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Research Methods in Intercultural Communication introduces and contextualizes the most important methodological issues in the field for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students. Examples of these issues are which paradigms and how to research multilingually, interculturally and ethnically. * Provides the first dedicated and most comprehensivevolume on research methods in intercultural communication research in the last 30 years * Explains new and emerging methods, as well as more established ones. These include: Matched Guise Technique, Discourse Completion Task, Critical Incident Technique, Critical Discourse Analysis, Ethnography, Virtual Ethnography, Corpus Analysis, Multimodality, Conversation Analysis, Narrative Analysis, Questionnaire and Interview. * Assists readers in determining the most suitable method for various research questions, conceptualizing the research process, interpreting results, and drawing conclusions * Supports students from start to finish with key terms, suggestions for further reading, research summaries, and sound guidance from experienced scholars and researchers

The rapid growth of Sino-Foreign Cooperative Education Programs highlights the critical role of intercultural competence (IC) for Chinese students studying abroad. While extensive research exists on domestic contexts, empirical studies on Chinese students’ experiences at foreign partner institutions remain scarce. This study addresses this gap by examining the intercultural competence of Chinese students in these programs and identifying key factors influencing their development. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study surveyed 130 Chinese students in Ireland and conducted WeChat video interviews with 16 participants. The results indicate that Chinese students generally exhibit moderately high levels of IC. Language proficiency, intercultural training, and intercultural contact experiences were significantly and positively associated with IC, while gender showed no significant correlation. These findings highlight the complex interplay of factors shaping intercultural competence in international education. The study offers valuable insights for educators and policymakers to improve intercultural training and support in Sino-Foreign Cooperative Education Programs. It also fills a key research gap by providing empirical evidence on Chinese students’ intercultural experiences abroad, laying the groundwork for future research and practical improvements.

PurposeA significant body of research has now been accumulated in the intercultural service encounter (ICSE) literature. However, no study to date has provided scholars and practitioners with a systematic review to map and better understand the ICSE domain.Design/methodology/approachTo fill this gap, the authors systematically review and critically examine the state of academic research on ICSE.FindingsBased on a systematic review of 31 journal articles published over the last two decades, the results illustrate that ICSE research is a vibrant and rapidly growing stream of the broader international business domain, and it is topically and methodologically diverse. This review also identifies significant knowledge gaps related to the adoption of different theoretical orientations by researchers examining ICSE at different levels of analysis, a lack of contextual positioning, as well as poor methodological rigor.Originality/valueBased on the findings, the authors introduce a multilevel and multidisciplinary conceptual framework that integrates the concepts of emotional intelligence (EI) and intercultural communication competence (ICC) as the key variables that explain trust development during the interaction between two key culturally different stakeholders: service providers (employees) and service receivers (customers). Finally, the authors discuss the contributions and implications for both academics and practitioners.

This investigation identifies contextual characteristics associated with meaningful intercultural interactions between domestic students enrolled in a 13-week intercultural communication course and international students. After participating in an international student welcome and games event and three cultural encounters, domestic students completed post-activity reflection surveys that included a quality intercultural interaction scale and open-ended contextual questions. This mixed-method, convergent design approach employed factor analysis to assess the quantitative scale and utilized process and magnitude coding procedures for the qualitative data. Results suggest that meaningful intercultural interactions tend to occur when students have the opportunity to discover commonalities and experience cultural exchanges during unforced, natural, and enjoyable initial encounters. Additionally, self-disclosure, cultural learning, and personal growth characterize meaningful intercultural encounters with longer duration. These findings provide several recommendations for universities, administrators, and educators seeking to facilitate meaningful initial interactions and prolonged encounters between domestic and international students. This study also offers theoretical implications regarding intercultural relationship development and the role that domestic students play in creating a receptive host environment. Finally, this research introduces a newly developed quality intercultural interaction instrument that international educators can use to evaluate, compare, and enhance intercultural learning interventions.

Virtual exchange (VE) is an umbrella term used to refer to the engagement of groups of students in sustained online intercultural interaction and collaboration with international partners under the guidance of their teachers. In the computer-assisted language learning literature, telecollaboration and eTandem approaches to VE have been researched extensively. However, this research has principally focused to date on learner gains and the impact on teachers has been much less explored. This paper identifies the impact of VE on foreign language teachers’ practices and their professional development by examining the results of a qualitative study of 31 teacher trainers who engaged their classes in VE projects as part of a large-scale European project. The findings of the study suggest that participation in VE projects provides teachers with valuable experience in continued professional development and methodological innovation. In particular, VE was seen to open up opportunities for teachers to develop new professional partnerships, collaborative academic initiatives, to develop their own online collaboration skills, and also to introduce more innovative approaches in their current teaching practice.

Intercultural competence (ICC) is now widely recognized as essential to living and working in an increasingly globalized and multicultural world. As a result, considerable attention and resources are devoted to programs for enhancing and assessing ICC, particularly within post-secondary institutions. Concomitantly, these efforts have spurred a massive increase in the volume of publications focused on fostering students’ ICC.  Yet, recently, researchers and practitioners have raised concerns about the potential for ethnocultural bias in ICC models and measures, in that they tend to have Western-centric, dominant-culture origins and orientations.  Such bias would have significant conceptual, methodological, and ethical implications.  This paper first identifies and details potential sources of ethnocultural bias in assessing students’ ICC, including those that result from ambiguity in the conceptualization of intercultural, as well as from criteria for competence that center on frequency and enjoyment of intercultural contact, low ethnocentrism, intercultural knowledge, and level of confidence in intercultural interactions. Then, applying cross-cultural research methodology, this paper proposes employing an emic-etic approach to investigating and minimizing such bias. This approach combines strategies for assessing the universality of ICC components with the search for culture-specific and context-specific variations to attain greater inclusivity, accuracy, and functionality of ICC models and measures. 

