785396

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JEEXXX10.1177/1053825918785396Journal of Experiential EducationMasterson

Article
Journal of Experiential Education
2018, Vol. 41(4) 341­–355
Self-Discovery Through © The Authors 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/1053825918785396
https://doi.org/10.1177/1053825918785396
Co-Construction of Life journals.sagepub.com/home/jee

Stories in the Foreign

Language Classroom

Mary Masterson1

Abstract
Background: Although culture is deeply embedded in language, cultural proficiency
is not always gained during language learning. Experiential pedagogies that emphasize
reflection may be appropriate for such learning. Purpose: This research explored
pupils’ self-awareness as they engaged in the co-construction of personal life stories
in one experiential pedagogy, the Autobiography, Biography, and Cross-cultural
analyses (ABCs) model. Methodology/Approach: The ABCs methodology was
implemented across two secondary-level foreign language classrooms, one of Irish
students learning German, and the other of German students learning English utilizing
a case study approach. Student writing products generated during early stages of
the implementation were analyzed for themes related to self-discovery and cultural
awareness, to explore how students negotiated self-image as they experienced
cultural exchanges with the cross-cultural partner. Findings/Conclusions: Thematic
analysis revealed that in the early stages students’ understanding of the role of culture
in their own identities was absent. Implications: Teaching culture alongside language
is challenging, especially in an online format. The current study demonstrates that
language students do not necessarily show awareness of the self and the role of
culture at the outset of the intervention. It also shows how the ABCs model can
foster experiential learning in a foreign language classroom setting toward greater
cultural awareness through self-discovery.

1University of Limerick, Ireland

Corresponding Author:
Mary Masterson, Director of the Professional Master of Education (Languages) programme, School of
Education, Faculty of Education and Health Sciences, University of Limerick, Limerick V94 T9PX, Ireland.
Email: mary.masterson@ul.ie
342 Journal of Experiential Education 41(4)

Keywords
identity development, diversity education, culture and foreign language pedagogy,
autobiography research, self

Introduction
Challenges in teaching and learning about the relationship between identity and
belonging have been accelerated by the increasing pace of globalization (van de Vijver,
2018). Meanings are culturally constructed, embedded in a sociocultural context, and
can differ depending on a person’s cultural location (Finkbeiner, 2006). Through co-
writing life stories and comparing them, learners can start to co-construct their identi-
ties. When learners assess the perspectives of both “others” (the other person and the
self made strange through reflection and dialogue), it is possible for them to recognize
themselves as culturally situated and adopt a more relativistic perspective (Masterson,
2017).
The present study considers the co-construction of life stories to support adoles-
cents’ developing intercultural competence. It investigates the Autobiography,
Biography, and Cross-cultural analysis (ABCs) model (Schmidt, 1998) as a valuable
experiential student-directed learning strategy for promoting language learning and
cultural awareness through intercultural exchange, dialogue, and reflection. The ABC
model, described below, pairs students across languages and cultures to write an auto-
biography, construct their partner’s biography, compare life stories, and reflect on their
construction of self. Transcending the limits of the online format, learners are engaged
as active, reflexive participants to complete the steps of the ABCs model in collabora-
tion with an international partner. A central question that guided this research was, Can
the co-creation of life story narratives across cultural difference help in the develop-
ment of intercultural competence?
This article offers the ABC model as an innovative case of intercultural experiential
learning, and it summarizes research evaluating the model’s implementation. It expands
upon Lefebvre’s sociospatial theory on experiential learning (Lefebvre, 1974/1991), by
assuming that the creation of the adolescents’ self-identity is embedded in a sociocul-
tural social space. Concepts from Bakhtin’s (1981) narrative theory are also used, as the
young people from the study narrate their life stories through dialogue and reflection
with the help of their partner. These frameworks together form a sociocultural approach
to investigating how young teenagers (aged 14-16) co-construct their identities and
guided the case study design used in the present study.

