A Multi-disciplinary Use of the Critical Incident Cycle: A Didactic Model

AMulti-disciplinary Use of the Critical Incident Cycle: ADidactic Model Dagmar Sieglová ABSTRACT: Critical incidents (CIs) refer to memorable situations from an individual’s life that contribute to the formation of their future decisions, behaviors, and actions. During WW2 and even after, CIs were used in varied professional settings, including the army, navy or air force, to analyze job performance and measure proficiency. Later, their use expanded to other areas such as dental medicine or counselling psychology to manage human behavior or to professional settings, such as business, to improve recruitment and leadership. More recently, CIs were adopted to facilitate intercultural dialogue and for teaching and training purposes. This text examines their wider use in higher education and beyond as tools to accelerate personal growth, professional development and life-long learning. Launched in 2017, this study is apart of alongitudinal project conducted at aprivate university with master’s degree students of Business English. CIs in the form of written narratives are collected in this project to record varied memorable moments from the students’ interaction in English locally or abroad. Six sample CIs structured as areport, reflection and reevaluation of each experience from the lens of the participant were selected from the data corpus for this text in order to describe the Critical Incident Cycle (CIC) and propose adidactic model for amultidisciplinary use. The data show the CIC model is apotent means for not only enhancing language and communication skills, but also developing acomplex set of other intrapersonal and soft skills applicable in the world of the current social reality. Relevant recommendations for practical implications for the use of CIs in education, human resource management or social sciences are made. ABSTRAKT: Kritické incidenty představují významné životní situace, které přispívají kformování chápání, rozhodování, chování ajednání jednotlivců. Počátky práce skritickými incidenty se datují do období druhé světové války, kdy byly využívány nejprve varmádě, námořnictví nebo letectví pro účely analýzy pracovního výkonu aměření kompetencí. Později se tato metoda rozšířila do dalších oblastí, například vlékařství nebo vpsychologii sloužily kritické incidenty kusměrňování lidského chování, vprofesionální aobchodní sféře pak koptimalizaci náboru ařízení lidských zdrojů. Na přelomu tisíciletí nalezly kritické incidenty využití kusnadnění mezikulturního dialogu ave vzdělávání. Tato studie se zaměřuje na možnosti práce skritickými incidenty ve vysokoškolském vzdělávání imimo něj jako snástrojem kosobnímu aprofesnímu rozvoji akpodpoře celoživotního učení. Sběr kritických incidentů, ze kterého tato studie čerpá, byl zahájen vroce 2017 vrámci projektu realizovaného na soukromé vysoké škole se studenty magisterského studia vpředmětu obchodní angličtiny. Kritické incidenty jsou zaznamenávány studenty ve formě psaných příběhů, které zachycují významné okamžiky zinterakce vangličtině jak vdomácím prostředí, tak vzahraničí. Znashromážděných dat bylo pro tento text vybráno šest ukázkových kritických incidentů obsahujících popis situace akritického momentu, vlastní postřehy ahodnocení zkušenosti zpohledu účastníka. Vpráci je popsán kritických incident jako cyklus emocí, myšlenek achování člověka na úrovni jak okamžitých, tak pokročilých reakcí účastníků aje navržen didaktický model pro multidisciplinární použití. Data ukazují, že tento model je účinným nástrojem nejen pro posilování jazykových akoOPEN ACCESS 42 STUDIE ZAPLIKOVANÉ LINGVISTIKY 1/2023 munikačních dovedností ve vzdělávání, ale ipro rozvoj celého souboru dalších jemných aintrapersonálních dovedností využitelných ve světě práce. Praktické využití kritických incidentů proto přesahuje oblast vzdělání, přičemž nalézá širší využití voblasti řízení lidských zdrojů, vedení lidí aspolečenských věd. KEY WORDS: critical incidents, didactics, language education, key competences, personal growth, human resource management 1 CRITICAL INCIDENTS Critical incidents (CIs) take upon awide range of definitions depending on the field and time when they have been used (e.g., Apedaile & Schill, 2008; Butterfield et al., 2009; Cope & Watts, 2000; Flanagan, 1947; Sieglová, 2022; Spencer-Oatey, 2013; Wight, 1995). They are generally grasped as life situations that deviate from the expectations of normality and usually catch aperson unprepared. Given their atypical nature, they affect emotions, induce reactions, assume quick decisions, and result in action. Charged with astrong emotional force, either negative or positive, CIs become deeply ingrained in aperson’s memory. As such, they can be revisited and serve as amodel resource molding one’s decisions, behaviors, and actions in analogic situations later in life. Simply said, CIs never leave aperson the same, and thus notably contribute to an individual’s personal development. This study proposes that considering new CIs accumulate over one’s whole life, they are ahidden yet potent agent navigating people’s life-long learning. CIs have inspired abundant terminology in various scientific fields proving their potential for amulti-disciplinary use. They come in varied forms and serve as model situations in varied specializations and fields. As oral testimonies, storytelling, or anecdotal remarks, written narratives, informal observations, or collected in aprestructured format, they can remain either barely noticed by the person involved or used as data for asecond party in an organized form. Given their profound practical potential, they can be used to foster education and personal development in manifold social practices. 