That's the short version of the research done by Tamara Thorpe on participants of the IPP in Canada in 2008. The longer version includes, that in fact the participants made quite some progress in the area of the theme of this IPP ("the elderly") but however, didn't explore their cultural differences enough.
With all the research I've come across within CISV, the results seemed biased and said that the things CISV does were either great or not measurable. In a certain way, now I feel relieved that not all is good in the world of CISV.
In CISV, I think, we often rely to much on the effect of simply being and working together will yield in intercultural learning. From reading Tamara's research summary, it seems as if we need to structure our programmes more in a way, that people become aware of intercultural interaction.
Also: DId you know that IPPs are officially categorized as "Service Learning Programmes"?
You can read the research summary here, but watch out, it's 8MB:
IPP Research Summary 2009_Tamara Thorpe.pdf
With all the research I've come across within CISV, the results seemed biased and said that the things CISV does were either great or not measurable. In a certain way, now I feel relieved that not all is good in the world of CISV.
In CISV, I think, we often rely to much on the effect of simply being and working together will yield in intercultural learning. From reading Tamara's research summary, it seems as if we need to structure our programmes more in a way, that people become aware of intercultural interaction.
Also: DId you know that IPPs are officially categorized as "Service Learning Programmes"?
You can read the research summary here, but watch out, it's 8MB:
IPP Research Summary 2009_Tamara Thorpe.pdf
The research probably raises more questions than it answers. Maybe more will come when the final report is ready.
- There was little talk about reference groups; at an absolute level how "good" are the participants?
- Were the participants experienced CISVers, or did they have experience in similar activities? Generally it is hard to increase the "performance" of those already performing ok, compared to that of those completely new to it.
- Is the participant background consistent with a "CISV average"?
Gut feeling is that CISV is best at "entry level"; this is where the staying together aspect will have the biggest influence. 11 year olds will see that foreigners are not dangerous and so on.
I would also agree to the mono-culture tendency; CISV takes people out of their normal habitat (interchange being the exception), in that during an activity everybody lives in the same place, (mainly) eats the same food and generally does the same things.
I would love to see similar research for Villages and Interchanges. If possible "large scale". Sadly we have seen before that large scale quantitive studies are not our strenght(ref. 21day village)...
Yes, this was an interesting study, and I think that it should be duplicated over other programs (including other IPPs) to see how consistent the results are. Also, we're looking a bit at whether we need to focus more time and energy on exploring intercultural competencies at IPP, or whether our focus really is (and should be) on other things. For example, the study also finds that the competencies of the inter-generational culture, which was the main focus of the IPP, were very much change. I think the overall point is that by the time we are adults in CISV who grew up, in a way, in an intercultural environment we need to really be pushed to look deeper at what the next level of interculturalism can and should be.