Studies that explored intercultural competence in tele collaborative projects mostly integrated their intercultural learning activities in language learning context, and other learning contexts were neglected by researchers. In the present study, we aimed to address this gap by integrating intercultural learning and information literacy learning. We established a common learning space in which students from China and Indonesia learned together to build their information literacy and intercultural competence. A learning activity was designed in which the participants took Informatics course to learn about VR Tour production. They created virtual tours about local cultural attractions, presented them to their foreign peers, and then discussed how tours of each other can be improved. We investigated whether our learning activity can facilitate information literacy about VR Tour production and intercultural competence development. Participants’ perceptions of VR Tour production technology were also explored. Mixed methods research approach was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data. Our results showed that the participants developed their information literacy about VR Tour production and their intercultural competence was promoted. In addition, the participants positively perceived VR Tour production technology. Based on the results, it is suggested that a common learning space can be established in which students from different countries can learn together to build up information literacy and intercultural competence. The findings of the present study can guide educators and researchers in their design of learning activities to help students develop intercultural competence and information literacy skills and use them for communication and exchange of culture-related information.

Purpose This study aims to examine the impact of intercultural learning and collaboration on two English as a world language teachers from South Korea and Taiwan within a virtual professional development program, emphasizing their evolving understanding of culture and interculturality and its implications for practice. Design/methodology/approach Utilizing qualitative research design, this study incorporates three sources of data: written reflections, online meetings and semistructured interviews. Data is examined through the cultural perspectives framework (Hall, Covarrubias and Kirschbaum, 2022) to analyze how teachers (re)frame culture and interculturality in English language teaching, specifically through the lens of interpretive, critical and socio-scientific perspectives. Findings The findings reveal that engaging in facilitated professional intercultural learning and collaboration enhances teachers’ perspectives and practices regarding cultural complexities in language classrooms. The study highlights the importance of reflective practice, collaborative professional learning and the adoption of multiple cultural perspectives. Originality/value This research enriches the field of intercultural education by advocating for a structured approach to teacher learning in bridging the gap between theory and practice. It uniquely applies Hall et al.’s (2022) ICS framework to analyze how teachers (re)frame culture and interculturality in English language teaching. The originality is in the in-depth analysis of the intricate dynamics of teacher learning and the transformative potential of intercultural collaboration.

Although various aspects of intercultural communication have been addressed in the works of various authors, there is still a lack of works that describe intercultural communication from the new viewpoint – in terms of effective intercultural business interaction, theoretical analysis of models of the classification of cultures, and combination of theoretical and practical insights in overcoming the obstacles of intercultural interaction. There is also a lack of works that highlight creativity as an integral part of cross-cultural business communication. In the belief of the author of the article, without a close synthesis of these aspects, it is impossible to understand in detail the meaning of effective intercultural business interaction. Purpose of the article – to analyse theoretical and practical aspects of effective cross-cultural business communication based on creativity. In the article, through the use of the models of the classification of cultures of various researchers from around the world (Richard R. Gesteland, Edward T. Hall, Richard D. Lewis, Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede, Michael Minkov, Shalom H. Schwartz), the aspects of multiculturalism in the context of intercultural business interaction are highlighted. The work analyses creativity as an integral part of effective cross-cultural business communication. The publication also describes the barriers in the intercultural interaction and ways to overcome it. Research methods used in the work: systematic, comparative, logical analysis and synthesis of scientific literature. Article in English. Efektyvi kūrybinė tarpkultūrinė komunikacija dalykinio bendravimo kontekste: teoriniai ir praktiniai aspektai Santrauka Nors įvairūs tarpkultūrinės komunikacijos aspektai nagrinėti skirtingų autorių darbuose, iki šiol pasigendama darbų, nušviečiančių tarpkultūrinę komunikaciją naujame kontekste – nusakant efektyvų tarpkultūrinį dalykinį bendravimą, kultūrų klasifikavimo modelių teorinę analizę ir tarpkultūrinių bendravimo kliūčių įveikimą, derinant teorines bei praktines įžvalgas. Taip pat pasigendama darbų, kuriuose kūrybiškumas būtų nušviečiamas kaip sudėtinė tarpkultūrinės dalykinės komunikacijos dalis. Straipsnio autoriaus įsitikinimu, be glaudžios šių aspektų sintezės neįmanoma iš esmės suvokti veiksmingos tarpkultūrinės dalykinės komunikacijos prasmės. Straipsnio tikslas – išanalizuoti efektyvaus tarpkultūrinio dalykinio bendravimo, pagrįsto kūrybiškumu, teorinius ir praktinius aspektus. Straipsnyje, pasitelkiant įvairių pasaulio mokslininkų (Richardo R. Gestelando, Edwardo T. Hallo, Richardo D. Lewiso, Geerto Hofstede’s, Gerto Jano Hofstede’s, Michaelo Minkovo, Shalomo H. Schwartzo) kultūrų klasifikavimo modelius, atskleidžiami daugiakultūriškumo tarpkultūrinio dalykinio bendravimo kontekste aspektai. Darbe analizuojamas kūrybiškumas kaip sudėtinė efektyvios tarpkultūrinės dalykinės komunikacijos dalis. Publikacijoje taip pat nušviečiamos tarpkultūrinio bendravimo kliūtys ir jų įveikimo būdai. Darbe taikomi tyrimo metodai: mokslinės literatūros sisteminė, lyginamoji, loginė analizė ir sintezė. Reikšminiai žodžiai: tarpkultūrinio bendravimo kliūtys, kūrybiškumas, kultūra, tarpkultūrinė komunikacija, daugiakultūriškumas.