Intercultural communication during pandemic: new ways to build intercultural dialogue and relationships

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article explores how intercultural relations can be fostered at the level of an undergraduate university degree during the pandemic. It offers one specific intervention within intercultural education to provide new ways of thinking about how intercultural relations can and do happen. By drawing on the self-reflexive narratives of the article’s authors – a university lecturer and three students – we consider the ways in which intercultural education can enable people from diverse cultures to build a learning community. On the basis of a thematic analysis, we explore the role of reflection and action in the creation of intercultural knowledge that can lead towards developing meaningful relations and can assist in further supporting students in their well-being. We first map some key issues in intercultural education at the university level and provide a short literature review. Secondly, we briefly describe our intercultural initiative. We put our narratives into conversation in order to facilitate deeper understanding of how to build meaningful intercultural relationships, while learning, and collaborating together. Our goal is to reflect on perceptions of the quality of intercultural relationship experiences at the level of a university degree and to show how complex relational work fostered intercultural collaboration during the pandemic. On the basis of our inductive research, we offer an original approach to fostering intercultural education based on four stages: constructing and fostering an initial encounter; promoting group participation; emphasising reciprocity; and constructing activities to promote trust and care. Our experience demonstrated how forming intercultural relationships can meaningfully help students with their expectations, aspirations, and ultimately, careers.