Preparing Professionals for Working in Multicultural and Democratic Europe: Two Pedagogical Programs – Their Assessment and Collaborations

There has been continuous debate concerning policies and practices regarding intercultural education in the multicultural Europe and intercultural competence has become one of the crucial issues today. There is an urgent need to educate students about the limitations of using their own cultural frame to interpret and evaluate people belonging to a different cultural background. For quite long intercultural communication courses were typically offered for students in Education, International Relations, Business, and a like programs, while this subject was out of scope until the last few years in other disciplines. However, recent social and political changes are forcing program developers to work on a general intercultural preparation of professionals from all backgrounds. There is an educational need to focus on how to prepare interculturally competent students, to act in a drastically changing society as true global citizens, who have a motivation for civic engagement and contribute to their community. More than that, according to the new framework by the Council of Europe, there is a political need for the new generation of young people to get involved with the democratic society in an active way (Council of Europe, 2016). This paper presentstwo similar structures for a long-term intercultural program, where civic mindedness receives an important scope (Guntersdorfer and Golubeva, 2017). These programs can be offered to students from all disciplines in higher education. Both educational efforts aim to broaden knowledge of the meaning of culture by providing students with theories from linguistics, psychology, sociology, ethnology, and political science. Although pedagogical set-up slightly ISSN 1392-0340 E-ISSN 2029-0551 Pedagogika / Pedagogy 2017, t. 128, Nr. 4, p. 39–54 / Vol. 128, No. 4, pp. 39–54, 2017 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15823/p.2017.53 40 ISSN 1392-0340 E-ISSN 2029-0551 Pedagogika / 2017, t. 128, Nr. 4 differ, there is a strong motivation for cooperation. The following article provides a description of the theoretical and pedagogical concepts of these two programs, draws on research plans and assessment methods, and lays down the groundwork for a collaboration.

Globalization and the idea of internationalization lead university officials to actively respond to the question: how do we raise young people to become motivated, civic-minded graduates, who understand the meaning of cultural and global issues?And more to the point: how can our students cope and act appropriately in multicultural settings and engage in their communities?
'Global citizenship' has been more than an elegant expression in postsecondary education during the past decades; there are a plethora of innovative exchange and study abroad programs, and universities invest tremendous energy in developing internationalization strategies and partnerships across the globe.Universities in Germany and Hungary follow the trend where the focus of internationalization has reached the level of constructing new curricula for students.In Germany, several universities (e.g. in Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart Bonn, and Regensburg) established so-called intercultural communication certificate programs (in German, Zusatzstudium) and these programs have a common denominator: they serve as an encouragement for students to become more mobile and to explore other cultures.To receive a certificate diploma, students have to finish some modules on higher language proficiency, studying or working abroad, service in programs for international students, or they have to take courses in sociology and some related fields, e.g.internationalization, global/socio-political issues, etc.The high number of students in these programs was an indicator for constructing a program that can go beyond the mere acknowledgement and recognition of international and global issues.
Two major changes have given scholars further stimulation for curricula development.First, there is drastic transition in European societies due to the current refugee crisis, which demands the responsibility of educators to readjust their curricula, and second, this socio-political situation was not even predictable ten years ago when the humanities went through a philosophical/conceptual shift of "intercultural turn", as Georg Stenger, the Viennese philosopher, prophesied in 2006.Stenger believed there is a new age of "intercultural reasoning" emerging, which meant that understanding and recognition both hold their relevance and constantly balance each other out; they base their existence on ISSN 1392-0340 E-ISSN 2029-0551 Pedagogika / 2017, t. 128, Nr. 4 "experience", constantly modifying and relativizing it1 (Stenger 2006;pp. 45-46).This philosophy implies that the value of international experience and global actions are only visible and palpable when based upon recognition and a deep understanding.Ten years later, this notion was translated by scholars in intercultural communication as: "intercultural competence would be a prerequisite for being a global or intercultural citizen <...>" (Golubeva, Wagner, & Yakimowski, 2016, p. 10).Byram et al. (Byram, Golubeva, Han, & Wagner, 2016), referring to Barnett's (1997) seminal work on criticality, expresses the necessity for developing students' critical thinking and reflective skills.The authors of the book (Byram et al., 2016) explain and demonstrate, using concrete examples of telecollaborative projects, how intercultural citizenship education can be realised through students´ actions in an international group.'Action in the world', which can also be expressed as "civic mindedness", is one of the basic attitudes needed in democratic society (of Europe) according to the recently developed educational framework by the Council of Europe (2016).The willingness to put effort into involvements with the micro-level of community, or on a macro-level of a democratic society, is indeed a requisite for being an active global/intercultural citizen when people intend to live in a democratic society.(Note: this might not be the case in intercultural education in non-democratic, or non-western political settings.Therefore, we are not indoctrinating the implementation of our programs.It would be scientifically interesting to prove the relevance of the idea of civic mindedness in non-democratic cultures.)By establishing the collaboration described in the following paper, it was a clear for us scholars that our students will sign up for intercultural programs for very different reasons, due to the socio-political differences in our countries.Therefore, our cooperation will need a careful scientific grounding and pedagogical preparation.First, our teaching objectives need to be elaborated and then we can proceed with general guidelines and specific shared exercises.

