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Expanding the Narrative of Intercultural Competence:A Study of Library Faculty and Staff

Nastasha E. Johnson*

Libraries are in integral part of every higher education institution domestically and abroad. They meet the needs of residential and virtual students and faculty in every way appropriate: course support, technological support, and even entertainment and social needs. But there is little to no research done on the intercultural adeptness of the library faculty and staff who serve and teach. Some research exists regarding preparing future librarians within the LIS curriculum (citation), but even that is limited in perspective of the day to day realities of the job. Conversations about inclusion and diversity have been limited largely to the attracting of an ethnically represen-tative workforce(citation). Furthermore, little to no research has been done to extend the conversation about the continued training and development of library faculty and staff in an increasingly diverse workplace.

Intercultural competence is the “ability to develop targeted knowledge, skills, and attitudes that lead to vis-ible behavior and communication that are both effective and appropriate in intercultural interactions”. In other words, intercultural competence is the deliberate awareness and engagement with people who are different and behaving in manner conducive to the awareness and appreciation of the nuances of other cultures. Intercultural competence is reflected in knowledge, skills, and attitudes (Deardorff 2006) Knowledge is the specific informa-tion about one’s own culture and others, while attitude is the sentiment of the value and understanding, while skills are the behaviors and actions of dealing with other cultures. Because of the attitude, knowledge, and behav-ior that accompanies intercultural competence, hiring managers and coworkers cannot assume the intercultural awareness of library faculty and staff. Intercultural behavior can be observed but the attitudes and knowledge cannot be easily observed in the same way. That said, attitudes and knowledge effect behavior. The attitudes and knowledge of library faculty and staff effect the behavior and actions of library faculty and staff. Therefore, it is incumbent of library administrators and programming officers to assure all users of consideration by those who build collections and programs, but also how library workers interact with each other.

Intercultural competence does not happen as a one-shot or in a vacuum. Intercultural competence is a process that must be continuously addressed as other lifelong learning goals. Milton Bennett proposed that intercultural competence can be assessed along a continuum called the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (Bennett 1986). The model continuum describes intercultural competence along a shifting mindset paradigm from singular cultural perspectives to more intercultural and global perspectives.

The first stage is the Denial Stage where persons are frankly disinterested in the other cultures and may even deny the notion of what an “other” culture is a represents. People who operate in the denial mindset have limited exposure to other cultures and use broad generalizations when attempting to define or understand other cultures. Polarization is the second stage of the paradigm shift and represents the mindset of “us” versus “them”, with “us” being dominant and defensive. Reverse polarization, opposed to Defense Polarization, believes that other cultures are superior than theirs. Polarization mindset tends idealize a particular culture over another

* Nastasha E. Johnson, Assistant Professor of Library Science, Purdue University, nejohnson@purdue.edu

culture. The third stage of the continuum is minimization. Minimization tends to be most common of inter-cultural stages, because it minimizes differences between cultures. Common phrases may be “we all bleed the same” or “we are all human and have the same opportunities”. Minimization is seen as a transitional mindset because a single view of culture to a more intercultural or multi-cultural worldview. The fourth and fifth stages of continuum are Acceptance and Adaptation, respectively. Both stages are mindful of the differences of other cultures and appreciative of the nuances of culture. The major difference is that in the Adaptation stage, people may begin to accommodate the nuances of others’ culture and adapt their behaviors. Those in the Acceptance stage may be more reflective and curious on how to continuing to act on what they have come to learn about culture (Bennett 1986).

Mitchell Hammer (2011) developed an inventory entitled the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) that assess the stage of intercultural competence. The questionnaire consists of 50 statistical validated questions that ask respondents about their intercultural understanding, goals, challenges, and cultural past. The test has been administered and translated across the world, in various contexts, including educational and corporate contexts. A unique feature of the IDI is that respondents are presented with an intercultural growth plan as a part of the results debriefing. That is, respondents are encouraged to develop with a list of tips and subjects that they could explore on their own to develop interculturally and shift along intercultural paradigm continuum.

In the first phase of this study, the aim was to extend the narrative to include an understanding of the cul-tural competence of those who offer said services, by administering the IDI to library workers and encouraging them to reflect on various intercultural events. We recruited library workers to engage in intercultural awareness activities of their choice and assess the change in perception and behavior as a result of these activities. In the second phase of the project, we conducted a pre-test and post-test of study participants to assess growth along the intercultural continuum. The second phase will be published in a later work.

MethodsAt a midwestern research intensive university in the U.S., there are approximately 120 workers of various ranks and responsibilities. There are approximately 35 faculty positions and the 85 staff and administrative positions. Workers are spread out across 7 locations on the same campus. In Fall 2018, a recruitment email was sent to all library workers. All slots for the project were filled within 30 minutes of the recruitment email. The campus Office of International Programs awarded a grant to fund this project. IRB approval was requested and granted.

