Journal review "The Development of Communicative Abilities within Small Group Contexts: A Cross Cultural Perspective"

Journal review
“The Development of Communicative Abilities within Small Group Contexts: A Cross Cultural Perspective”
By: B. Campbell et al
Penulis review : Roy G. & jasmansyah
Introduction

Interacting with foreigners is always interesting but it can also present some problems. The problems may draw back from their back home cultural condition or situation. One who would speak if only he/she is asked to do so would encounter problems when discussing something with those who are egalitarian and accustomed to speaking impromptu on certain topics of discussion.
Such situation also happens to some polish citizens who studied in UK. They once lived for three generation within a communist system of economic and political control that influenced all domains of public life. This made them become citizens with such characteristics as conformism, passiveness, an absence of engagement with economic life and an apparent lack of responsibility for planning and managing their daily lives. Engagement in such strategies may be associated with the emergence of psychological barriers that can frustrate the process of economic transformation that is currently taking place in Poland. It seems likely that as Poland embraces capitalist economic and political systems, its citizens will be become obliged to develop a greater sense of personal responsibility. The ability to communicate will be central to this.
The study becomes very interesting to me for it digs up the process of improving communicative abilities by giving microtraining to a group of respondents. This will obviously gives us good insight of how such abilities improves and whether the improvement is significant after the training was given.

Content

The journal is particularly concerned with a fact that the acquisition of specific communication abilities deemed functional in one culture may not be so in another. Even if it is accepted that certain communication abilities such as empathy, respect, non-judgmentalness, and decision making can be defined, it cannot be assumed that these transcend cultural boundaries; the way these are expressed behaviorally (skills) and interpreted by oneself and others, may vary considerably from one culture to another. This necessarily brings people to the notion of communication competence, a challenging concept that can be described as a kind of social attribution, one that permits communication skill assessments to be made from both the 'self' and 'other' perspective; this emphasizes the dynamic nature of interpersonal communication and the complexity of its context. In essence it is drawn to what is described in the intercultural literature as the culture-general versus the culture specific controversy. Importantly, communicative competence and ability must be seen as much more than simply the acquisition and employment of a range of universal demonstrable behaviors.
The study explores the usefulness of a Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) designed program for use with Polish students. An integral part of this package is the assumption that increased self-awareness is an essential component of communicative ability and that this can be raised 'as appropriate'. Parallel with the prior discussion, this may be an inappropriate assumption; it is a suspect that participants' learning styles, their knowledge of self and others and the impact of cultural imperatives will be of profound importance in the process of skill acquisition and differ significantly across the two cultures.
This study attempts to explore the role and contribution of aspects of self belief to the development of communicative ability within the small group, therefore the author has constructed three working hypotheses which formally stated are; 1) Before experience of training the correspondence between perceived self efficacy expectations and performance in respect of the ability to manage small group discussion will be higher for MMU students than those from the University of Lodz; 2) This correspondence will not change significantly for the Polish students as a result of exposure to the training program adapted from MMU; 3) MMU students will demonstrate a significantly more enhanced level of declarative knowledge on completion of training than their Polish contemporaries.
The journal provides an account of what is meant by communicative ability in the group context; it follows this with a brief description of the theoretical principles and defining features of the program that we are using; it continues by outlining the first part of our empirical study, designed to measure the participants' self estimates of skill; and finally, it presents and discusses some initial findings.
The study also highlights Four distinct phases of training in the program; the first phase is concerned with staff research efforts to identify key abilities and behaviors, the products of which are used in the didactic elements of the program; the second phase is a classroom based examination of these research findings whereby students are encouraged to reflect upon these in relation to their own life experiences; thirdly, all participants are subsequently involved in the practice and analysis of task related simulated group discussions in the university; and finally all participate in supervised practice in a community setting.
As for the method, in the journal the author decided to carry out a pretest-posttest study, one group design as Nelson-Jones (1991) points out that there are ethical issues entailed in withholding treatment from control groups. Meanwhile, Subjects were 22 students (sixteen females and six males) undertaking the one year full time course leading to the award of the Postgraduate Diploma in Careers Guidance (the professional training course for career guidance practitioners in the UK).
Identified sub skills considered in a ten-session microtraining course were 'set induction', 'focusing', 'encouraging contributions', 'gatekeeping', 'clarifying', 'summarizing' and 'closure'. The program involved elements of sensitization, practice and feedback whereby trainees were given the chance to learn the theoretical background to each skill dimension, to practice the skill in question and obtain feedback on their performance from tutors and their peers.
Upon completion of the microtraining program the students then practiced their skills in a school setting. For a period of six weeks they worked in pairs delivering a one-hour guided group discussion session in a local school each week. Each person was responsible for leading and participating in every discussion. Fifty percent of the sessions were supervised by tutors from the university. This is the regular practice.
To measure the research, the author applies the GGD-SEI consisting of a 19 item self-efficacy self report measure which asks respondents to consider their chances of successful skill performance when making their best effort at guiding a small group in a discussion of a topic that they had previously researched. On a scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (6), participants rated the 19 likert items according to the extent to which they agreed that the items reflected their actual estimate of how they would perform. The response scores were added to give a total score. Higher scores on the GGD-SEI reflect stronger percepts of self-efficacy.