Intercultural trainings vs. long-term and systematic intercultural programs
In an endeavor to help students and staff at universities assimilate within international settings, intercultural trainings, or "cross-cultural trainings", defined by Scullion and Collings (2006) as "any formalized intervention designed to increase the knowledge and skills of international assignees to live and work effectively in an unfamiliar environ- ment", are offered as a component of the internalization and leadership training venture.Most times these short workshops are culture-specific trainings, which are offered as preparation for a planned study abroad leave (Scullion & Collings, 2006, p. 118).There are measurable positive effects and benefits of this setting, but, as proven by research, we can not oversee the limits and disadvantages of such short-term study sessions (Mietusch, 2010).These workshops focus on culture-specific knowledge and give a short glimpse about cultural misunderstandings.Then they try to satisfy the unrealistic expectations of the participants with their inevitable generalizations.This can often end with disappointment when the acquired insufficient knowledge meets real-life situations (Black & Gregersen, 1991).There is also a danger of short intercultural trainings leading to mental short-cuts (such as generalizations and essentialization of cultures) through limited and ambiguous information about cultural groups, or leading to an overrated view on national cultures (Caliguri, Phillips, Lazarova, Tarique, & Bürgi, 2001).An effective intercultural training needs a long-term set-up, and in universities and other postsecondary institutions it should involve systematic coursework following the standard terms and regulations of the academic organization.For administrative purposes the courses can be built into modules building a separate study program.In order to motivate students to stay on for a longer period of time (longer than a semester) there must be an official degree that students can pursue.Therefore, we decided to call it a "certificate", following the US-American example of short term academic programs.
On the pragmatic side, an intercultural competence certificate is a preparation of students for the job market.In the field of organizational psychology, the importance of the positive effects of diversity at the workplace and the prevention of negative outcomes of stereotype threats has been long recognized (Casad & Byrant, 2016), but there are even more indications for the need of such programs.With the soaring demands of the refugee situation in Europe, intercultural competence has become one of the crucial skills.Never before has it seemed more urgent to educate students about the limitations of their own cultural frame when communicating face-to-face with people from other cultures.Social workers, psychologists, doctors, educators, etc. dealing with refugees nowadays need more than an ideology of cosmopolitanism and/or language knowledge.In an intercultural setting there is a "penetration that occurs between individuals at the interpersonal level as people from different backgrounds come together to collaborate in the pursuit of common goals" (Cushner, 2015, p. 203).According to Deardorff's summary of the western scholarship: intercultural competence is tied to empathy, perspective taking, and adaptability, it is directly connected to emotions -touching the conceptualization of identity (2009, pp. 241-246).It is necessary to learn to employ strategic skills in order to read cultural values and norms behind the objects of a particular culture (Roth, 2004, p. 123).Cushner (2015, pp. 215-216) further asserts that the development of these skills of intercultural competence need "thoughtful reflection" and "cultural mentors".However, is intercultural competence enough for our society when it comes to communicating with people belonging to a different culture?Especially when the socio-political situation of Europe requires more engagement of its citizens?These questions cannot be answered with a simple 'yes'.To escalate intercultural competence into action (and action research), civic engagement and understanding of global issues become highly important; there is a need to focus on how to prepare students to act and cope in an appropriate manner, and maintain their self-confidence in drastically ambiguous life and work-situations.

