Written by Kate Naidu (University of Notre Dame Australia)
As a former secondary school language teacher, I had long held an interest in how people learn about culture and how they might develop intercultural capacities (sometimes referred to by other names, such as intercultural understanding, cultural competence, cross-cultural awareness etc). It was a research project with secondary school teachers of Indonesian language that sparked my interest in how first-hand experiences of a country might contribute to the way we think about cultural difference, and develop intercultural communication skills. This interest took shape as my doctoral research project, which examined the experiences of Australian university students taking part in study abroad programs in Indonesia.
For this project, I was fortunate to be able to collaborate with the Australian Consortium for In-Country Indonesian Studies (Acicis), recruiting participants from two of their semester-long in-country programs: the Flexible Language Immersion Program, and the Development Studies Immersion Program. Both of these programs are based in Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia. The participants came from a variety of universities all over Australia, from a range of disciplines, and with varying degrees of fluency in the national language of Indonesia, Bahasa Indonesia. There was also a range of age groups represented in the participant sample, from 19 through to students in their fifties.
To understand the experiences of these students in relation to the potential development of intercultural capacities, a qualitative approach to data collection was employed. It was important to me to capture data over the course of the study-abroad program cycle, to gain insight into the processual nature of learning that might occur. An embodied approach to the research was also important, grounded in an understanding that intercultural capacities involve more than just cognitive understandings. The study addresses the assumption held by some (both within and beyond academia) that study abroad will automatically make people more open-minded, able to relate to people from diverse cultural backgrounds etc. That is, rather than taking for granted that time abroad would have a pedagogic impact, I was interested in documenting the nature, and degree, of such pedagogic impact.
Based on these aims, the methodological approach of the study involved semi-structured interviews with the participants before, during, and after their time in Yogyakarta. In addition to these interviews, focus groups were conducted with the students during the first week of their stay, to capture their initial impressions, and processes of settling in the new context. I visited the participants twice during their time in Yogyakarta, not only to conduct the interviews and focus groups, but to observe the orientation program, and to ‘tag along’ on other activities they were involved in. These data collection methods with the main group of participants (16 students in total), were supplemented with interviews with Acicis staff, and focus groups with some of the pendamping (local Indonesian university students that were recruited as ‘student buddies’ to assist the Australian students). The result? A wealth of rich, detailed qualitative data which demonstrated the complexity and diversity in the modes, and degrees, of learning taking place.
As I analysed the data, several themes emerged, which became the basis for the chapters in my book: pedagogy, temporality, the accumulation of homeliness, and culture. Each of these themes represent a significant element of the students’ experiences in-country, intersecting with the way they make sense of the new cultural context and find ways of navigating it. Interestingly, as I spoke with the participants over the course of their experience, I noticed that they often drew connections between their past experiences (of education, travel, family etc) and their experiences in Yogyakarta. I began to use the notion of habitus – elaborated by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu – to analyse these student experiences. This helped me to grapple with how the sedimentation of past experiences shapes us and, therefore, the way we respond to the world around us. This also assisted me in understanding why some participants made more significant gains, in terms of developing intercultural capacities, than others. There was much evidence in the data to suggest the laborious nature of this pedagogic work; labour that was embodied, but also social and emotional. Ultimately, what my participants taught me, through their generous sharing of time and experience, is that the development of reflexivity is key to interculturality. Reflecting on the study-abroad experience (or any cross cultural encounter for that matter), is important. But situating that reflection in relation to broader global and societal discourses (such as poverty, gender, and race) is vital if we are to move towards critical understandings of culture and cultural difference.
- This post is based on my recently published book with Springer, Embodying Intercultural Capacities: The Pedagogic Impact of Study Abroad.
Further reading:
Naidu, K. (2025). Embodying Intercultural Capacities: The Pedagogic Impact of Study Abroad
Naidu, K. (2023). ‘You just get used to waiting’: Exploring the temporal dimensions of in-country educational experiences
Naidu, K. (2023). Toward reflexivity: Critical reflections on “Race” and “Whiteness” in the context of study abroad. In Handbook of critical whiteness: Deconstructing dominant discourses across disciplines (pp. 1-16). Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore.
Author bio:
Kate Naidu is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Notre Dame Australia. She completed her PhD at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University. Her research interests include linguistic and cultural diversity, interculturality, Learning Abroad, and the application of Bourdieu’s theoretical framework.