Literature Review
Expanding on Experiential Learning
Jarvis, Holford, and Griffin (1999) conceptualize experiential learning as “the process
of creating and transforming experience into knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, emo-
tions, beliefs and senses” (p. 46). In Lefebvre’s (1974/1991) theory of experiential
Masterson 343

learning, learners produce spaces. Conceived space, or “what is thought,” is con-

structed discursively; perceived space, or “what is seen,” reflects the everyday percep-
tions of the world, and lived space is “what is felt,” which is not habitually reflected
upon. Misunderstandings and conflicts can develop because lived space and different
notions of reality are not consciously articulated. Lefebvre suggests “we are taught to
see the world a certain way, and we often think this is the ‘natural’ state of things” (as
cited in Pipitone & Raghavan, 2017, p. 268). Yagelski (2009) notes peer dialogue can
help to re-examine assumptions, expand and diversify thinking, and enable a reposi-
tioning, which may, in turn, disrupt and reframe identity. Through processes of accul-
turation “our encounters and engagement with a place shape the stories we tell, and the
stories we tell shape not only our relationship with place but also the place itself”
(Pipitone, 2018, p. 71). In the current study, the ABCs model opens a virtual space, in
which participants share cultural knowledge, learning to question taken-for-granted
assumptions.
As a narrative process, the ABCs model suggests identity develops through the
adoption and use of narrative forms such a life narrative, written biographies, and
autobiographies (Bakhtin, 1981; Fivush, Habermas, Waters, & Zaman, 2011; Seaman,
Sharp, & Coppens, 2017). Fivush et al. (2011) maintain culture and language “influ-
ence developing autobiographical narratives and self-concepts” (p. 339). They explain:
“individual life narratives are constructed within social and cultural contexts that
define what a life is and how it should be lived” (p. 331), allowing insights about the
self to develop, strengthen, and be confirmed (McLean, 2005). Through exposure to
other cultural narratives, learners build a network of cultural references which help
them interpret their own and other perspectives (Fivush et al., 2011). As learners chal-
lenge established meanings and redefine the meanings that they perceive as real to
them (Kramsch, 2013), they begin to understand that experience has multiple, situated
meanings (Fox, 2008, p. 1) and expand their knowledge, explore autobiographical
memories, and develop a sense of self. This process is dependent on prior experiences,
aided by a reflexive stance toward communication at hand and critical awareness of
the symbolic systems used to construct representations of culture. Thus, for cultural
meanings to be critically examined, a reflective space must be created for learners.

Experiential Learning and Reflection

Seaman and Rheingold (2013) note that “a major epistemological premise within
experiential education is that ‘reflection’ is an essential component of learning” (p.
155; see Kolb, 1984). Likewise, Smith and Segbers (2018) recommend “a reflective
approach to learning through experience” (p. 81). This process, whereby “‘people
recapture their experience, think about it, mull it over and evaluate it (Boud, Keogh, &
Walker, 1985, p. 19)’ has become central to experiential learning” (Seaman &
Rheingold, 2013, p. 156). Seaman and Rheingold (2013) challenge linear and formu-
laic conceptions of experiential learning such as Kolb’s (1984) model, however. They
question the imposition of a set of universal, sequential, and differentiable or discrete
steps as out of step with the reality of thinking, particularly during social interaction
344 Journal of Experiential Education 41(4)

(see also Dewey, 1933). In the current study, reflection processes followed stages in
the ABCs method, but that does not mean learning was necessarily linear. These pro-
cesses resulted in a new narrative that was based on reflection, enabling some partici-
pants to reframe their identity.
In contrast to cyclic models of experiential learning, reflection can be defined as an
iterative process throughout the experience of constructing and reconstructing an auto-
biography with an interlocutor. It is inherent in the experience of interaction and com-
position, not something that gets appended after an “experience.” According to Bakhtin
(1981), the meaning found in any dialogue is unique to the sender and recipient based
upon their personal understanding of the world as influenced by the sociocultural
background. Meanings are produced dialogically through the interaction between par-
ticipants and their cultural beliefs and views. By guiding students from the known
(their autobiography) to the unknown (the lives of their cross-cultural partners) and
then back to a critical reflection on the role of culture in shaping their selves, the ABCs
model draws on these experiential pedagogies, positioning reflection as a key aspect
of learning within the experience of intercultural interaction while constructing an
autobiographical narrative.