Ludwig-Maximilians Universität: Intercultural Communication Certificate Program
The sociocultural indications provided the motivation for outlining our teaching objectives of the Certificate Program for Intercultural Competence in the study abroad program at the Junior Year in Munich Program (JYM), Ludwig-Maximilians Universität in Munich (LMU Munich) in academic year 2014/20152 , and a year later with the Institut für Interkulturelle Kommunikation at LMU Munich3 .The main goal for the development of both programs was to focus on the intensive reflections of our students.In order to ignite the desired deep self-analysis, students need a theoretical scientific background paired with a sufficient amount of time and a range of reflection exercises.(Guntersdorfer & Golubeva, 2017).
The Certificate Program for Study Abroad is scheduled for two semesters.While students are spending two semesters at LMU Munich taking courses for their degree in the United States, they enroll in the introduction and theory lectures provided by the Institut für Interkulturelle Kommunikation in each semester.The weekly lectures discuss some of the most recent theoretical models on: communication in general, ethnology, psychology, the definitions of the broader meaning of culture, and several explanations on intercultural competence.The intensive reflection seminar is also scheduled two days after the lecture every week.For this intensive two-hour long course students have to prepare according to the topic of the lecture and are required to complete different writing and speaking assignments on their intercultural encounters in Germany.Since students are studying different disciplines, the classroom itself is a place of diversity, where the different perspectives on the same issue becomes palpable.Their task is to find every-day situations that fit the theory learned in the lecture.To assure that students have time for proper reflection after the lecture, and can come up with examples from their daily life and work, a certain amount of time has to pass.Therefore, a time-gap of one or two days for reflection and notes is scheduled.Special attention is given to the topic of identity, and the understanding of collective identity to bring students close to the meaning of universalism and ethnocentrism.Students reflect on these issues by finding examples from their own surroundings.In the focus of the question are their own family and friends, their observations on the street, at work, and in their fields of study.It is an important task in the seminar to analyse their critical incidents from many different angles where they experienced culture related difficulties.As the program proceeds, these exercises become more and more multi-faceted and students can start to play with the use of different theories on critical incidents.
Conscious reflections give the study abroad experience a different meaning.Students are more aware of their development (or stagnation) in their thinking.With the proceeding seminars they recognize cultural patterns, personal reaction forms, and can track their emotions, which are involved during the intercultural encounters.From the first year on, we worked on the assessment of the outcome of the program, but at the beginning, our research was only based on students' essays.The idea was to pinpoint some tendencies and theories for a research plan.Our first run reassured us in our first hypotheses: although self-centred analyses sometimes differ from an outsider's point of view, approximately 30% of students can reach a higher stage on the Bennett's developmental scale.In their essay on their path toward a more ethnorelative thinking, 76% of students identified problems with Bennet´s scale.This notion is in accordance with scholars in the field of intercultural communications, who recommend a more well-rounded assessment (Fantini, 2009;Deardorff, 2009 and2015;Cushner, 2015).Our aim is not only to evaluate our educational objectives and enrich our teaching, but to provide more insights into the outcome of this program in general.During the three years of the study abroad program our research group has already worked out a comparative assessment by using qualitative and quantitative methods.In the upcoming three years the intercultural competence of the students will be observed and analyzed by using several different quantitative scales.Our inquiries will be the base of a longitudinal study in the upcoming five to ten years.
