Essential to students’ intercultural learning abroad? Faculty intercultural development as key to leverage effective pedagogies

Faculty development programs at U.S. higher education institutions, as well as in other countries’ university systems, have gained prominence in the last decades because of a growing recognition of the connection between pedagogical skill and student learning (Condon et al., 2016). Faculty development professionals, networks (such as POD), and published research in the field actively explore how to impact the culture of teaching and learning at an institution (Gillespie et al., 2010). As a result, faculty development is fast becoming a vital pillar in the higher education landscape. Austin and Sorcinelli (2013) astutely asserted, “faculty development constitutes a strategic lever for institutional excellence and quality, and a critically important tool for fostering institutional readiness and change in response to the array of complex demands facing universities and colleges” (p. 95). Specifically in the realm of international education, there are many calls to increase and improve faculty development to make study abroad experiences more intellectually and interculturally enriching, for both faculty and students (Anderson et al., 2016; Gillespie, 2019; Gillespie et al., 2020; Johnstone et al., 2020; Layne et al., 2020). In this study we offer the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE; https://www.ciee.org), a study abroad provider, faculty development structure as a model.

Our discussion will focus on the intentional, systematic, and protracted professional development and mentorship for instructors that accompanied the roll-out and implementation of a special course dedicated to developing students’ intercultural learning. The aim of the course is students’ intentional intercultural development; likewise, the organization’s professional development is focused on faculty’s intercultural development. In fact, faculty experience the course firsthand as learners, along with mentoring and ongoing intercultural development, before they teach the course to students. The results of our larger study indicate that faculty intercultural skills are tied to students’ intercultural gains (Gibson et al., 2023). In this article in particular, we analyze how faculty apply their intercultural competence to effectively leverage pedagogies that enhance students’ learning.

A dominant piece of faculty development is helping educators learn teaching skills that foster student learning via student-centered, engaged learning approaches. Approaches vary depending on context, needs, and changes faculty face, but the tendency is to focus on general pedagogical skills that faculty can acquire, apply, and practice in any discipline (Beach et al., 2016). New research is acknowledging success in discipline-specific pedagogies (Yoshinobu et al., 2023), coaching and mentoring models (Bloomberg, 2022; Carpenter, 2022), and book/topics-based learning communities or pedagogy circles (Carpenter, 2023). Calls are also being made to firmly root faculty development in transformational learning models in the Mezirow (1991) tradition so as to disrupt thinking and fundamentally change the status quo regarding teaching and learning (Ultsch et al., 2022).

An important strand of faculty development is rooted in adult education theories, Cranton’s (1996, 2006, 2016) and Cranton and Carusetta’s (2004) theory of authenticity being one of them. Cranton and Carusetta defined authenticity in teaching as being genuine, developing self-awareness, showing consistency between values and actions, relating to others in such a way as to encourage awareness of others and their needs, showing awareness of context and how it impacts self and others, and engaging in deep critical reflection that leads to changes in pedagogical practice (p. 7). LaBelle et al. (2023) expanded on Cranton and documented how faculty communicate authenticity via language that demonstrates openness, a growth mindset, humility, connection, student empowerment, and course content illustration.

It is logical that as faculty develop interculturally, they in turn can better guide students’ intercultural development. Nevertheless, as Cranton and Carusetta (2004) stated, “It is more common for people to look for standardized principles of effective practice than it is for them to turn inward and examine how it is that they as social human beings and individuals can develop their own way in the world of teaching” (p. 21). Despite the tendency of faculty development to overly stress teaching skills to improve pedagogical effectiveness and increase student learning, we argue for a more holistic approach, in line with Cranton, that roots students’ learning in intentional faculty intercultural development and growth. As we found, faculty intercultural learning is the key to empowering their successful leveraging of dynamic pedagogies, not vice versa. Therefore, our study demonstrates the need for investment, expansion, and mentorship of integrated faculty development programming, particularly with regard to educators’ own intercultural growth, in order to implement effective pedagogies that activate and expand students’ learning while studying abroad.

