Abstract
Self-efficacy encompasses the professional and personal language goals of learners as their progress depends upon a strong motivation to put practical language skills to use when the real world requires it. Intercultural communication and effectiveness are of interest to the professional and personal language goals of learners as their progress depends upon a strong motivation to put practical language skills to use when the real world requires it. Studying or working abroad and engaging in intercultural training are two such contexts that bind research in learner characteristics between applied linguistics and positive psychology as they provide a substrate of concrete interactions, transformative experiences characterized by opportunities for changes in self-concept, negotiations with values and authenticity, and forms of interpersonal development underwritten by intercultural communication as an ability. A tool to capture this domain-specific intercultural communication was previously developed with sojourner educational professionals for use among English speaking populations. However, the original study lacked confirmatory analyses of internal and external validity that would clarify model identification and applicability for research that deals with intercultural communication competence across populations with diverse sample characteristics. A total of 876 teachers (M age = 37.48, SD = 10.81) and 266 university students (M age = 19.48, SD = 0.74) in Japan responded to items from the SEIC instrument. Acceptable model fit was supported for the eight-item short form. Metric invariance was observed for individuals from a sample of sojourning English language teachers similar to the original validation and a nationwide survey of Japanese teachers of English, offering indications of cross-cultural validity. Degrees of equivalence were also found for the Japanese items as extending fitness for use to students from two universities in Japan. Concurrent validity was supported for SEIC measured by the scale with intercultural effectiveness competencies and speaking and listening self-efficacy constructs used in classroom contexts. Together, this study offers a tool of valid indicators for researchers and practitioners who aim to observe self-efficacy in positive education, intercultural training, or international programs that intersect with language learning and intercultural communication.
Highlights
Communicative competence is a penultimate goal for language learners
According to conventional guidelines for reliability as estimated by Cronbach’s α and McDonald’s ω, values greater than 0.7 were favored and internal consistency was supported for the self-efficacy study variables (SEIC: α = 0.88; ω = 0.87; Speaking Self-Efficacy (S-SE): α = 0.96; ω = 0.96; Listening Self-Efficacy (L-SE): α = 0.92; ω = 0.88)
Acceptable model fit was determined from a combined consideration of the incremental (CFI, Tucker–Lewis Index (TLI), Goodness of Fit Index (GFI)), absolute (SRMR), and parsimonious fit indices (RMSEA), such that Comparative Fit Index (CFI), TLI, and GFI values reached above 0.90 but especially exceeded 0.95, SRMR values were less than or close to 0.06, and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) values were close to or less than 0.80 (Brown, 2014)
Summary
Numerous theories have been posited for its instructional and developmental processes, but tools for applications, such as simulations and learning experiences designed to augment communicative competence mediated by language, require added considerations for domain specificity. A nomological net for selfefficacy in intercultural communication (SEIC) was carefully identified with convergent and discriminant analytic techniques by Peterson et al (2011), which provides a framework rooted in social cognitive theory and a mid-level construct recognized as necessary for practitioners (Lake, 2016). This report offers numerous positions in favor of the approach and instrument taken by Peterson et al (2011) with further theoretical support due to the usefulness of an SEIC construct in applied settings and addresses questions of validity to evaluate its potential as a tool for evaluators and educators
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