After a three-year pilot phase of the certificate program in study abroad, the Institute für Interkulturelle Kommunikation at the LMU-Munich started a university-wide Certificate Program for Intercultural Competence in academic year 2016/2017.The program is open to all Masters students from all university disciplines of LMU-Munich.The initial interest of students was very high and within a month, student application increased 25% without additional advertisement.There are currently students from Economics, Psychology, Physics, Public Health, Linguistics, German as a Foreign Language, among others.Before starting the program, we conducted a "Pre-Program" survey with a self-tailored assessment method.The questions targeted our students´ intercultural competence, but the focus was on their motivation for signing up regarding their plans in the future.Most students indicated that they needed this program for their job in international companies, but 30-40% of the students have also mentioned that they signed up for it due to their own personal situation.According to the survey, 80% of the students grew up in Germany and 66% of them have no migration background among their parents and grandparents.This was a surprising fact since we anticipated more "international" students with an migrational family system.Another fact was, that several students mentioned that they are hoping for scientific explanations for current political situations, especially students with a journalism or political science major.Therefore, similar to the Study Abroad Program Certificate, the Intercultural Competence Program is based on the scientific theories and models in the university lectures.
The weekly seminars accompanying the lecture are conducted in English, which allow non-native German speakers to contribute in the discussions and give non-native English speakers the opportunity to practice their language knowledge.With this pedagogical setting the university follows its mission of internationalization and we can open up the groups for international collaborations.After completing the two semesters, students are required to write a 30 page qualifying paper which should be a comprehensive interpretation and analysis of an intercultural situation that occurred in the students' everyday life -preferably related to their field of study.
According to the teaching philosophy of the program in Munich, theory and practice are equally important for the development of intercultural competence, and for the combination of them self-reflections seem to provide a platform.Our teaching objectives are to provide a broader knowledge of culture and communication according to different disciplines to educate students about different cultural frames, and to develop their own way to withhold judgments and resolve culture-related conflicts.The outcome of the first year revealed -according to the feedback of our students -a need to change our teaching goals by implementing more theories on community building and on how to exercise civic mindedness and global citizenship.
Assessment tools, such as measuring tools of intercultural competence, seemed efficient at the beginning, but after the first year of the pilot program, our former research plan has shifted after further observations in the classroom.The assessment of intercultural knowledge, skills, and attitudes of our students has increasingly become the focus of our investigations, according to our observation, as the self-reflection tools show only a momentary/situational inner perspective of our students.The homework of the same students have exposed irregularities and discrepancies several times.A deeper analysis is needed to track students' thinking on this issue, where external observations can supplement the already existing qualitative and quantitative methods.To put it bluntly, we quote from the popular book by Paul Bloom, where he argues against empathy and the usefulness of quantitative tests: "Administering questionnaires is easier than other methods, but it has its problems.For one, it's hard to tell whether you are measuring actual <…> [intercultural competence] as opposed to how much people see themselves or want others to see them as <…> [interculturally competent].<…> Some people who aren't actually <…> [interculturally competent] might believe they are or want others to believe they are and answer accordingly" (Bloom, 2016, p. 78).Therefore, our plan is to develop a more concise research combining qualitative and quantitative methods for the upcoming year, which will include tools for measuring the motivation for civic engagement, such as the Civic-Minded Graduate (CMG), among our students (Steinberg, Hatcher, & Bringle, 2011).

University of Pannonia: Intercultural Communication for International Mobility course
At the University of Pannonia (UP) in Veszprém, internationalization is measured mainly by numbers of inbound and outbound mobility students.In the academic year 2015/2016 a special course was introduced for both groups of mobility students (see more about it in Golubeva, 2017).Incoming international students are offered the Intercultural Communication for International Mobility course in English; and, the Hungarian language version of this course is offered for Hungarian students going on a study abroad program.In both courses, the focus is on reflecting skills and on developing critical understanding of the world.Until now these two groups have studied separately because these courses have slightly different purposes.The course for incoming international students is focused on preparing them for living abroad and studying in the context of Hungarian Higher Education.And, the main purpose of the course for Hungarian students is to motivate them to participate in study abroad programs and to prepare for challenging situations occurring in a different culture.However, in the future we plan to "mix" the groups which -we believe -will foster students' self-reflective awareness.
The learning goals and outcomes for this course were adapted from the IEREST project (IEREST 2015, pp. 15-16) -a set of modules for intercultural education of Erasmus mobility students and their teachers -as follows: Table 1 Learning objectives and outcomes (from IEREST, 2015, pp. 15-16) Learning objectives Learning outcomes [1] Reflect on each person's uniqueness but also similarities.