Cultural Awareness and Foreign Language Instruction

Cultural awareness refers to the ability of individuals to understand and reflect on their
own cultural frames, values, and perspectives, and to recognize that others may not
share the same frames of reference. Learners who develop cultural awareness can
learn to question stereotypes and develop empathy through enhanced self-understand-
ing (Finkbeiner & Lazar, 2015), an essential skill in the context of rising neonational-
ism (Smith & Segbers, 2018).
Byram’s (1991) theory of intercultural competence posits that “culture learning”
leads to a clearer sense of self and a greater ability to understand multiple and differing
perspectives. Intercultural competence encompasses the skill “to critically or analyti-
cally understand that one’s own and other cultures’ perspective is culturally deter-
mined rather than natural” (Byram, 2000, p. 10). Although Byram’s theory has been
influential, questions remain about implementation in a foreign language classroom.
Byram (2012) acknowledges a need to push theory forward in a way that helps teach-
ers and learners clarify how to achieve intercultural competence. Learners sharing
their personal stories collaboratively can support one another, broaden their own per-
spectives, and increase cultural awareness.

The ABCs Method of Intercultural Learning

Ruggiano Schmidt (1998) conceptualized the ABCs model to prepare teachers for
teaching in multicultural classrooms. Ruggiano Schmidt describes the five steps of
this approach to intercultural learning. First, each participant writes an autobiography
reporting on key people, experiences, events, and memories from their own life such
as family, home, school, friends, interests and hobbies, special memories, personal
Masterson 345

histories, traditions, religion, successes, and failures. Second, participants interview a

partner from a different culture to discover his or her life story and to write their biog-
raphy. Third, participants compare this biography with their own autobiography to
learn about cultural similarities and differences. Fourth, participants construct a Venn
diagram that depicts these similarities and differences to facilitate an “in-depth self-
analysis of cultural differences” (Schmidt & Finkbeiner, 2006, p. 5). During this cross-
cultural process, participants reflect on any surprising, pleasant, or uncomfortable
discoveries. The purpose of this key step is to help participants begin to acquire
insights about others and sense their own ethnocentrism (Ruggiano Schmidt, 2015, pp.
4-5), which promotes “learning to view differences as special and as a means of cele-
brating the uniqueness of individuals” (Schmidt, 1999, p. 7). Finally, teachers consider
how to connect home and school in their lesson plans.1
Research on the ABCs method has tended to focus on students in higher education
or young language learners in primary school; the present study focuses on adoles-
cents, making identity a relevant concern (Erikson, 1994). From a narrative identity
perspective, “it is in adolescence that the cognitive processes necessary for identity
work emerge” (Seaman, Sharp, & Coppens, 2017, p. 20). The ABCs method may,
therefore, have a notable impact on the adolescent participants’ developing sense of
identity as they expand their perceptions of themselves and others through direct expe-
rience with an interlocutor from a different sociocultural environment.
Michelson (1996) argues that life stories can be used as a springboard into meta-
cognitive reflection on perceived differences of cultural processes, and the resulting
dialogue can enhance cultural awareness. Finkbeiner and Lazar (2015) also identify
challenges inherent in intercultural interaction. People often experience discomfort as
they move away from the familiar, taken for granted of their own culture toward the
unfamiliar cultural practices of the other (Parker-Jenkins & Masterson, 2013).
Developing sensitivity toward cultural differences can be extremely difficult for some
people who struggle when the unfamiliar disrupts the taken-for-granted comfort of
their previous worldview (Pipitone, 2018). In Kramsch’s (2013) model of culture
learning, perception, rather than any objective cultural truth, plays the key role.
Through experience with and exposure to other cultural narratives, learners can gradu-
ally build a network of cultural references which help them analyze and interpret both
their own and other perspectives (Young, Natrajan-Tyagi, & Platt, 2015). Kramsch
(2011) advocates that learners challenge established meanings and redefine the mean-
ings that they perceive as being real to them. She recommends a reflexive stance
toward the communication at hand and a critical awareness of the symbolic systems
used to construct any representation of culture. As Seaman, Brown, and Quay (2017,
p. 12) point out, “cultural transmission as an aspect of learning” should not be down-
played in models of experiential learning. The ABCs model provides a promising
sequence of experiential steps to guide language learners to develop both self-aware-
ness and an intercultural perspective (Masterson, 2017), as students acquire firsthand
experience of their own and their partner’s culture.
In sum, the present study used Lefebvre’s (1974/1991) sociospatial theory on
experiential learning as a top-level conceptual framework and Bakhtin’s (1981) idea
346 Journal of Experiential Education 41(4)

