Short-term Cultural Immersion Research Articles

Faculty Reflections on International Travel to Reach the Medically Underserved.

One approach to preparing students to engage in culturally diverse health-care settings around the world is to incorporate faculty-led short-term cultural immersion programs in medically underserved nations. This reflective summary analyzes the impact of a faculty-led international health-care trip on students' global health-care experience and needed health-care services in developing countries. A content analysis of the journals of two advanced practice registered nurse (APRN) faculty members was performed to gain perspectives on a trip with undergraduate and graduate nursing students and medical students to a small city in Nicaragua. This article examines the personal and professional growth achieved, and the challenges faced, when managing acute and chronic diseases with limited resources in an unfamiliar country. Themes identified included anxieties of planning, provider versus faculty role, students in action, networking, nurturing behaviors, advocating, and mentoring self-sustainability. Faculty-led international health-care trips both add a needed service to developing countries' health-care needs and offer students the experience of health care from a global perspective.

Recommendations for planning short-term nursing student mission trips

Cultural immersion and service learning are effective pedagogical tools to support the development of cultural competence among nursing students. An international mission trip incorporates these concepts and provides an opportunity for students to broaden their understanding and skills. A review of the literature demonstrates a significant gap surrounding the process used to successfully plan such a trip. Within the context of a small private college, data from an exemplar project help to identify protocols for planning a successful short-term international mission trip. An appropriately planned short-term cultural immersion mission trip allows nurse educators and participants to achieve their personal and educational goals for the trip, while providing much-needed healthcare aid to residents and staff in impoverished and underserved areas.

The Impact of an Immersion Programme in Cambodia for Australian Pre-Service Teachers

Australian teachers are required to teach students from diverse cultures, and preservice teachers are reported to feel culturally unprepared. The Australian Government’s New Colombo Plan aims to increase pre-service teachers’ cultural competency by providing funding for cultural and educational experiences in the Asian-Pacific region. This paper reports on the impact a short-term cultural immersion programme in Cambodia had on the development of cultural competence for ten pre-service teachers. The programme included visits to Cambodian schools and a university, and cultural immersion activities such as Khmer lessons and visiting cultural icons. The cultural competency framework was used to analyse the impact of the programme on pre-service teachers’ cultural competence before, during, and after the programme. Findings show that the programme had a significant impact upon meaning-making as the pre-service teachers reflected upon their experiences in Cambodia. The use of focus groups was found to be powerful, supporting pre-service teachers in a safe environment to learn from each other. The article contributes to the growing interest in the effectiveness of immersion programmes in enhancing the development of cultural competency in pre-service teachers. Recommendations include evaluation of the long-term impact of such programmes on pre-service teacher cultural competence.

Cultivating Culturally Relevant Classrooms

We explain how a short-term cultural immersion experience in Mexico helped prepare pre-service teachers to better gauge and empathize with the needs of English language learners. We outline our pedagogical goals and the activities they organized prior to departure, such as inviting the Consulate General of Mexico in Raleigh, N.C., to present an overview of the social, economic, and political ties between Mexico and the U.S. The article covers our full agenda in Mexico, including highlights such as the students’ first-hand experience teaching English in local elementary schools.

Preparing teacher candidates to serve students from diverse backgrounds: Triggering transformative learning through short-term cultural immersion

This study followed 24 teacher candidates in a short-term cultural immersion field experience designed to help them reflect on their assumptions and perspectives in order to better understand the culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse students they will teach. Qualitative methods were informed by a phenomenological research approach to examine candidates’ transformative learning experiences in a cultural immersion context. The findings are discussed within a three-stage framework of transformative learning: triggering experiences, frame of reference examination, and transformative change.

Accounting and conflict resolution in Ireland

Purpose – This paper aims to contribute to the special issue by sharing reflections on and best practices derived from the successful five-year iteration of a semester-long, hybrid, international accounting course which centers on a short-term cultural immersion component in Ireland. The course provides students with an opportunity to learn about international business and to learn about the importance of tolerance and finding common ground with people. Design/methodology/approach – Discussion of the process the course designer used to combine traditional technical content with a “liberal arts,” soft-skills content and places both firmly within the international cultural context of a short-term, study abroad experience. The paper includes insight into how the authors choose a country to visit, develop international academic partners, administer an international case competition and assess student performance throughout the course. Findings – The paper identifies practices that were successful and implementation of changes over time for course improvement. Originality/value – This describes a unique approach to incorporating a hybrid-based course that was developed to embrace cultural differences while maintaining high expectations for understanding and application of technical accounting material.

Out of Our Comfort Zone: Short-term Cultural Immersion with Community Health Nursing Students

Out of Our Comfort Zone: Short-term Cultural Immersion with Community Health Nursing Students

Exploiting the Links between Theory and Practice: Developing Students' Cross-cultural Understanding through an International Study Tour to China

This paper describes and critiques a study tour to China of undergraduate and postgraduate business students in a large business faculty in a university with an emerging focus on internationalisation through building links with global business and industry. The study tour was designed to fit with the emerging trend towards internationalisation of business education wherein universities perceive themselves as being international universities based in one city rather than city-based universities who have international students. The literature on the difficulties of cross-cultural understanding and adjustment when business people sojourn to other countries is well documented. Yet, the same difficulties being encountered by students on short-term cultural immersion tours are yet to be adequately documented. This paper serves to address this gap in the literature by examining the experiences of 50 Australian and international students when confronted with a three week immersion into China's business, cultural and social practices. The paper explores the contributions of the study tour to academic understanding of globalisation.

Developing a culturally competent work force: an opportunity for collaboration.

This article describes a collaborative project formed between three major community systems--education, health care, and the business sector--to respond to the specialized cultural needs of a growing Hispanic population in a large public health care system in Dallas, TX. Two specific strategies, short-term cultural immersion and the development of a nurse exchange program with a "sister" hospital in Mexico, assist health care personnel to learn the language and the culture of Mexico. Findings from process evaluation suggest that these initiatives are essential and beneficial to changing individual views and developing knowledge and skills. Community partnerships requiring a significant commitment to a continuum of efforts from top administrative levels to the individual level facilitate institutional responses to the challenge of developing a culturally skilled health work force.