Recognize and explain the variety and complexity that exist among individuals in social groups.
[ Recognize when misunderstandings may be the result of stereotyping, ethnocentrism, essentializing and prejudice.
[8] Reflect on some of the myths about study abroad and interculturality (interaction, language learning, identity, culture, etc.) in order to (re)frame expectations about the mobility period.
Set realistic objectives in relation to intercultural encounters, including language and communication expectations, for their stay abroad.
The first three objectives are very closely related to Byram's definition of intercultural communicative competence (1997), while the last one is the most specific in the context of preparing students for mobility/staying abroad.
Byram's concept of intercultural communicative competence viewed as a combination of five components, namely: (1) attitudes, (2) knowledge, (3) skills of interpreting and relating, (4) skills of discovery and interaction, and (5) critical cultural awareness/ political education, serves as the basis for the theoretical framework.The other two important pillars of the course philosophy are Holliday's (2011) non-essentialist approach and Barnett's (1997) idea of criticality.
During teaching, the focus is made on the elements highlighted in Deardorff's (2006Deardorff's ( , 2009) ) Pyramid Model of Intercultural Competence: -deep understanding of culture; -cultural self-awareness; -an ethno relative view.The innovativeness of teaching methods and techniques lies in an integrative approach which combines the cognitive style approach (see Soboleva & Obdalova, 2014) and Kolb's experiential learning (1984).The latter proved extremely effective in the context of intercultural preparation of mobility students (Beaven & Golubeva, 2016;Cebron, Golubeva, & Osborne, 2015).Following the idea of activities developed and piloted in the frame of the IEREST project (2015), exercises are built according to Kolb's circle, i.e. concrete experience -reflective observation -abstract conceptualization -active experimentation.The idea of combining the experiential learning with the cognitive style approach was implemented to enhance students' cognitive readiness for intercultural encounters through developing their cognitive strategies such as analysis, synthesis, comparison, identification, classification, ranging, generalization, abstraction, hypothesis, and mapping.
Likewise, in the Intercultural Communication Certificate Program at LMU, the students at the University of Pannonia are exposed to the basic concepts of intercultural commu-nication, with special emphasis on cultural differences and similarities, stereotypes and prejudices, and culture shock (see Golubeva, 2017) during the course.Increased emphasis is placed on challenges and the importance of mobility in the today's globalized world, which follows from the primary goal of the course (see objective 8 in table 1).Students reflect on their experiences of studying in a different higher education context; language/ communication problems in social contacts with locals; and, problems of sharing housing with other international students.In the case of the latter topic, the issues which provoke the most discussions are disorderly conduct; noise; disregard of silent hours, untidy use of kitchen, selfish use of other facilities, which directly affects not only students' everyday life quality, but their academic progress as well (see Golubeva, 2017).Beyond the academic context, we also discuss the emotional dimension of living abroad.In order to help students to cope with their emotional discomfort and/or frustration, we have found it useful to discuss their expectations for their mobility experience.
To develop students' intercultural competence, similarly to the Program at LMU, we used various techniques such as cultural incident, noticing, predicting, observing, comparing, reflecting, role playing, and total physical response, etc.As reported in Golubeva (2017, pp. 188-189), 82% of students from 2015/2016 course preferred to listen to a teacher's personal experiences of intercultural encounters, and 50% -to engage in interactive exercises.As the least effective methods, these students mentioned lectures on intercultural communication theory (48%), analysis of case studies (46%), and short students' presentations (44%) (ibid.).
For assessing students' intercultural development three methods are applied, namely: 1.A questionnaire developed by the teacher, which students have to fill-in before and after the course; 2. A self-assessment tool adapted from INCA (2004); and, 3. The Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters (Byram, Barrett, Ipgrave, Jackson, & Méndez García, 2009).The first method is applied to learn more about students' attitudes, values, etc., and whether they changed.
The self-assessment tool adapted from the Assessee version of INCA Framework (INCA, 2004) helps to identify students' level of intercultural communicative competence.Students are invited to choose among three levels developed by INCA project (INCA, 2004, p. 1).For example, among those who were enrolled in this course in academic year 2015/2016, after the course, 46% of students claimed that they have reached the highest level in comparison to only 8% of students who described themselves as interculturally competent before the course (Golubeva, 2017, p. 189).
