The study explored study abroad students’ ability to discriminate and experience cultural differences (i.e., intercultural sensitivity). We explored two different populations of study abroad students in Italy: ERASMUS students enrolled in Italian Universities versus US students enrolled in English-speaking study abroad programmes. Unique to this study is that students’ narratives of experiences in a foreign culture in the form of critical incidents (De Frankrijker, 1998; Hesse et al., 2008) are related to intercultural sensitivity (Bennett, 1993), acculturation orientations (Berry, 2003), and foreign study programme qualities. The research question was explored through triangulation, a mixed-method approach.  

Several studies conducted with university students showed that study abroad programs do not contribute to enhanced cultural awareness unless students’ reflective processes are explicitly fostered (Anderson, Lawton, Rexeisen, & Hubbard, 2006; Vande Berg, Paige, & Hemming Lou, 2012). These findings are confirmed by training studies that found a positive relationship between formative feedback and intercultural communication development (Lane, Hays, Core, & Auerbach, 2013). Moreover, several scholars agree that although considered important, students' abilities to identify and experience cultural differences are rarely sufficiently explored (Anderson et al., 2006; Bennett, 2009; Busse & Krause, 2016), especially in interaction with individual variables, such as students’ own cultural background, and contextual variables, such as the characteristics of the study abroad programme in which students are enrolled.

Major questions guiding this study include 1) How do students in foreign study programmes offering different opportunities for students to be embedded in Italian culture narrate their experiences, in particular critical incidents? and 2) how do those narratives relate to measures of intercultural sensitivity and programme? We hypothesized that ERASMUS students would display higher levels of intercultural sensitivity in light of their greater exposure to cultural differences during the study abroad experience. We also hypothesized that such differences would emerge in analyses of how the students recounted intercultural experiences (i.e., organized their narratives) in addition to differences in our assessments of intercultural sensitivity expressed in the narratives.  

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