Role of intercultural competence in the relationship between intercultural contacts and creativity of Russian students

Journal of Studies in International Education. 2019.

Bultseva M. A., Lebedeva N.

We studied the interplay of intercultural competence, intercultural experiences, and creativity among Russian students from Moscow (N=272). We expected the students from culturally diverse groups attending the courses on cultural issues to be more creative. We based our expectation on the idea that cultural diversity and cultural learning are associated with a higher level of intercultural competence that might contribute to students’ creativity. We measured the intercultural experiences by cultural diversity of study groups (a number of foreign students in the groups and the intensity of friendly contacts with them) and by cultural learning (a number of culture-related courses students attended). We measured creativity by “Many Instances Game” from Runco Creativity Assessment Battery (rCAB). We measured cultural competence by the adapted scale of Fantini and Tirmizi. We discovered positive associations of intercultural experiences in the university with students’ creativity. Such components of intercultural competence as attitudes and skills (the adaptability of behavior) played an important role in the students’ creativity: attitudes positively and skills negatively related to creativity. We also revealed that these two components of intercultural competence mediated the relationship between intercultural experiences and creativity of students. Based on the results we discussed factors of educational environment that may enhance or prohibit creativity

Keywords: креативность, creativity, cultural diversity, культурное разнообразие, intercultural contacts, межкультурные контакты, межкультурная компетентность, intercultural learning, intercultural competence, культурное обучение