We recruited a heterogeneous group of 18 library faculty and staff to participate in a 2-part intercultural assessment and intervention project. In the first step, using the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) we assessed where participants were in their intercultural knowledge. In the second step of the plan, an intervention was implemented that incentivized engagement with other cultures around the campus and local area. Specifi-cally, participants could choose intercultural events throughout the local area to engage in and then reflect on those events through structured questions. After each anonymous Qualtrics reflection submission, participants received a $6 gift card. The 6 questions participants were asked were:

Q1 How do you feel about the cultural exercise? What is your reaction to the people and the activities?Q2 What was the significance of the activity for the target audience? (For example, was it a celebration, a

commemoration, a community forum?)Q3 What did you learn from the exercise? What insights did you gain about other people’s behavior? About

your own behavior?Q4 How does the exercise relate to other real-world events? (For example, is this event part of a series or local

version of something national?)

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Q5 If you were to participate in this activity all over again, how would you behave differently?Q6 As a result of your new insights, how would you behave differently in your workplace?Q7 Did you speak with anyone (including family or coworkers) about your experience prior to completing this

reflection?

Participants were also asked to provide a picture of evidence of attending the events, such as a selfie or a pic of an admittance ticket. They were asked to use their IDI unique username to identify themselves. IDI user-names were a method of anonymizing participants yet created an ability to link participant data across events and inventories.

Each reflection was coded and evaluated using 2 items of the Intercultural Knowledge and Competency Value Rubric from the Association of American Colleges and Universities to create a depth differential (Δ)(As-sociation of College and Universities, 2009) . The depth differential which represents the difference between a participant’s empathy and openness, as described in the Value Rubric. The items of the VALUE rubric are below.

Capstone4

Milestones3 2

Benchmark1

Skills Empathy

Interprets intercultural experience from the perspectives of own and more than one worldview and demonstrates ability to act in a supportive manner that recognizes the feelings of another cultural group.

Recognizes intellectual and emotional dimensions of more than one worldview and sometimes uses more than one worldview in interactions.

Identifies components of other cultural perspectives but responds in all situations with own worldview.

Views the experience of others but does so through own cultural worldview.

Attitudes Openness

Initiates and develops interactions with culturally different others. Suspends judgment in valuing her/his interactions with culturally different others.

Begins to initiate and develop interactions with culturally different others. Begins to suspend judgment in valuing her/his interactions with culturally different others.

Expresses openness to most, if not all, interactions with culturally different others. Has difficulty suspending any judgment in her/his interactions with culturally different others and is aware of own judgment and expresses a willingness to change.

Receptive to interacting with culturally different others. Has difficulty suspending any judgment in her/his interactions with culturally different others but is unaware of own judgment.

Semantic AnalysisAt the end of the project, reflections were downloaded as a .csv file and analyzed using TextBlob. TextBlob is a Python programming language library (i.e. add-on) used for analyzing text. TextBlob is a Python library for processing textual data(Loria et al. 2014). The library looks at the polarity of a word, along with its occurrence, to describe its importance in determining the sentiment of the qualitative data. Positive or negative values are assigned to the words which are then averaged to give a range of values from -1 to 1. This sentiment analysis was then compared to a score of the empathy and openness rubric values of the AAC&U to create the depth differ-ential Δ between the feelings and possible changes in behavior before and during the cultural event.

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Before the files could be analyzed in Python, they needed to be cleaned of extraneous information. The data columns that were not relevant to the text analysis were removed from the file including location information, digital proof of attendance, and identifying information of the responders. Any blank responses from testing the survey or incomplete responses were also removed.

The integrity of data was reviewed in Python paying close attention to any truncated columns or misrepresent-ed date values. To analyze the results of the first phase of the project, the researcher reduced the reflection results for questions one, three, and five to their root values, a process known as lemmatization. By this we mean that the dif-ferences in tense and case between words were removed, leaving only the lemma. By doing this it is possible to find the frequencies of words for the purposes of counting their occurrence. The existing Stop Words library in Python, which is a collection of common English words such as “for”, “to”, and “the” were also removed. Stop Words are often removed from things such as search engines as they appear so frequently that it is not relevant to the overall meaning of the query. The resulting words are reflected in this world cloud, generated using Tableau.

Word counts of the data set for questions one, three, and five were analyzed similarly to the semantic analysis for TextBlob, before importing into Tableau. A word cloud conveys he importance of each word by increasing its size in the overall image based on the number of times it occurs in the text data. It is an effective tool for convey-ing similar themes across multiple respondents.

