Intercultural Knowledge in Homogenous Community Colleges
The foci of this doctoral research were whether community college students in homogenous, rural community colleges are being educated in intercultural acceptance, diversity, and alternative perspectives and, if so, how the community colleges are assessing these items. These two statements are conceptually different but are intertwined from an empirical perspective. The connectedness intersects because community colleges will only know whether they are educating on intercultural knowledge if they assess this outcome institutionally. The hypothesis of this research was that a majority of homogenous, rural, accredited community colleges were including intercultural competency language in their institutional student learning outcomes. The data collected established that of the 54 colleges examined, 57.40% had student-learning outcomes that specifically acknowledged intercultural knowledge terms. Thus, the majority of colleges examined did establish institutional student learning outcomes regarding the importance of intercultural knowledge. The results of this research include categorical and descriptive information, as well as a subsequent quantitative statistical analysis and qualitative coding of major themes. This mixed methods study includes an informational training on the development of an institutional student learning outcome assessment process that specifically addresses intercultural knowledge and competency. Higher education institutions can use the training to inform their decision-making on cultural competency institutional students learning outcomes and how to devise an outcomes assessment process. Keywords: Intercultural knowledge and competency, cultural diversity, intercultural experience, and worldview.
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