International Journal of Educational

Science and Research (IJESR)

ISSN(P): 2249-6947; ISSN(E): 2249-8052
Vol. 6, Issue 5, Oct 2016, 1-10
TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.

A STUDY ON THE MENTORS INTERCULTURAL

COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCES THROUGH
MULTICULTURAL STUDENTS MENTORING EXPERIENCE
OH, SE KYUNG
Convergence Institute for Asian Multicultural Studies, Inha University, Korea
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study is to examine how the mentors intercultural communicative competences are
cultivated through multicultural students mentoring. To this end, qualitative research methods such as e-mail interviews
and face-to-face in-depth interviews were used targeting a total of 7 college student mentors who participated in the I
University multicultural mentoring program. Collected data were analyzed by using the continuous comparison method
of Strauss and Corbin(1990). As a result, we found three experience types of 1) Intercultural understanding, 2)
Entering into relationships with others 3) Role as a cultural mediator. If connecting these three experience types with
elements of intercultural communication, it was found that mentors found cultural differences, experienced

conflict problem solving ability through multicultural students mentoring activities.

KEYWORDS: Multicultural Students, Mentoring, Intercultural Communication Competences, Mentor, Mentee

Received: Jun 03, 2016; Accepted: Aug 12, 2016; Published: Aug 25, 2016; Paper Id.: IJESROCT20161

Original Article

intercultural understanding and multicultural respect and played a role as a cultural mediator and enhanced their

INTRODUCTION
Background/ Objectives and Goals
Entering multicultural society and global era, we came to have more frequent and diverse
opportunities of contact and exchanges with people with different cultural backgrounds. As of 2015, there are
1,741,919 foreigners living in Korea in Korean society and the importance of inter-cultural exchanges
understanding and communicating with other cultures is being further highlight (Ministry of the Interior, 2015). It
implies that intercultural understanding and communication is the unavoidable topic in global village era. As
there are more and more opportunities to communicate with people with different cultural backgrounds even in
daily life, school etc., intercultural communication problems arising from intercultural prejudices,
misunderstandings occur. In particular, intercultural communicative competences are required in order to
minimize problems that may arise in the intercultural communication process and facilitate communication.
Intercultural communicative competences are the essential qualities of a modern society in addition to the
linguistic aspects and mean the intercultural mediation ability to not only understand other cultural backgrounds
but mediate intercultural interlocutors (Kim, 2007). In a similar perspective, Lee (2011) defines intercultural
communicative competences as Composite of various sub-skills required for adequate, efficient exchange and
communication in a situation facing cultural contact and interpersonal contact, the interpersonal behavior with a
continuous, dynamic structure. That is, intercultural communicative competences are the capability to recognize

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Oh, Se Kyung

and understand different cultural differences and take the appropriate action for the situation and the competences to cross
cultures (Rothman, 2007).
Then, what are the communication competences required in intercultural communicative? Although no consensus
has been derived yet about this question, intercultural communicative competences factors argued by several scholars can
be summarized as follows: Hyun(2010) classified factors related to intercultural communication competences into
sensitivity to others, language and literacy, multicultural problem solving ability and Chen(1989) divided them into four
levels such as personal properties, communicative competences, psychological adaptation and cultural cognition.
Fantini(2005) thought that they consist of linguistic skills, social skills, open attitude, ethnocentric attitude, knowledge of
other cultures, interactive recognition. Also, factors related to intercultural communicative competences were structured to
cognitive, emotional, and behavioral levels in a broad sense(Bloom, 1956). Cognitive, emotional, behavioral levels,
Bloom(1956)s approach is a suitable method to be used as a classification system to identify the overall structure of
intercultural communicative competences(Arasaratnam & Doerfel, 2005). Therefore, this study transformed and utilized
the three level methods presented by Bloom (1956).
Table 1: Elements of Intercultural Communicative Competences
Aspects
Cognitive
Emotional
Behavioral

Elements
Cultural diversity awareness, Understanding of the others,
Cultural understanding
Openness, Empathy, Respect, Self-efficacy, Sympathy,
Satisfaction,
Multicultural Sensitivity, Self-esteem
Culture shock coping, Interpersonal problem solving competence,
Cultural Practice