Results

The study uses the Wilcoxon matched pairs signed-rank test to assess the significance of the difference between GGD-SEI scores pre-training (pre-test) and post-training (post-test 1) and after a period of practice in schools (post-test 2). Differences for total and sub-scale scores were examined.
There were highly significant (p <0.01) differences between the total scores of the pre-test and post-test 1 and between pre-test and post-test 2. Inspection of the means shows that on both occasions, the participants developed their self-beliefs. There was also a significant (p<0.05) difference between the total scores post-test 1 and post-test 2. Again, inspection of the means suggests that participants developed a greater sense of their own communicative abilities in the group context. The research indicates significant improvements on some of the sub-scales both at the end of the microtraining program and following a period of practice in the community.
On the `Summarizing' sub-scale, which consists of 8 items, there was a highly significant change between pre-test and post-test 1 and between pre-test and post-test 2 (p <0.01 respectively). As the means illustrate, expectations of the ability to summarize discussion in the small group setting were improved.
On the `Encouraging Contributions and Distributing Participation' sub-scale between pre-test and post-test 2 and between post-test 1 and post-test 2 there were also highly significant changes (p<. 01). Mean scores suggest that expectations of successful performance in this dimension of communicative skill increased. However, the change between pre-test and post-test 1 marginally failed to reach significance at the .05 level. On the `Confidence' sub-scale between pre-test and post-test 2 and between post-test 1 and post-test 2 there were again highly significant changes (p<. 01). The change between pre-test and post-test 1 was also significant (p<. 05). Mean performance on each of these testing occasions increased, suggesting an improved level of self-belief amongst the participants.
The final sub-scale was `Contracting'. Once more there were highly significant changes; in this instance between pre-test and post-test 1 (p<.01) and between pre-test and post-test 2 (p<.01). And there was a significant change (p<.05) between post-test 1 and post-test 2 responses. Mean scores suggest that on each occasion participants raised their levels of expectation of successfully contracting with others in small group activities.

Comments

In line with the underlying problem in this study, LaRay M. Barna states that the problem relates to the high anxiety that often exists in intercultural encounters. Further, Barna says that this anxiety may come from any sources such as assuming that the interlocutor has higher status, elder age, native cultural background, etc.
What seems to be unfortunate for me is that in the journal, the writer doesn’t mention the factor why the program is successful. When we take a look a little bit closer, there are some factors that can make the intercultural competence or ability increases. as Spitzberg suggests that the competence will increase when we are motivated, knowledgeable, possess interpersonal skills, are credible, meet the expectations of our communication partner, can strike a balance between autonomy needs and intimacy needs, reflect similarities, manifest trust, offer social support, and have access to multiple relationships. There should be a further investigation of which factor plays important role in increasing the communication ability in the designed programs. This will make the reader of the journal easier to understand and later, the reader can design the program that accentuates different factors.
Margaret Mead suggests a better approach to solve problem in communication. The suggestion is in line with what Campbell does in this research. The better approach is to begin by studying the history, political structure, art, literature, and language of the country if time permits. This will provide a framework for on-site observation. It seems that Campbell has no enough time to do sort of things. As a result, Campbell only studies the political structure of the respondents.

Conclusion

The program used does seem to be associated with positive change in self-efficacy beliefs for English students. However, to develop a greater understanding of the nature of self-efficacy and its function in communicative acts, this study should develop its research strategy and collect more and varied forms of data. Most importantly, research findings which will help us to decide whether intraculturally derived CST can contribute to the development of communication competence in other cultures. This model of research is applicable in Indonesian situation to promote successful intercultural communication as many foreign students study in Indonesia and they may meet the same situations as Poland people experienced in UK. As a matter of fact, these findings may offer a signpost for further research into the development of intercultural communication competence.