Experiences and interactions of domestic and international students in a foundation university

This study was conducted with the purpose of finding out whether having a multicultural environment in terms of international diversity in the student body empowers students in order to have an equitable environment that ensures intercultural competence, intercultural interaction and understanding in a university. In this regard, social interactions and experiences of students were analyzed in order to understand university students' experiences and interactions with individuals from various cultures in the context of critical multicultural education. The study was conducted in a foundation university in Ankara, Turkiye and the participants were chosen from 10 domestic and 10 international students having studied in their faculties for at least two semesters. While studying the experiences and interactions of an international student body, most studies focus on only one party, which is mostly international students. This study is one of the few studies that focus on experiences and interactions of both domestic and international students. This provided the researcher with a chance to analyze various experiences students coming from various cultures have. The results of this study show that numerical diversity in student body is not an indicator of meaningful intercultural experience. The findings also demonstrated that some domestic students do not have intercultural competency since they are not competent enough in English language and since they do not usually interact with individuals from different cultures. This results in problems such as exclusion, prejudice and discriminatory behaviors. Moreover, this study demonstrated that some domestic students do not think the cultures of their international peers are worth learning.