Effects of Multiculturalism Education for KOREAN MILITARY CADETS

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of the Multiculturalism Education Program (MEP) for military academy cadets on their respect to foreign culture, psychological distance to foreigners, knowledge of foreign language, and culture. The sample of this study consisted of 143 cadets (67 experimental group, 76 com-parison group) attending the K military academy in Korea. The Multiculturalism Education Program with a ses-sion lasting 90 minutes in each was administered to the experimental group for 12 weeks while the comparison group took Korean Language and Literature class. This study employed a quasi-experimental design of static-group comparison with posttest only and three instruments were used in order to measure the dependent varia-bles: Behavioral Assessment Scale for Intercultural Communication Effectiveness, Intercultural Sensitivity Inven-tory, and Intercultural Social Distance Scale. In the analysis process, descriptive statistics and Multivariate Anal-ysis of Variance (MANOVA) techniques were used to assess the effects of the MEP. The results of the analysis showed that there were significant differences between the two groups in the all four dependent variables and the follow-up MANOVA on psychological distance toward foreigners in five different regions revealed that the effect of the MEP is culture-general. Measurement approaches drawing on the behavioral perspective depend on observational methods rather than self-report and this study employed the instructor as the third-party ob-server to measure the participants’ knowledge of foreign culture and language. In this study, there were signifi-cant differences in two attitude measures and two ability measures. The scales use behavioral dimensions based on work by Ruben display of respect to foreign culture, interaction and communicative ability, knowledge. Rat-ings provided by instructors showed that the MEP enhances the military cadets’ communication effectiveness and respect to foreign culture regardless of the region. Developing education program for multicultural compe-tence has been a popular subject of studies in these days; however, most of the institutions of the studies were civilian schools. This study is the almost first attempt to investigate the effects of the multiculturalism education program developed in the military school. Current training in the military school targets primarily the knowledge component of multicultural competence, with emphasis on culture-specific features of the contemporary lan-guage and culture. However, evidence of this study for the contribution of knowledge and favorable attitude to culture-general multiculturalism. Independent of specific language and culture, cross-cultural competence is promoted through the MEP. Thus, training should continue to address specific language and culture, but should also culture-general respect and acceptance. Training and education should also consider the level of participants’ initial knowledge and the level of cross-cultural development. MEP will provide the scaffolding needed to struc-ture knowledge and skill acquisition of multicultural competence in a way that facilitates learning.