Elliot Steeves-
Professor of Spanish and Chair of LALACS studies K. Angelique Dwyer will give a talk today, Friday, Dec. 1st, entitled “Teachers Talk: Fostering Curiosity in an Antiracist Manner.” The session will be held in the St. Peter Room for Faculty at both 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.
The talk, on a research project by Dwyer entitled “Measuring Intercultural Competence via Community Engagement”, concerns the measurement of intercultural skills that students in Gustavus Spanish classes develop through community engagement. Through the Language Buddies program, Gustavus students volunteered for community engagement at various sites, including St Peter, Le Sueur, Le Center, and Cambria public schools.
When putting together a study on how students would engage with the program, Dwyer came up with six different areas students could score on Openness, Empathy, Worldview Framework, Curiosity, Cultural Self-Awareness, and Non-Verbal Communication.
“Because the world is becoming more diverse, it is more important to be respectful to each other, and get along,” Dwyer said. “It is one thing to be tolerant, and it is another to understand someone culturally and respect them because of that. Another key aspect of that is privilege; understanding it, and better understanding the role you play and the result.”
The talk on Friday will contain a series of charts and graphs detailing all of the findings. The most important finding, however, was that Gustavus students ranked quite low for Curiosity and Non-Verbal Communication.
“Curiosity is key toward whether someone wants to understand another culture,” Dwyer said. “A low score indicates, essentially, that you are either passive about wanting to learn another culture, or that you do but you are scared to come off as bigoted.”
This was a critical finding with implications for whether a student was engaged in any of the outreach programs at Gustavus, such as Language Buddies.
“Students are connecting their skills between English and Spanish,” Dwyer said. “They are paired with kids from Guatemala, Columbia, Central America, and Mexico. And at no point are they curious about how someone came to this country?”
Dwyer is certain that they are.
“They are either scared or passive about it,” Dwyer said. “[My main takeaway was that] I need to develop more assignments in class of what non-racist curiosity looks like.”
Some Gustavus students seem to fear that attempts to be curious about one’s culture might come across as a microaggression, or even a bigoted attack. Dwyer’s focus on Friday will concern how Gustavus can model curiosity in a positive, non-racist manner.
The talk will concern data compiled from students in Spanish classes from 2016 through 2019. The research was funded by a President’s Student Faculty Grant and was done with the written reflections of over 381 students.
Two students were immensely helpful to Dwyer. Junior Cosette Melton Hanily measured the anonymous reflections against the scoring rubric. Senior Lauren Lambert created all of the graphs within Dwyer’s presentation and looked at how the six above-mentioned areas varied over time for each student.
While the first findings may have been foreboding, the others were very positive. Gustavus students scored especially high in Openness, as well as Worldview Framework.
“Instead of a small worldview, we realize that we have students from Guatemala, from Somalia, and other countries all around the world,” Dwyer said. “We also have a lot of empathy. We recognize struggles, and we can put ourselves in someone else’s shoes.”
So, while some of these findings may have been stark, the picture shows a college that is open and learning, and adjusting to an increasingly diverse world.