Our Study

To expand on the Georgetown Consortium (Vande Berg et al., 2009), we set out to analyze potential impacts on students’ intercultural learning while studying abroad. In order to do so, we used pre- and post-Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) data from 1,858 U.S. undergraduate students studying at CIEE programs in Latin America, Asia, Europe, and Africa who took the optional Intercultural Communication and Leadership (ICL) course between 2014 and 2019. We collected demographic information via student surveys; had a control group of 109 students who did not take the ICL course; assessed student assignments; looked at educator IDI scores; and, in 2018–2019, held hour-long, semi-structured interviews with 22 educators from across CIEE centers. The educator interviews, and how educators’ apply their intercultural skills (as a result of intentional faculty development) to impact student learning, are the focus of this article.¹

The authors would like to thank CIEE for their cooperation and support in providing access to data, training materials, and instructors teaching Intercultural Communication and Leadership.

The main quantitative findings from our entire, large study indicate two factors that strongly impact students’ intercultural learning: (1) active engagement with unfamiliar cultural contexts in non-traditional destinations and (2) highly experienced educators who act as cultural mentors to help students process the disorienting dilemmas in living abroad (Gibson et al., 2023). Importantly, students who took the ICL course had greater IDI Developmental Orientation (DO) score changes (ICL group average DO change = 5.71; Non-ICL group average DO change = -0.846), supporting the idea that students benefit from intentional, guided interventions to increase their intercultural skills (Gibson et al., 2023). In the present article, we further coded, anonymized, and analyzed the 22 educators’ interviews, specifically grouping and categorizing their stated pedagogical tactics. In the end, we found that CIEE’s intentional, highly mentored, relationship-rich faculty development program—centered on instructors’ own intercultural learning and growth—helped educators leverage their intercultural learning and thus pedagogies to effectively foster students’ intercultural learning in the ICL course.

The Intercultural Communication and Leadership (ICL) Course and Educator Training

CIEE is one of the largest study abroad program providers in the United States, serving more than 10,000 study abroad students each year. CIEE programs aim to help people gain understanding, acquire knowledge, and develop the skills needed to live in a globally interdependent and culturally diverse world. Inherent to their mission, the focus on promoting intercultural learning is evident in both their extracurricular and co-curricular programming as well as their commitment to offering the ICL course across the majority of their numerous academic programs in 45 countries. Furthermore, their commitment to intercultural learning extends to supporting and fostering staff and faculty intercultural competence via a carefully designed and implemented professional development program.

CIEE has historically invested in its employees’ intercultural development—including administering an employee intercultural development program across all the organization’s divisions (not just study abroad). The connection between professional development and intercultural growth has been evident in its organizational culture, and this has naturally extended to include centering the ICL course as a high-impact learning experience for both the student and instructor.

To effectively run the ICL course across a wide variety of cultural and program contexts, CIEE must hire competent, highly qualified instructors to teach a course that has strong potential for high-impact learning experiences. In most cases, the ICL course is taught by contract, local adjunct faculty members with teaching experience and a master’s degree in a related field at minimum. Often, veteran CIEE resident directors and qualified full-time staff members teach the ICL as it is a highly sought after course to teach, for both its developmental approach and highly varied course activities that take place both in and outside of the classroom. To teach the ICL, instructors typically participate in extensive training and professional development.

The ICL content and approaches to teaching and learning were built to align with Paige’s (2006) intercultural learning dimensions. The course description, that faculty take as part of their professional development program and students take as an elective to enhance their learning while abroad, includes:

In this class, students will develop skills, knowledge, and understanding that will help them communicate and engage more appropriately and effectively in [program location] as well as in other intercultural contexts. Students will explore various topics in intercultural communication in the context of the study abroad experience and will practice intercultural learning processes to apply when working across difference in a wide variety of contexts. (CIEE, 2024)

One of the major contributors to the evolution of the course was the participation of the CIEE instructors providing their own culture-specific resources and articulating their perspectives on dominant and non-dominant cultural groups within the host context. In collaboration with the Academic Director of Intercultural Learning (formerly Tara Harvey, Elsa Maxwell, and Whitney Sherman), instructors regularly provided input on culture-specific content, offering both anecdotal evidence in the form of critical incident narratives (as part of intercultural communication theory) as well as key case studies, academic and non-academic articles, blog posts, podcasts, and other media found within the host context. The ICL instructors helped shape the development of the course, demonstrating the significance and value of their roles as faculty. Furthermore, the course is regularly augmented in alignment with best practices of teaching and learning in higher education as well as updated with relevant curricular approaches, including adopting Brave Space Pedagogy (Sherman et al., 2019) and DEI-focused concepts such as unconscious bias, power and privilege, and concepts of stereotypes.

