Putting Intercultural Competency Into Action

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In a joint program with the Asia Society, we’ll be learning more about their Story Circles program, created to cultivate intercultural competencies and to build bridges of understanding between the U.S. and China. International education has been a means to promote mutual cultural understanding through cultural exploration, work opportunities, and productivity in multicultural environments. Today, many obstacles are interfering with cultural communication between the U.S. and China. The current geopolitical environment between the two states has been exacerbated by the pandemic, and previous methods for intercultural communication such as study abroad opportunities and international conferences, have needed to be put on hold indefinitely. Asia Society has found a unique solution to this problem.

A new and successful method to bridge cultural gaps between Chinese and American students, currently employed at the Asia Society, is the UNESCO story-circle method. Enjoy this replay as we hear from Dr. Darla Deardorff, creator of the Story Circle methodology and author of its manual, as she describes the methodology and its theoretical and practical ties. Later we’ll hear from Frank Wong and Dr. Frank Dolce as they share how they’ve applied this methodology to be used specifically at the Asia Society. Following the duo, will be four students who have piloted the Story Circle method at Asia Society to share their testimonials. The event concludes with a Q&A session from the audience.

Featured speaker - Darla Deardorff 

Executive Director of the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA)

Author of UNESCO's Story Circle Methodology

Darla K. Deardorff

Darla K. Deardorff is Executive Director of the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA). In addition, she is a research scholar at Duke University's Social Science Research Institute and holds faculty positions at universities in several countries including as a research associate at Nelson Mandel University (S. Africa), Meiji University (Japan), Shanghai International Studies University (China) and adjunct faculty at North Carolina State University. She is on the faculty of Harvard University's Global Education Think Tank,  and has served as faculty for Harvard's Future of Learning Institute as well as the Summer Institute of Intercultural Communication in Portland, OR.  With over 20 years of experience in international education, she has also held national leadership positions with NAFSA and with Forum on Education Abroad. Author/editor of 7 books and over 50 book chapters and articles, her publications include The Sage Handbook of Intercultural Competence (Sage, 2009),  Sage Handbook of International Higher Education, (Sage, 2012)  Building Cultural Competence (Stylus, 2012), Demystifying Outcome Assessment for International Educators (Stylus 2015), and Intercultural Competence in Higher Education: International Approaches, Assessment and Application (Routledge, 2017).  She regularly gives invited talks, trainings and workshops around the world on intercultural competence, international education assessment and global leadership and serves as a consultant and trainer on these topics, including with UNESCO and OECD. The intercultural competence models developed from her research are being used in numerous countries and she is recipient of several awards related to her work. Founder of ICC Global, her areas of specialty include cross-cultural training, assessment and evaluation, teacher/faculty preparation/development, curriculum internationalization, global leadership, and intercultural coaching. She received her master’s and doctorate degrees from North Carolina State University.

Darla Deardorff Bio

Manual for Developing Intercultural Competencies - by Darla K. Deardorff

This book presents a structured yet flexible methodology for developing intercultural competence in a variety of contexts, both formal and informal.

Event Host

Frank M. Dolce, PhD.

Director of Networks and Engagement, Asia Society

Frank M. Dolce, PhD.

Frank M. Dolce is the Director of Networks and Engagement at Asia Society in New York City, where his work is focused on facilitating meaningful engagement between diverse students from Asia and the United States. Frank leverages his PhD background as a sociolinguist and conversation analyst to design digital ecosystems where diverse students come together to cultivate intercultural competency. Having worked as a Mandarin language teacher and professor for over a decade, Frank creates supportive environments where intercultural engagement fuels second language learning. Frank began learning Mandarin as an undergraduate and is committed to pushing the next generation of Americans to share his passion for intercultural exploration, as well as the bilingualism that supports it. 

Frank M. Dolce Bio

Organized by

Co-organized by

Outreach Partners

The Chinese Language Teachers Association, USA

About Asia Society Bridge –  Asia Society has joined forces with US-China Strong Foundation to spearhead a new initiative, Asia Society Bridge, focused on facilitating dynamic intercultural engagement between diverse students interested in China and diverse Chinese students. The flagship event of Asia Society Bridge is a bi-weekly, bilingual “Story Circle” session where diverse Chinese and American students are placed into small groups together to share stories with one another, and to critically reflect on the things that they learn from this intercultural engagement. Beyond these virtual “Story Circles”, Asia Society Bridge also enables its diverse network of students to watch and read stories (of their peers) bilingually across a range of digital platforms, with these stories serving as a means of helping our network to further cultivate intercultural competence (as well as second language skills). 

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