FIGURE 1Word Cloud for Questions one and three (top) and question five (bottom)

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Depth DifferentialThe Δ was calculated by reading the responses for questions one, three, and five and determining how they aligned with the associated rubrics from the AAC&U. Questions one and three were used to analyze the feelings of the reflector and aligned with the skill rubric of empathy. Five was used to analyze the attitude of openness. Once the value of each was found, the Δ was calculated as the difference between the behavior score and feeling score.

The overall score, which was the sum of the two values for em-pathy and openness was also assigned a value to group the partici-pants together. This was based on the perfect score of eight and the number of scores at each value. The maximum value per item was 4 which denotes mastery in the areas of openness and empathy. This was done to allow comparison between those that were actively and minimally engaged in the cultural experience but had a similar Δ and for the comparison of respondents who were aligned in their anticipated behavior to those that had conflict.

ResultsThe semantic analysis found no negative responses from the reflections, with a small range of polarity. This makes sense due to the self-selected participants who were inquisitive and interested in intercultural compe-tency. The overall length of the assessments was enough to infer that the operation was taken seriously. While some did respond multiple times to receive an incentive, about half the responses had less than or equal to three total cultural experiences. The Δ found there is a large discrepancy between the feelings and behavior of some

FIGURE 2Duration in minutes of all responses with average and median

Overall Score

Number of Scores

Competency

2 2 D3 3 D4 7 C5 4 B6 4 B7 4 A8 5 A

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respondents. This suggests the initial feelings of the event and the future adapted behavior created an internal conflict for the participants. Phase two of the project will tell us whether there was actual intercultural growth in the participants during the project. Further study may help explain some of these discrepancies more fully and give context to the specific changes that occur in the IDI based on the Δ.

Semantic AnalysisThe average value of the TextBlob semantic analysis was 0.12, with -1 representing a negative impression and 1 being the most positive possible. The median was 0.11. The first quartile value is 0.07 and the third quartile value is 0.18. Overall the data appears roughly linear with a slope of 0.01 when the data is arranged sequentially. The fact that there were no negative responses seems to suggest that overall the respondents were either unclear in their preference for the activity or positive. It is important to note that the polarity is an average, meaning some-one with a high score did not necessarily have only positive qualitative data. It simply means that the average of the sentiment was positive. Participants had positive intercultural experiences.

Depth DifferentialIt seems that sentiment is not related to the overall competency score, but the overall competency score is related to the depth differential. People that scored at the extremes in competency tended to have a lower depth differential. While those with a high amount of conflict between feelings and behaviors tended to score in the middle of the competency evaluation. This suggest that at the ends of the spectrum, being those with high competency and low competency, there is little difference between feelings and behaviors. While those in transition may be experiencing discomfort and conflict between how they feel and the way they act in a new cultural environment. This is sup-ported by the defining principles of the Minimization stage of the intercultural continuum. However, the sentiment

FIGURE 3Values of Semantic Polarity arranged sequentially

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was not correlated with the overall competency, or engagement, of the reflectors. Some enjoyed the exercise but were not active participants, while others reflected strongly on the experience but not in an engaged way.

ConclusionExposure to different cultures challenged the perception of the library workers who were involved in the pilot project. We recruited library workers of different ranks and job descriptions to participant in a self-selected in-tercultural activity throughout the local community. We found that participants were overall pleased with their experiences but also challenged by the cultures that they encountered as a part of the project. However, through semantic analysis we learned that positive feelings did not necessarily correlate with positive or changed future behaviors. More work needs to be done explore the impact that intercultural experiences have directly on library services and the interpersonal relationship of library workers. In this study, the aim was to extend the narrative to include an understanding of the cultural competence of those who offer said services. We were able to do that and look forward to more work and analysis of the data.

BiblographyAssociation of American Colleges and Universities. “Intercultural Knowledge and Competence Rubric.” 2009. https://www.aacu.org/

value/rubrics/inquiry-analysisBennett, Milton J. 1986. “A developmental approach to training for intercultural sensitivity.” International Journal of Intercultural Rela-

tions 10 (2):179-196. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/0147-1767(86)90005-2.Deardorff, Darla K. 2006. “Identification and Assessment of Intercultural Competence as a Student Outcome of Internationalization.”

Journal of Studies in International Education 10 (3):241-266. doi: 10.1177/1028315306287002.Hammer, Mitchell R. 2011. “Additional cross-cultural validity testing of the Intercultural Development Inventory.” International Journal

of Intercultural Relations 35 (4):474-487. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2011.02.014.Loria, Steven, P Keen, M Honnibal, R Yankovsky, D Karesh, and E Dempsey. 2014. “Textblob: simplified text processing.” Secondary

TextBlob: Simplified Text Processing.

FIGURE 4Each point represents a participant, graphed at the intersection of their corresponding sentiment and

differential depth (Δ)

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