Previous studies on intercultural communicative competences include A Study on Development and Application
of Intercultural Training and Learning Programs (Kwon, 2010; Kim & Chung, 2006; Kim & Min, 2014), A Study on
Measures for Intercultural Communication competences Enhancement (Bae, 2014), An Intercultural Communication Study
on Cultural Adaptation of Chinese living in Korea (Lee & Chang, 2011), A Study on Cultural Differences between Korea
and Brazil and Intercultural Communication (Lee, 2010), A Study on Intercultural communicative Performance Capability
(Lee, 2011) etc. Previous studies conducted in the meantime are of significance as an attempt to build a basic foundation
for intercultural communicative competences but are limited in terms of not including the empirical side about intercultural
communicative competences.
As reported in existing previous studies, intercultural communicative competences can be cultivated through
programs such as studying abroad, international cultural experience, international exchange students etc. rather than being
innate qualities (Kim & Jeong, 2006). In particular, as measures to promote intercultural communicative competences,
multicultural students mentoring can be given as an example. Multicultural students mentoring is a program providing
earning, career, emotional support targeting multicultural family children. multicultural students mentoring was started as a
pilot project and has been operated in 70 elementary and secondary schools since 2006 and the project was expanded to
universities nationwide and 42 universities, 3,736 mentors in 2011 and 80 universities, 6,919 mentors in 2014 participated
in it.

Impact Factor (JCC):4.5129

NAAS Rating: 2.72

A Study on the Mentors Intercultural Communicative Competences

Through Multicultural Students Mentoring Experience

Currently, the multicultural students mentoring project centering on the Ministry of Education is comprehensively
operated by the Korea Student Aid Foundation. Looking at multicultural mentoring-related research trends, multicultural
students mentoring participants interest in relationship formation, multicultural resources and multicultural variables was
found to increase as expanding from the individual approach to the scientific-systematic approach. More and more
representative domestic studies focus on intercultural competence and possibility of social practice of multicultural
mentoring (Lim & Kim, 2014; Lim & Park, 2015), A Study on Supervision of University Mentors participating in
multicultural students Mentoring Project (Kim & Kim, 2012) etc.
In the case of overseas, on the other hand, studies on mentoring have been carried out around U.S. Australia and
U. K. which are multiracial countries and empirical studies are dominant. In particular, foreign multicultural mentoring
studies found specific multicultural variable factors and the difference between the factors and performed research on
relationship duration, correlation between social factors and role of mentoring participants etc.
Various areas are discussed such as a study on the effect of race, gender, recognition similarities and contact in the
relationship with mentor (Ensher & Murphy, 1997), a study on mentoring and individual differences depending on gender,
race, development, risk factors (Darling, Bogat, Cavell, Murphy & Snchez, 2006), a study on the relationship between
diversity and youth mentoring (Liang & Grossman, 2007), a mentoring study in school life considering diverse
population(Sedlacek, Benjamin, Schlosser, & Sheu, 2007), a study on skills of various interactions of mentoring members
and the effects (Kopcha, 2010; Russell, 2011; Tolbert, 2015 etc.), a study on the effect of reflective knowledge of
mentoring on personal life and society (Hu & Ma, 2010; Herrera, Kauh, & McMaken 2011) etc.
As discussed in domestic and foreign previous studies, multicultural students mentoring can be effective in terms
of enabling students to have a multicultural broad view and achieve the reflective growth and development through the
social relations of the mentor and mentee(Lim & Kim, 2014). As shown above, the process where each of mentor and
mentee is changed into the subject of the social growth while exchanging positive effects in multicultural students
mentoring can be described as a process of cultural communication where each member experiences cultural contact,
cultural conflict, cultural reflection and introspection through multicultural students mentoring.
Focusing on this point, the purpose of this study is to examine how intercultural communicative competences of
the mentor are cultivated through multicultural students mentoring. We especially approached the value found in
multicultural students mentoring activities of the mentor in terms of intercultural communication. Thus, the question of this
study is What are the mentors intercultural communicative competences that can be cultivated through multicultural
students mentoring experience? Therefore, this study conducted qualitative interviews targeting mentors highly evaluated
in multicultural students mentoring activities and derived composition factors of intercultural communicative competences
cultivated for mentor by deeply analyzing multicultural students mentoring experiences of mentors. This approach is
significant in terms of enabling to strengthen the multicultural competency of mentors who experienced reflective
introspection on existing prejudices through multicultural students mentoring activities and fostering a glocal point of view
as an extended perspective looking at the world and high capacity for various cultures.

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Oh, Se Kyung

METHODS
Selection of Search Participants
This study selected 8 university students who have participated in the multicultural students mentoring program
carried out by I University located in I Region as a mentor. In selecting study participants, the study was conducted
targeting 7 people elected as excellent mentors by the project group in 2015 in order to select study participants who can
represent the characteristics of this study best. Characteristics of the research participants are as shown in <Table 2>.
Table 2: Characteristics of Research Participants
Division

Age

Mentor A
Mentor B
Mentor C
Mentor D
Mentor E
Mentor F
Mentor G

25
23
26
26
23
23
24

Gender
Male
Female
Male
Male
Female
Female
Male

Mentees
Age
16
16
20
16
19
9
19

Nationality of Mentees
Parents
Mother: China
Mother: Cambodia
Father/Mother: China
Father/Mother: NK
Mother: China
Mother: China
Mother: China