Providing holistic ICL instructor training is a crucial component of the CIEE experience. In addition to receiving and collaborating on teaching materials, regular one-on-one coaching, and support with CIEE Academic Affairs staff, instructors engage in both internal and external opportunities for intercultural learning-focused professional development. For instance, between 2009 and 2016, 20 CIEE instructors attended the Summer Institute of Intercultural Communication (SIIC) in Portland, Oregon, while 10 were trained as Qualified Administrators of the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI). In 2014 to 2015, 12 instructors attended a 5-month virtual training course led by Barbara Schaetti, co-author of Personal Leadership: Making a World of Difference (Schaetti et al., 2008). When budget allowed, certain instructors also attended Harvard Graduate School of Education seminars and workshops in-person. While external training opportunities shifted depending on the offerings and funding, newly hired ICL instructors were enrolled in a 6-week asynchronous virtual instructor training program offered three times each year via Canvas LMS. The training program enabled each instructor to experience the course content firsthand, experiment with different facilitation strategies both in-person and in virtual contexts, understand CIEE academic standards, and deeply focus on their own intercultural development as preparation to teach the ICL course.

There were also consistent opportunities to attend virtual and in-person teaching workshops centering on best practices for teaching and learning in study abroad and higher education contexts. Topics included Facilitating Difficult Discussions, Leveraging the IDI in the Classroom, ICL Updates, New Instructor Check-Ins, Supporting Underrepresented Students, among others. The Academic Director of Intercultural Learning often co-facilitated these sessions with veteran ICL instructors. While the workshops were not required, most instructors typically attended the virtual sessions. Recordings and presentation notes were provided for all ICL instructors, for later reference, via the Intercultural Learning Collective, an online, Canvas-based community. Created specifically for ICL instructors, this digital community was also a repository for course facilitation guides, slide decks, and mandatory and suggested readings, as well as a regularly monitored online discussion board for teaching-related questions and ideas. The virtual community setting encouraged collaboration, discussion, reflection, and even course concepts such as cultural self-awareness activities among instructors, modeling the major pedagogical approaches of the course.

The training emphasized educators’ own intercultural development and aimed to impart a solid understanding of CIEE’s approach to intercultural learning. Utilizing a train-the-trainer model, instructors completed the training from a student perspective, completing many of the same student assignments and activities themselves. Activities they were to facilitate in class were applied to a virtual format mostly via written and video discussion boards on Flip, a digital tool used to share and record video responses. For instance, the main activities during Week 1 of the training course emphasized cultural self-awareness, mirroring what students experienced during the early weeks of ICL. Educators engaged in Describe-Interpret-Evaluate, a foundational introductory activity of looking at images and doing the discrete steps of the title (describe, interpret, and evaluate) to contest held notions and assumptions. The activity explores cultural identity, self-awareness, global-local community, interdependence, and intercultural praxis, among other interrelated themes. The virtual discussion board format provided an impactful learning moment for educators.

Another major component to training instructors was a formal mentorship program with assignments and engagement embedded into the 6-week ICL instructor training Canvas-based course. The instructor training program encouraged the cultivation of instructors’ intercultural growth, with each instructor participating in several one-on-one intercultural coaching sessions with the Academic Director of Intercultural Learning. In addition, new ICL instructors were matched with experienced ICL instructors across cultural and physical boundaries. Pairs or triads would meet a minimum of two times the semester prior to when the new instructor would commence teaching. Conversations included open-ended time but were also scaffolded with suggested questions, for both the mentee and mentor, such as:

• What is the most gratifying aspect of teaching the ICL course? What motivates you to teach it?

• What is the most challenging aspect of teaching the course? Did (or do) you struggle with any aspects of it?

• What was it like teaching it for the first time? What made you nervous? What felt intimidating at first but now feels easy or second nature?

• What does debriefing mean to you? (Or in other words, how would you define debriefing?) Why is it important in your teaching practice? How did you learn to become good at it? What makes a good debriefer?

• Share what you do for the cultural engagement activities. How do you incorporate debriefing into them?

• What other tips, advice, or suggestions might you have for me?

