Pedagogies that foster undergraduate students’ intercultural sensitivity development: A case study in Hong Kong

This paper reports a qualitative study on pedagogies that foster intercultural sensitivity development in a general education course in ta tertiary institution in Hong Kong. Interventions of Hofstede's (2001) five cultural dimensions and multiple teaching strategies, such as narrative writing, group learning, movie watching, etc. were applied to stimulate undergraduates' intercultural sensitivity development. Undergraduate's self-reported learning outcomes and their perceptions of the impact of the teaching strategies were then collected through individual interviews. It was found that: 1)these interventions have resulted in a higher level of intercultural sensitivity among undergraduates; 2) narrative writing is an effective teaching strategy to encourage undergraduates to reflect on their own cultural values and essay writing is very useful in stimulating students to think deeply and actively on cultural difference issues; 3) the intentional combination of strategies in the stage of minimization and acceptance is imperative to motivate students' development, so is the sequencing of strategies based upon Bennett's model (1993). Copyright © 2013 Alternation.