of addressivity to elaborate on how experiential learning works in the context of

cross-cultural narrative processes. Lefebvre conceptualizes meaning-making as a
participatory and collaborative process embedded within social, spatial, and temporal
realities. Learners are not seen as decontextualized, passive consumers of knowledge,
but instead active participants in the ongoing and collaborative process of making
sense of themselves, the world, and places within it (Pipitone & Raghavan, 2017;
Seaman, Sharp, & Coppens, 2017). The life stories co-constructed by the pairs in the
current study capture lives shaped by sociocultural position, memory, and history
(Masterson, 2017).

Method
The aim of this study was to understand how learners navigate the challenging task of
developing an enhanced understanding of self and a greater sense of cultural aware-
ness. To examine this process in a cross-cultural language learning context, this study
employed a naturalistic, case study-based, qualitative approach (Yin, 2014). The case
study involved two language classrooms in Ireland and Germany. Ethical approval
was granted by the review committee at the University of Kassel, Germany.
Online collaboration used eTwinning, an online community for schools in Europe
that provides a database of schools looking for partners for projects. After registering
the Irish class on the eTwinning website, the researcher found a partner class in a
German school. The project used a TwinSpace on the eTwinning virtual desktop for
the experiential learning tasks. Permission was obtained from the participating
schools. The project lasted 8 months. Sampling was purposive; the group of interest
were two foreign language classes (n = 30). There were 15 students aged between 14
and 16 in each class, representing mixed genders. The students in the class in Ireland
were native English speakers and the students in Germany were mostly native German
speakers.
The students received a worksheet informing them about the project. Participants
spent three class periods on the project, amounting to 1.5 contact hours per week. For
the ABCs assignments, autobiographies were written in the native language and biog-
raphies in the foreign language. Participants could choose which language to write the
comparison. To give the students some ideas as to what to include in their autobiogra-
phies, they brainstormed potential topics for life stories. The results were then written
on cards and pasted on a large mind map labeled “autobiography” with the branches
“school,” “self,” “family,” and “the world that I live in.” As a homework exercise, the
students wrote their autobiographies in their mother tongue, as recommend by
Finkbeiner and Koplin (2002). The research inquiry focused on developing awareness
of the perspective of self and other through intercultural dialogical processes, whereby
two stories (two perspectives) are shared and then compared and contrasted in order
for the pairs to develop a third perspective together.
The students’ co-constructed narratives (the original autobiography, the biography,
the cross-cultural analysis) were analyzed thematically, and recurrent patterns were
identified with the aim of a developing rich description of the core themes in the data
Masterson 347

set (Braun & Clarke, 2013). The analysis revealed the autobiography as playing an
important role in enabling students to appreciate the influence of culture on identities
through the act of writing by entering into another’s experience.

Results
The project showed how challenging it is to bring about self-discovery with respect
to developing awareness of the influence of culture on identities, a finding consis-
tent with Finkbeiner and Lazar (2015). There were substantive differences in the
extent to which participants experienced success. Overall, however, the analysis
identified themes in students’ experiences of self and intercultural awareness dur-
ing the initial steps of the implementation, specifically, the Autobiographies and
Biographies.
The themes that were identified during the analysis are shown in Figure 1. The
broad theme is Awareness of the Self. The participants’ writings reveal their personal
and social identities, which are based on the acculturation processes they have experi-
enced, which were embedded in place. Both autobiographies and biographies show
that the students’ values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors were grounded in personal
experiences and sociocultural circumstances.
This grounding formed the sociocultural substrate that defined the baseline for the
ABCs intervention. The substrate, a sort of cultural bedrock, is composed of cultural
history, geography, socioeconomics, worldview, and population density. Writings on
this theme were identified in data from both autobiographical and biographical
instruments.
Cultural history, geography, and worldview are interrelated constructs (Zapata-
Barrero, 2016). One indicator of cultural history is religion. Interestingly, only the
students from Ireland mentioned church/mass in their autobiographies, and we learn of
the religious background of the students from Germany only in the biographies written
by their Irish partners. The students from Ireland tended to present experiences of
religion as positive; religion was more deeply embedded in their self-identity than
their German peers:

