What is it about?
This field experiment compared whether students in an intercultural communication course reported more trust in and receptivity towards two African-American students, compared to students in control courses.
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Why is it important?
Educators assume, but rarely assess, whether diversity education makes a difference in how people respond to cultural Others. The results of this experiment suggest that the answer is, "yes!". Additionally, we found that the difference it makes is also accompanied by changes in student beliefs about meritocracy. Increasing levels of trust in and receptivity toward cultural others was correlated with decreasing beliefs in descriptive meritocracy (e.g., people get what they deserve).
Perspectives
I had intuited that our pedagogy was having this effect, so the results were a nice confirmation. Moreover, the results indicate that intercultural educators need to pay (more) attention to student ideology, because it seems to be key!
Professor Aaron Cargile
California State University Long Beach
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: What’s hard work got to do with it? Diversity course impact on meritocracy beliefs and dialogue about race, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, January 2019, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijintrel.2018.10.005.
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