Leveraging ICL pedagogy for CIEE instructors and staff was only the beginning. The overlap in using ICL content to strengthen instructors’ intercultural development was also used via other in-house training and professional development. Around 2014 to 2020, CIEE invested in the company-wide Employee Intercultural Development program. This initiative used many of the methodologies and concepts featured in the ICL course and aimed to increase the intercultural development of all participating staff members, including both CIEE onsite and U.S.-based staff. Intentional, strategic cultivation of intercultural skills has clearly been a priority for CIEE.

Educators’ increased their own intercultural development via all the opportunities offered by CIEE instructor training, cultural mentoring from seasoned colleagues, one-on-one coaching with the Academic Director of Intercultural Learning, and total engagement of ICL material from the learner’s perspective. These factors all led the interviewed educators to vocalize how they implemented effective pedagogies, from an intercultural frame, that activate and expand students’ learning while studying abroad.

Effective Pedagogies Stemming From Educators’ Own Intercultural Growth

The interviews, led by three of the four researchers of this study, indicated common teaching tactics that educators implemented to effectively enhance student learning, which stemmed from their intentionally mentored and supported intercultural development via both the CIEE Employee Intercultural Development training and the ICL instructor training and mentoring.

The 22 educators who volunteered to be interviewed admittedly did so because they were excited to talk about teaching and learning, and, as such, a strong collective profile of common teaching tactics emerged from the interviews. Educators adapted the curriculum, were responsive to students’ needs, infused intercultural learning in all interactions, leveraged their social networks to create cultural exchange events for students, and constructed intentional opportunities for students’ application and integration of learning. Importantly, the interviews also highlighted educators’ perspectives, mindframes, or worldviews that likewise spurred learning—that of their students and their own. The educators demonstrate a dedication to constant growth and exploration and actively apply their intercultural skills to bridge with students. Figure 1 is a visual representation of the pedagogical tactics that came out of the interviews; below the figure are the concrete details and explanations, with direct quotes from the participants.

Figure 1. Effective Pedagogies and Practices as a Result of Supported Faculty Intercultural Development

The visualization in Figure 1 demonstrates how these specific pedagogical approaches interconnect through a dynamic and holistic approach to supporting faculty intercultural development, which in turn invokes student intercultural learning and growth. As the figure indicates, most foundationally, offering peer and explicit mentorship opportunities to faculty illustrates the core of our qualitative research: continuous investment in faculty via intentional and integrated training is central to both their intercultural development and, consequently, the intercultural growth of students. The focus on faculty engaging in their own intercultural learning through mentorship and training opportunities empowers them to translate their intercultural attitudes, skills and behaviors into effective pedagogies that develop students’ intercultural capacities. These pedagogies are interconnected, stacked, and layered, as demonstrated in the concentric circles. As faculty implement these pedagogies, the practice fosters their own intercultural development, which spurs leveraging more and better pedagogies in a continuous, overlapping feedback loop.

Implications for Education Abroad Programs and Faculty Development

As the results of our interviews illuminate, professional development and mentoring programs that foster faculty intercultural learning lead to increased pedagogical skills used to bridge with students and increase learning. These findings offer key implications for other education abroad programs and contexts.

First, it was clear CIEE invested heavily in financial and human resources during the first few years of rolling out and expanding the ICL course locations. Initially, there were numerous external and internal trainings and, what became, a full-time director overseeing all aspects of the ICL course and its instructors. Unfortunately, however, the number of external trainings decreased and the focus became on virtual in-house opportunities, when duties allowed. As study abroad in a post-pandemic context rebuilds, our study indicates that heavy investment in faculty development, both within the organization and funding external opportunities, highly impacts the teaching and learning that happens on the ground. Not only should this training investment be adopted within the program provider context but also across the education abroad field, including the institutional realm. Heavy investment in faculty training, coaching, and mentorship inherently supports student intercultural growth, as evidenced by our data.

Relatedly, CIEE started with a clear intent to develop all faculty and staff intercultural development in the organization, thus leading a cultural transformation in their workforce and institution. And over the past decade, CIEE has adapted its organizational mission to highlight its commitment to intercultural learning. Nevertheless, decreased funding has provided fewer training and mentorship opportunities and, overall, less emphasis on holistic and targeted faculty development. Thus, this notion of full cultural transformation geared toward interculturally competent staff and faculty may not have fully taken root. For a cultural shift to happen—that all faculty and staff are constantly learning and growing interculturally—a new pathway needs to disrupt and replace prior socialized values, beliefs, and behaviors (Harro, 2000). Financial investment in faculty development therefore needs to be sustained over time to allow faculty to internalize, practice, and apply their intercultural capabilities in the pedagogical realm.