My First Holy Communion was a great day for my family. We celebrated this special
occasion with family and close friends and neighbours. (CS3/MIS/Autobio)2

What religion does she have? She is catholic, and she believes in God. She does not go
often to church. (CS6/CIS bio for CGS/Bio)

The sociocultural substrate differentiated the students from Ireland and Germany
(Table 1). Nearly all live where they were born. Yet, students from Ireland more often
spoke of their home place and county, which for the most part was rural. When it was
mentioned, students from Germany resided in a city or urban setting. Parents’ work
was often mentioned, with farming the predominant economic activity of the students
from Ireland; parents from Germany worked in the city. The search for contrary case
348 Journal of Experiential Education 41(4)

Figure 1.  Theme awareness of the self.

pairs proved futile because the differences between students from Ireland and Germany
were greater than the differences within pairs. This suggests a fundamental difference
shaped by the sociocultural context.
Similarities were numerous, and were related to age (socializing with friends, inter-
est in music, and sports) and value of education. Students from Germany wrote more
about music, schooling, and passing an A-level test/“Abitur” and Irish students, about
sports (Table 2). These were not culture specific and, therefore, not as powerful a
moderator on the response of the ABCs intervention.
Cultural awareness was unconscious or unexamined in autobiographies, although
many students had previous experiences of traveling to other countries:

I really like to travel and got to know new countries. This is because already as a small
child I often visited my relations who live far away from each other. (CS2/KGS/Autobio)
Masterson 349

Table 1.  Sociocultural Substrate of Differences Between Irish and German Pupils.

Difference Ireland German

Rural vs. We live on a farm in the
urban small parish of X in East Co.
Galway. (CS3/MIS/Autobio)
I have lived on a farm my whole
life and I enjoy working on the
farm (CS5/SIS/ Autobio)
I have been born and reared
on a farm in rural Ireland, Co.
Galway. (CS6/CIS/Autobio)
Parent My mammy is a house-wife and
employment my daddy a farmer. (CS2/VIS/
Autobio)
My father is a dairy farmer and
my mother is a secretary.
(CS3/MIS/Autobio)
I live with my parents, dog and 2 cats,
10 birds and a few fish in an apartment
on the 4 floors in a city. (CS1/IGS/
Autobio)
He lives with his family in an apartment in
the city. (CS2/KGS/Bio)
My parents are both taxi drivers, my
father works days and my mother
nights. (CS1/IGS/ Autobio)
My mother is 49 and a qualified
administrator. My father is 52 and an
industrial mechanic. (CS3/AGS/Autobio)
My father has his own veterinary
business… My mother helped my
father in the veterinary clinic for years
and now she is trying to develop her
own career. My eldest brother is an
engineer with Siemens, one of the best-
known German companies. My other
brother is a doctor, to be exact he is a
gynaecologist. (CS4/MGS/Autobio)

Yet, none expressed an opinion or offered a bit of knowledge about a country they had
visited. Rather, the preponderance of their writings related to the four categories in the
third layer in the conceptual map: cultural schemata, scripts; values and beliefs; cul-
tural norms; and attitudes and behaviors. As represented in Tables 1 and 2, students
relied heavily on their personal and family circumstances to identify and describe
themselves to their partner. Their autobiographies tended to reflect personal identifica-
tion with the family, friends, school, and the local community and were embedded in
a sociocultural context.
Overall, the autobiographies tended to reflect an acceptance of familiar practices,
and there was a marked absence of questioning or searching for underlying beliefs and
values at this early stage in the ABCs process. The participants focused on their per-
sonal lives and drew very few inferences about the role of culture on shaping their
thinking or lives. At this stage, the students’ engagement with their partner was on a
personal level, and their focus was on finding commonalities. For example,

