3:45 PM

End Date

7-6-2013 4:55 PM

Description

The IC is an independent, non-profit organization with the objective of promoting intercultural exchange around the world through a commitment to service-learning and community engagement. From the general observation of the fast development of intercultural sensitivity of the students participating in our service-learning program, in 2004 the IC faculty designed an instructional approach called Full-immersion: Culture, Content, Service (FICCS) (Bracci & Filippone 2009). In 2008 the IC faculty designed the Reflective Intercultural Assessment Model (RICA) (Biagi et al. 2012) to measure the unique competence resulting from the use of the FICCS approach: Reflective Intercultural Competence, or RIC (idem).

RIC is a competence gained through a structured and guided reflection process; it implies a conscious elaboration of intercultural encounters thus allowing a full engagement of the student.

Reflection is a step that is necessary in developing an intercultural sensitivity and the reflective writing course provides the means for students to understand and slowly absorb the second culture (C2) in a deep and lasting way through continuous observation, comparison and reflection.

In the reflective writing course students must submit weekly entries (concerning both their studies and their overall experience) and share them with their peers during reflective writing sessions. These sessions represent a moment when all intercultural encounters come to light with the aim of transforming the clash with a second culture into a more complicated but richer perspective. The goal is to increase a reflective consciousness that leads to a deeper engagement and understanding of the host community. This process is monitored through the RICA model. The workshop we propose has the ambition of actively involving the audience as RICA practitioners who will evaluate the development of students’ RIC using samples of students’ journals and assign a level to given entries.

The core levels of the RICA model are:

1) Pre-contact

2) Contact

3) Culture Shock

4) Superficial Understanding

5) Deep understanding

6) Social Acting

Recommended Citation

Bracci, L., & Bella Owona, J. M. (2013, June). The practice of reflection as a mean to develop reflective intercultural competence and its assessment through the RICA model. Paper presented at the 4th Asia-Pacific Regional Conference on Service-Learning: Service-Learning as a Bridge from Local to Global: Connected world, Connected future, Hong Kong and Guangzhou, China.

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Jun 7th, 3:45 PM Jun 7th, 4:55 PM

The practice of reflection as a mean to develop reflective intercultural competence and its assessment through the RICA model

The IC is an independent, non-profit organization with the objective of promoting intercultural exchange around the world through a commitment to service-learning and community engagement. From the general observation of the fast development of intercultural sensitivity of the students participating in our service-learning program, in 2004 the IC faculty designed an instructional approach called Full-immersion: Culture, Content, Service (FICCS) (Bracci & Filippone 2009). In 2008 the IC faculty designed the Reflective Intercultural Assessment Model (RICA) (Biagi et al. 2012) to measure the unique competence resulting from the use of the FICCS approach: Reflective Intercultural Competence, or RIC (idem).

RIC is a competence gained through a structured and guided reflection process; it implies a conscious elaboration of intercultural encounters thus allowing a full engagement of the student.

Reflection is a step that is necessary in developing an intercultural sensitivity and the reflective writing course provides the means for students to understand and slowly absorb the second culture (C2) in a deep and lasting way through continuous observation, comparison and reflection.

In the reflective writing course students must submit weekly entries (concerning both their studies and their overall experience) and share them with their peers during reflective writing sessions. These sessions represent a moment when all intercultural encounters come to light with the aim of transforming the clash with a second culture into a more complicated but richer perspective. The goal is to increase a reflective consciousness that leads to a deeper engagement and understanding of the host community. This process is monitored through the RICA model. The workshop we propose has the ambition of actively involving the audience as RICA practitioners who will evaluate the development of students’ RIC using samples of students’ journals and assign a level to given entries.

The core levels of the RICA model are:

1) Pre-contact

2) Contact

3) Culture Shock

4) Superficial Understanding

5) Deep understanding

6) Social Acting