Mentoring Time
192
210
116
157
145
134
106

Data Collection and Analysis

Data utilized in this study were mainly collected through email interviews and in-depth interviews with study
participants. The email interview collection period was from January 27 to January 29, 2015 and in-depth interviews were
carried out in order to supplement the email interviews and conducted from January 29 to February 12, 2015. It took about
50-80 minutes for each study participant to do an in-depth interview depending on the context in which the conversation is
in progress. Besides, best case presentations and counselling journal in a final mentoring briefing (January 27, 2015) held
in I University oo Center were consulted and used as study materials. Data were analyzed by using the continuous
comparison method of Strauss and Corbin(1990). Repeating and reviewing the transcribed original data constantly, the
researcher extracted and coded meaningful concepts that meet the study objective by considering the meaning and context
of a sentence. Comparing the derived concepts, the researcher constructed categories by grouping similar contents together.
To ensure the ethical severity of this study, the credibility of the study was ensured by increasing the validity and reliability
of this study with five strategies of reliability, transition probability, auditability, identifiability, theoretical sensitivity
(Oh, Kim, & Bekboeva, (2015).

RESULTS
Intercultural Understanding
The interview results of study participants about Intercultural understanding can be summarized as follows:
Study participants said they were not interested in multiculturalism, multicultural family children, immigrants before acting
as a mentor in multicultural students mentoring. Study participants mentioned that they had a closed mind for
multiculturalism because they actually have never met multicultural families directly. They just encountered the
multicultural-related information through university lectures or recognized the contents reproduced through the media. A
specific multicultural discourse reproduced through the media becomes a base to infuse preconceptions and prejudice
against multiculturalism into study participants.

Impact Factor (JCC):4.5129

NAAS Rating: 2.72

A Study on the Mentors Intercultural Communicative Competences

Through Multicultural Students Mentoring Experience

Multiculturalism? I was not interested. I heard related stories in university lectures. I also heard about it in the
media but multiculturalism did not leave a good impression. (Mentor F)
Directly exchanging with multicultural family children, their mentees through multicultural students mentoring,
however, study participants came to have an open mind for multiculturalism. This is interpreted that they are
communicating with their mentees while avoiding ethnic-centered behavior without being bound by stereotypes in
intercultural contact situations.
I am positive about multiculturalism. They are cheerful. I thought they might be depressed in discrimination but I
was wrong. I realized I looked at multicultural family students with a prejudice. (Mentor E)
Also, in order to collect information related to the cultural background of the mentee, study participants conducted
an interview with the mentees teacher or investigated related books and articles etc. Through this process of acquiring
information on multicultural family students, study participants came to recognize the cultural diversity and have
judgement competences on cultural information.
I searched materials a lot because I was also curious. They went through various hardships. They have such an
experience of hanging between life and death....It is a communist country so.... (Mentor D)
Such an open mind for multiculturalism can be discussed as sensitivity to others. Multicultural sensitivity to
others is possible by the 'expansion of mind' (Hyeon, 2010) and we can see study participants efforts trying to recognize
the reason of the cultural differences that may occur in communication with the mentee. Therefore, study participants came
to have Intercultural competences through multicultural students mentoring experience. The intercultural ability means
skills to learn cultural context, situation, relationship of other cultures and facilitate the understanding among community
members of other cultures.
Entering into Relationships with Others
The interview results of study participants on Entering into relationships with others can be summarized as
follows: Study participants said that it was difficult to form a relationship in the early days of mentoring because the
mentee revealed passive disposition, shyness about the first meeting and hostility. They said, however, trust could be
formed through the ongoing dialogue with the mentee after that. In particular, in order to build a relationship with the
mentee, Mentor 7 wrote his own information about himself and read the information together and tried to draw empathy
with the mentee based on the written information.
At first the mentee did not like me. He hardly said and answered carelessly. So I thought it should not be done
this way. Giving a blank sheet to the mentee, I asked him to write about each other. Hobbies, or likes etc... (Participant G)
Study participants also mentioned that they visited Incheon Student Science Center, Seoul History Museum,
Korea National Police Heritage Museum, one of cultural and artistic activities with their mentee. Mentors searched data
with their mentee in the selection of cultural and artistic activities and selected places focusing on the interests of the
mentee through constant communication. Mentors also said that selecting cultural and artistic space they have never visited
and arranging time with their mentee not unilaterally came to mentors themselves as meaningful time. Mentoring continues
a positive relationship between mentor and mentee in terms of respecting, considering and adjusting what individuals are
pursuing and others' opinions. Furthermore, the trust is formed through the positive relationship with the mentee. As