Kaspar is the same age as me. He is nice and has many interests like I do. He loves music,
sport and spending time with friends. (CS2/VIS on KGS/Bio 104-105)
 Table 2.  Similarities Between Pupils From Ireland and Germany.
350
Similarity Ireland
Socializing Other than my family and my hobbies the other most important thing to
with friends me are my friends. I have made and kept friends all the way up through
national school, new ones in secondary school and friends though sport.
I am lucky enough to have brilliant friends who are there though good
and bad. We love having the craic. We go out most weekends to discos,
cinema, some one’s house or shopping. I enjoy all my friends’ company
and they make school and life in general much easier. (CS3/MIS/Autobio)
I usually spend my weekend going out on Friday night with my mates and
spend Saturday and Sunday practising with the band. (CS4/EIS/Autobio)
Music and My main interest at the moment is music. I have been singing since I started
dance school and started playing guitar three years ago. I am currently part of a
local band and have been for about three years. (CS4/EIS/Autobio)
Sports My family is mad about Irish sports. My whole family plays. My father is
really into the hurling too. When you go to matches and you are sitting in
the crowd, it kind of makes you feel part of things. (CS1/NIS, Autobio)
I started playing camogie when I was 9 years old. My uncles thought me
the basic skills and I practiced every day. I began by playing for the
national school where we trained after school a couple of times a week.
Then I joined the local camogie club Davitts. Davitts is a great club not
only for camogie but because people from so many other areas play
camogie for Davitts. You meet many other people and start more and
more friendships. I love playing for my Club all the way up from U6 to
intermediate I have played. Our greatest achievement was reaching the
Feile All Ireland U 14 final. (CS3/ MIS/ Autobio)
Value Every night I get a lot of homework. I have small exams at the moment
education (nicht so gut!). I like school but not maths. (CS1/NIS/Autobio)
This year I am doing an optional year in the school called Transition Year. I
really love it. (CS2/VIS/Autobio)
Germany
I meet my friends to have a laugh and to talk and have a good time. Having
a good time with my friends means for me, for example, to sit on the
beach, to play football at night in the park or to go for a drink to a bar
or Café. (CS1/IGS/Autobio)
I am together a lot with my friends. During the week we don’t have much
time for meeting friends, but at the weekends we try to make up for it
by doing more things together. We mostly meet in the evenings in our
Youth Room, we take a drink there and listen to music. In the winter
time we go sometimes skating and in summer skate boarding. Now and
then we also go to a Disco evening we go to parties, to the cinema …
just the usual things. (CS4/MGS/Autobio)
I play the tenor flute in a music group. I also go every Friday to the
dancing school and I have a nice dancing partner who used to go to my
school (CS5/TGS/Autobio)
I am very musical. I play the saxophone, clarinet, the block and soprano
flutes, which I very much enjoy. I especially like to play the saxophone in
our school Big Band. (CS2/KGS/Autobio)
I am not that sporty in terms of athletics, but I like horse-riding and
swimming. My hobbies are reading, traveling, meeting friends, going to
parties. (CS2/KGS/Autobio)
I am not so fond of sport, I am quite unsporting, and I rather watch
soccer on the telly than to play it myself. But instead I like to play music.
(CS3/AGS/Autobio 407-408)
Otherwise I like to do different types of sport, like tennis, I also go
sometimes to the Gym and not forgetting I sometimes go fishing. (CS4/
MGS/Autobio)
But I do know that I’d love to go to college . . . I would like to pass the
Abitur (Final Examination and then go to college. (CS2/KGS/Autobio)
I am now in the 9th class in my school. I hope though after the 13 class
to leave with a good enough Abitur. Other than that, I don’t have any
more to say. I am an average pupil, I am not a gifted pupil, but also I am
not too bad of a pupil. (CS4/MGS/Autobio)
Masterson 351

Most students did not reflect on their own cultural identity or the sources of their val-
ues, attitudes, and behaviors. The values and beliefs that underpin a range of aspects
of their lives were routine, normal, and unquestioned, as is shown in Tables 1 and 2.
At the outset of the project, students did not have the ability to stand back from them-
selves to develop awareness of their cultural values, beliefs, and perceptions (Schmidt &
Finkbeiner, 2006). They constructed their identities in terms of their prior experiences
and knowledge, or what Hall and Hall (1990) term “the narratives of the past” (p. 225).
The autobiographies revealed the participants’ self-concepts which were uniquely per-
sonal (Edwards, 2009). However, as the students engaged further in the project, most
began to reflect on and develop an awareness of the influence of culture in their life, and
to gain insights and appreciation of cultural differences. As Djonko-Moore, Leonard,
Holifield, Bailey, and Almughyirah (2018) note “Cultural differences influence the ways
in which individuals interpret their lives” (p. 139). The students realized as the environ-
ment changed, identities changed too reflecting different realities. Duerden, Taniguchi,
and Widmer (2011) found that in adolescent identity development “interpersonal and
contextual elements facilitate the identity formation process” (p. 383).

