Bridging Cultural Borders: American Students’ Pedagogical Cross-Cultural Experiences in Hungary

Abstract

In exploring the best practices for preparing new teachers to meet the challenges of the changing demographics present in contemporary classrooms, cross-cultural internship experiences emerge as an important component to teacher training curriculums. The authors present information based on the experiences of American student teachers spending three weeks teaching English and American Culture in Szent István’s Practice School, making presentations to local clubs, churches, libraries, and traveling throughout Hungary. This exchange program presented a great opportunity for the authors to conduct a study related to exploring the impact of the student teaching abroad experience in their teaching dispositions as well as in developing an understanding of working within a culturally and linguistically diverse environment.