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Oh, Se Kyung

Mentor B mentioned, study participants are interpreted to stick to a community perspective as a member of Korean society
rather than distinguishing the relationship with multicultural family students.
We visited Incheon Student Science Center, Seoul History Museum, Korean National Police Heritage Museum.
We tried to adjust the interests of each other. There was also conflict with the mentee but I respected the mentees opinion
first. (Mentor D)
Not different at all. Sometimes I feel the difference but it is strange to think you and I are different beings.
The mentee is a good friend to me. (Mentor B)
Eventually, recognizing we all, not we and they, are the subjects of the multicultural society and reorganizing
the way of life according to it, that is, switching our consciousness, we should develop intercultural communication skills
of developing mutual understanding and respect for diverse cultures, overcoming prejudices and making tolerance as the
basic.
Role as a Cultural Mediator
Study participants explained to their mentee about Korea's military culture, university culture they experienced.
Also, Mentor C said that he participated in 8.15 the Liberation Day celebrations held in Gwanghwamun with his mentee
so that the mentee can easily understand the meaning of Korea's Liberation Day. Explaining National Liberation Day
containing important implications for Korea to the mentee, Mentor Cs pride in Korean culture and satisfaction of giving
help as a messenger for Korea Culture were found to be higher. Furthermore, self-esteem of college students is
significantly lower in Korean society where youth unemployment is emerging. However, regarding themselves as a being
with the capacity to be helpful to the society through mentoring activities, study participants are interpreted to restore selfefficacy and self-esteem.
I explained to my mentee about National Liberation Day or Constitution Day and also participated in events. I
conducted it because I thought if my mentee learns and knows the history about why Koreans do not work on these days,
why Koreans designate and celebrate these days as holidays, he will understand the culture. (Mentor C)
Also, study participants experienced conflict and shock in the communication process with their mentee but
negotiated about it and tried to arrange an alternative to unforeseen circumstances.

CONCLUSIONS
As shown above, this study could find three types of experience of 1) Intercultural understanding, 2) Entering
into relationships with others, 3) Role as a cultural mediator through the analysis of intercultural communication
experience of mentors who participated in multicultural mentoring. These three types of experience can be connected to the
elements of intercultural communication as follows: But, various elements of intercultural communication can be
corresponding to one experience type and such correspondence can be interpreted in various ways depending on where the
researcher puts the standards and therefore, study participants experience types were classified into cognitive area,
affective area, the behavioral area and only the elements determined to be representative among components of
intercultural communication skills were selected and recorded in <Table 3>.

Impact Factor (JCC):4.5129

NAAS Rating: 2.72

A Study on the Mentors Intercultural Communicative Competences

Through Multicultural Students Mentoring Experience

Table 3: Experienced Type of Intercultural Communicative Competences of the Typical Elements

Experienced Type
Intercultural
Understanding

Entering into relationships

with others

Role as a cultural
mediator

Contents
With an open mind in closed
minds
Obtaining information related to
the cultural background of the
mentee

Intercultural Communicative Competences

Cognitive
Cultural diversity awareness
Openness, Multicultural
Emotional
sensitivity
Behavioral

Culture shock coping

Sympathy of
mentors and mentees
Through the
Generosity overcome
personal prejudices

Cognitive

Cultural pride in Korea

Self-efficacy and
self-esteem recovery
through the teaching

Cognitive

Understanding of the others

Empathy, Respect,
Sympathy
Interpersonal problem solving
competence
Cultural understanding
Self-efficacy, self-esteem,
Satisfaction,
Cultural practice

Emotional
Behavioral

Emotional
Behavioral

Based on <Table 3>, the cultivation of intercultural communicative competences of mentors who participated in
multicultural students mentoring can be concluded as follows: Intercultural communicative competences of all participants
have been cultivated as priori learning and informal learning through multicultural North Korean refugee students
mentoring activities. Although study participants themselves did not recognize directly that their intercultural
communicative competences have been cultivated, they found cultural differences, experienced intercultural understanding
and multicultural respect, performed a role as a cultural mediator and conflict problem solving power was enhanced
through multicultural students mentoring activities.
This way, through mentoring activities, mentors and mentees understand cultural diversity and various cultural
contexts, with the understanding of others and other cultures they become aware of the mutually equal relation. Hereby,
from the relationships with their mentees, mentors come to regard the value of respect to each other. Namely, the
intercultural communication competence of mentors calls for communication ability between cultures, and mutual respect
is needed in an open attitude about others and other cultures.
Such results lead to multicultural growth thanks to the positive interaction between university students who are
multicultural mentoring participants and multicultural children. Thus, the intercultural communication competence,
cultural knowledge, knowledge, value and functions of multicultural mentoring participant mentors will be able to change
actively. Hereby, multicultural mentoring is significant as a provider of education contents for multicultural education
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Through Multicultural Students Mentoring Experience

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research
Foundation of Korea (NRF-2015S1A5A2A03048350)

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