Discussion
The research project described in this study provided a rich experiential learning envi-
ronment, as the communication took place between native speakers who discussed and
reflected on topics that were relevant to their own lives during the project. By being
situated in different sociocultural places, partners provided valuable cultural data to
help each other accurately locate and position themselves and others. They recollect
their experiences through memory; however, the ongoing contemporaneousness of
autobiographical construction also influences these recollections (Fivush et al., 2011).
As in other ABCs studies, participants faced some discomfort, and not all of them
progressed beyond the descriptive level (Finkbeiner & Lazar, 2015). Ruggiano
Schmidt and Finkbeiner (2006) show that a personal, biographical approach like the
ABCs can be problematic for online intercultural exchange because of privacy con-
cerns, and there is also the issue of distance. The partners meet online, and their com-
munication is text based. As O’Dowd (2007) notes, learning how to collaborate online
can pose challenges for the learners; there can also be issues arising from the cultural
characteristics of the online participants, which may result in “different expectations
as to how the communication should be carried out, at what rate it should develop and
what content it should contain” (p. 24).
The analysis demonstrates that students constructed their identities in terms of their
prior experiences and knowledge. They were not equipped with the tools to understand
the role of culture in the construction of their identities (Young et al., 2015). However,
in later stages (Cs-cross-cultural analysis steps) of the ABCs implementation, students
demonstrated the acquisition of new cultural knowledge that expanded their under-
standing of themselves as they begin to acquire new insights (Masterson, 2017). For
example, the following student’s comment shows the development of enlightenment
through collaboration:
352 Journal of Experiential Education 41(4)

Many people make the wrong assumptions, not realizing it’s different for everyone. It’s
not just because of where they live, it’s more because of who they are, how they see
things, the experiences they had before, the chances they get, the people they’ve met.
(CS4/EIS)

Fivush et al. (2011) contend that individuals construct a life story during coconstructed
reminiscing (p. 321). Self-discovery through the experiential co-construction of life sto-
ries is a first step in the process of discovering that each person is “a unique blend of his
or her diverse contexts and global encounters” (Young et al., 2015, p. 186). Furthermore,
the study provides a view of experiential learning as an iterative process occurring
throughout intercultural interaction, with the experience of “the other” embedded within
acts of reflection that are part of the process of narrative identity construction.

Conclusion
The research reported here presented a different view of experiential learning, with a
study of an active cross-cultural collaborative learning classroom project work. It
presents insights and learning from a new terrain of inquiry in terms of providing new
data on the impact of an innovative experiential methodology such as the ABCs model
on adolescents’ co-construction of life stories in the foreign language classroom. This
article has demonstrated that the co-construction of life stories helps student to develop
an awareness of the role of culture in the shaping of their own worldview. With this
awareness, students can begin to appreciate the ways in which their cultural perspec-
tive comes to constitute part of the very diversity of the world. The learners co-con-
structed their identities as they wrote within a shared space of discovery and
intercultural learning. The challenge is to foster cross-border relationships between
schools to develop intercultural competence as a joint endeavor.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.

Notes
1. In the current study, this step is not carried out as the learners are secondary school students.
2. Quotes are source using the convention: Case Study# /pair pseudonym/source
Autobio=Autobiography; Bio=Biography; CC=Cultural Studies; and R=Reflections.

ORCID iD
Mary Masterson https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2483-4440
Masterson 353

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Author Biography
Mary Masterson is a lecturer at the School of Education in the University of Limerick, Ireland.
Her research interests focus on a range of issues concerning diveristy and inclusion in local and
global contexts, with a particular interest in identity development of culturally-diverse children
and young people.
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