Second, the data from our larger study and the interviews expanded upon here support the growing evidence linking faculty development and student learning. For decades researchers have slowly documented, in various ways, the relationship between faculty capacities and student learning (Bass, 2020; Condon et al., 2016). Again, our larger study (Gibson et al., 2023) documents the significance of faculty in student learning. Though we only interviewed 22 faculty who went through intentional, mentored, intercultural training and both experienced and taught a course designed to develop intercultural learning, the educator interviews detail the pedagogical techniques used to elicit such heightened student learning. Clearly, more faculty interviews would expand our understanding of the ways in which educators apply their interculturality in a pedagogical context; nevertheless, the present group further elucidates the connection between faculty skill and student learning. As demonstrated, developing faculty intercultural capabilities and mentoring them through the application of their own intercultural learning in the (study abroad) teaching context has a direct impact on advancing students’ intercultural growth. Thus, institutions, organizations, and the field should commit to sustained, holistic, mentored faculty and staff intercultural development.

When connected, the development and mentored application of intercultural learning, which elicits enhanced intercultural learning, fosters a continuous cycle of growth. Faculty apply their intercultural learning skills to be better cultural mentors and pedagogues; when they see the results, via unprompted debriefs or strong faculty-student relationships for instance, that feedback encourages educators to continue to interculturally bridge with the curriculum, students, and themselves. Student learning becomes the affirmation and motivation for continued faculty intercultural learning. Furthermore, the unpacking and processing of experiences is important; educators themselves need to experience the unpacking via debriefs during their training and mentoring. When they practice debriefing as a learner, they gain greater skill and confidence to lead students through the debriefing process. When instructors experience the debriefs themselves, this creates a strong foundation of shared experience and effective implementation. Thus, again, there is a need for intentional, sustained, mentored faculty and staff intercultural development.

Another major implication of this study is that as individuals build a foundation of strong intercultural competence that is rooted in deep self-awareness work, cultural bridging activities, and critical moment dialogues, they are better primed to engage in diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. The educators we interviewed were learners on their own journey and as such became more and more aware of their own and others’ culture, perspectives, behaviors, attitudes, and identities. Future training opportunities that are intentional and strategic could leverage this foundation of intercultural competence work, propelling participants to address and respond to issues involving oppression and privilege and ultimately changing systems and structures that perpetuate inequity. The pedagogies and practices that support faculty intercultural growth, which are identified in this study, could arguably enhance the deconstruction of bias, stereotypes, and ethnocentrism, creating awareness of microaggressions and practices that ignore or disrespect others’ backgrounds (López-Rocha, 2023).

In sum, our study, and in particular the educator interviews, illuminate that when instructors were intentionally trained and mentored successfully, they were able to leverage their own intercultural learning skills to effectively and impactfully develop their students’ skills via pedagogical interventions, as evidenced in increased student IDI scores (Gibson et al., 2023). Providing holistic faculty training and coaching enhances student learning via instructor empowerment. When time, space, and commitment are prioritized, educators own the pedagogy and optimize the classroom experience. Specifically, they adapt the curriculum to the cultural and group context while demonstrating responsiveness to students’ needs. Using the host culture and context, these faculty constructed intentional opportunities for students to reflect, apply, and integrate their learning. Furthermore, this dedication to exploration and curiosity was intrinsically tied to their own intercultural skills, used to productively bridge with students. Again, faculty’s intercultural learning and growth are the key to empowering their successful leveraging of effective pedagogies that deepen student learning; when faculty go through a mentored, critically reflective process of analyzing perspectives, questioning assumptions, negotiating identities in multiple contexts and with diverse audiences, navigating emotional responses to disorienting dilemmas, and bridging with difference, they can better leverage those skills to teach their students how to do so as well. We urge an intentional, systematic, and sustained investment, expansion, and mentorship of integrated faculty development programming, particularly with regard to educators’ own intercultural growth, in order to expand students’ learning, especially while studying abroad.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors have no conflict of interest.

Data Availability

The data reported in this manuscript are available on request by contacting the corresponding author.