AN EDUCATIONAL PROJECT IN THE PHILIPPINES: BUILDING CROSS-CULTURAL COMPETENCE AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS ACROSS THE TAIWAN STRAIT

This paper is an attempt to present new considerations for a teaching paradigm in higher education that has usually been labeled "Service Learning" or "Community Based Learning". We prefer to call it "Partner Based Learning". We might call Partner Based Learning education “in the give and take reality of the world around us leading to a multicultural awareness and a holistic growth of the one learning.” (Ross 2008) This is referred to as "PBL" in the present paper.

To illustrate the spirit of partnership the program we just conducted in the Philippines will be of help. The PBL program in the Philippines includes both students and economically disadvantaged people, helps people to see their potential and therefore both students and those they are helping develop strength to act independently. Thus, this project concerned with cross-cultural competence, spirt of team work, and personal growth. The author lead a small group of university students to Navatos slum in Metro Manila. Student Participants are from both Fu Jen University in Taiwan and Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU) in Mainland China. By collaborating with SYSU student who take the selected course named “Cross-cultural Studies” in last semester we were able to gain cross-cultural competence within-group while helping the preschool education in urban slum communities in Navotas.

This paper describes first the executive summary of the PBL project followed by presenting the stories of 13 interviewees in the urban slum communities under studied. It concludes with PBL can be recognized as an innovative teaching in higher education with the aim of achieving the goal of the whole person.