At the end of the course, students also have to submit a reflective writing assignment (Byram et al., 2009), in which they are supposed to reflect critically on their intercultural experiences with special attention to adjustment in both verbal and non-verbal communication (Byram et al., 2009, p. 14).

Intercultural competence for Global and Democratic Citizenship?
The first feedback surveys from students in the Intercultural Communication Certificate Program, besides being absolutely positive, show something striking: the students expressed willingness to be engaged in other international programs or some intercultural civic institutions.Comments in this direction came in the "additional comments and suggestions" section of the survey, without even drawing the attention of the students into that direction.More than two-third of the students mentioned that they would like to expand the program with some international cooperation or with volunteering in intercultural institutions.In an additional survey 83% of the participating students indicated that they would like to collaborate with international peers from a similar program.These comments show evidence that dealing with the issues of intercultural competence does not only motivate students to work on their personal development, but motivates them to go one step further and expand their learning activities beyond the classroom to collaborations at international levels (Guntersdorfer & Golubeva, 2017).
Similarly, at UP, students of Intercultural Communication for International Mobility courses mentioned in their evaluation -among other issues -that they would like to have more interaction; the focus should be shifted to practice of intercultural communication; and, "mixing" the groups can enhance the exchange of insights among the students (see for more Golubeva, 2017, p. 190).
Although students can find enough opportunities to exercise their global/intercultural citizenship through engagement in civic programs, we believe that a regular meaningful exchange of communication with students from a different cultural and political background would benefit by the negotiations of cultural misunderstandings and it would build empathy toward people with a different mindset.We do not argue that these thoughts are hypothesis and the real effect(s) of participation in such programs should be proven scientifically.Nevertheless, the idea of a collaboration between universities seem to be a great opportunity for juxtaposition for our students (with the hope of paying attention to avoiding essentialization and generalisations) while providing us with knowledge about the development of intercultural competence (Byram et al., 2016, XXV).

Collaboration between the two programs as a pedagogical strategy
Our idea to collaborate has arisen from the assumption that education in general, and intercultural education in particular, cannot be just a simple act of knowledge transfer, it must be an act of collaboration and exchange of ideas (Guntersdorfer & Golubeva, 2017).For our planned cooperation we followed some practical guidelines (see Guntersdorfer & Golubeva, 2017): • The higher education institution should belong to a different language (and political) culture; • It should be a program where there is course work on intercultural reflections; • The scholar(s) leading the cooperation must be familiar with the meaning and development of intercultural competence; • They must have experience with intercultural settings so that they can serve as a cultural mentor to the students.• A possibility of visiting each other's institution would also benefit the cooperation and provide the possibility of developing coursework with co-teaching.Therefore the institutions should be either somewhat close geographically to allow an easier organization of meet-ups between both the student groups and the scholars, or the cooperation should be organised in the frame of a project that funds travelling expenses.
The cooperation between the University of Pannonia in Veszprém and the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich brings together desiderates of program development on both sides (Guntersdorfer & Golubeva, 2017).The two programs have considerable similarities due to the developers' agreement on conceptual/theoretical framework and methodology, and hold a strong potential for mutual benefit and enrichment.Students in the certificate program will get a chance to work on their intercultural negotiation skills by trying out their inquired theoretical knowledge and skills.As the students would be in the same age, it is our anticipation that the content of the discussions will be somewhat matching.As these countries follow a different political course regarding the current migrant crisis in Europe, the communication between students will help them to understand the meaning of different historical frames and their influence on current values and decision making procedures in politics.
The final and the most important aim of this cooperation is to teach students to think critically, and to motivate them to take action in their broader communities, i.e. act as active global/intercultural citizens.There are cautious teaching efforts needed to emphasize the meaning of the existing (national, regional, temporary, subcultural etc.) identities and values.The hope is to achieve a notion by the students, that cooperation can be successful even with a base of conflicting values, and there is still a possibility to build a community of collaborative action when people have different communication forms and when harmonious solutions and conformity are not given to start with (Byram et al., 2016, XXV).