1.1 EARLY DEVELOPMENTS CIs first appeared as amethod for qualitative research with abroad practical application in the United States around the time of the Second World War (Flanagan, 1954). The CI approach was first employed at this time in the military practice of the American army, but soon, made its way to the public and educational sphere. The Aviation Psychology Program of the USAAF was one of the first to adopt CIs for recruitment purposes. The program’s first two studies analyzed reasons for pilot failures (Flanagan, 1947; Miller, 1947). The subsequent studies focused on identifying incidents of experienced effective and ineffective behaviors recollected from the active duty of war veterans (Wickert, 1947) in order to improve battle leadership and organization. OPEN ACCESS DAGMAR SIEGLOVá 43 Agroup of psychologists from the USAAF soon established ascholarly non-profit organization the American Institute for Research (AIR) focusing on systematic research in human behavior that led to the development of the critical incident technique (CIT) as afully established research procedure. Following the initiatives from the Aviation Psychology Program, their first tasks aimed at defining job requirements, including aptitudes and personal characteristics, for air force officers (Preston, 1948) or pilots (Gordon, 1947, 1949). Similarly, projects studying requirements for personnel in physical sciences (Flanagan, 1949) and for air route traffic controllers (Nagay, 1949) followed. The CIT then penetrated into the industrial sphere where it was applied to record the quality of job performance of the employees for the General Motors Corporation (Miller & Flanagan, 1950). Many studies of the CIs also emerged from varied scientific projects conducted at the Department of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) by Flanagan’s students in the form of doctoral theses (Flanagan, 1954), studying requirements, proficiency, and general abilities in varied professions, e.g., dentists in medicine, industrial foremen in the Westinghouse Electric Corporations, managers in life insurance agencies, instructors of general psychology courses, or sales clerks in department stores. Based on finding ahigher occurrence of ineffective behaviors in students with respect to study and behavioral issues (Eilbert, 1953), CIs were used by the faculty to determine emotional immaturity and develop arelevant classification system. This in fact set up the basis for using the CIT to study personality and human behavior. By the time of the early studies, several practical applications of the CIs embracing varied approaches to the method can be found (Flanagan, 1954). Both studies of the USAAF and AIR first used the CIs to measure and evaluate job performance or proficiency including aptitudes and abilities in varied job positions, such as pilots, teachers, or chefs. This contributed to improving the recruitment procedures by defining more specific job requirements, as well as helping develop specific training programs of new employees as afirst record of using the CIs for educational purposes. The results of the aforementioned studies also lay the foundation for refining operating procedures or adjusting work environment and tools. The use of CIs as a“very valuable supplementary tool for the study of attitudes” (Flanagan, 1954, p.28), as mainly determined by the works from the Department of Psychology, Pitt, can then be seen as first probes to study leadership and motivation or counseling and psychotherapy. 1.2 THE CRITICAL INCIDENT TECHNIQUE (CIT) The early research employing CIs resulted in the CIT, first described by John Flanagan in 1954 as an established qualitative study research five step scientific procedure (Figure 1). While allowing for flexible data collection and analysis typical for qualitative research, the CIT remains in the traditional scholarly boundaries, starting with aclearly identified purpose of the study, including the statement of research questions or hypotheses that mainly follow, and thus emphasize, apractical use of CIs. Prior to choosing the methods for data collection and analysis, constituting the third step, questions of relevance are posed in order to ensure aplausible choice of setting, participants, and related objectives. The amassed data get further assessed and OPEN ACCESS 44 STUDIE ZAPLIKOVANÉ LINGVISTIKY 1/2023 interpreted according to emerging thematic categories. Upon considering potential bias and limitations against the general aim of the research, the final results get advanced for their intended practical use. Step 1: General Aims Identifying the purpose of the study and posing research questions — Measures of typical performance — Measures of proficiency — Training — Selection and classification — Operating procedures — Equipment design — Motivation and leadership — Counseling and psychology Step 2: Plans and Specifications Addressing questions of relevance and objectivity — Situations to be observed — Relevance to the general aim — Extent of effect on the general aim — Persons to make the observations — Groups to be observed — Behaviors to be observed Step 3: Collecting the data Choosing methods for data collection and analysis — Interviews — Group interviews (focus groups) — Questionnaires — Record forms Step 4: Analyzing the data Summarizing and describing the data to be used and to maximize their practical usefulness — Selecting arelevant frame of reference — Formulating aset of major categories — Placing the incidents into the categories Step 5: Interpreting and reporting Weighing potential overgeneralizations or bias and identifying limitations of the research — Reviewing the general aim — Evaluating the data — Reporting the value of the results Figure 1:The Critical Incident Technique. The CIT defined by Flanagan (1954, p.327) as “aset of procedures for collecting direct observations of human behavior in such away as to facilitate their potential usefulness in solving practical problems” entered further professions around the new millennium but changed during the upcoming decades because of multiple perspectives. First, the technique penetrated further social and scientific areas, continually proving its wide applicability within multiple fields. Besides the aforementioned army, industrial or business psychology settings, the CIT was further adopted in the first decade of the 21st century in health sciences, specifically in nursing, medicine, or dentistry. It also saw preliminary application in anumber of fields, such as psychology, counselling, communications, job analysis, marketing, or social work (see FitzGerald et al., 2007), or in education and teaching practice (see Butterfield, 2005). OPEN ACCESS DAGMAR SIEGLOVá 45 The second direction the CIT took in its post-war development relates to the procedures used. Starting with the emphasis on behaviorally grounded expert “direct observations”, as originally conceived by Flanagan (1954), “retrospective self-reports” (Butterfield et al., 2005) of the participants dominated the studies toward the end of the millennium. This turned the CIT, as Butterfield (2005, p.482) puts it, from a“task analysis tool” that helps “to uncover existing realities or truths so they could be measured, predicted, and ultimately controlled” into an “investigative and exploratory tool” (ibid., p.489) that puts astrong emphasis on flexible, practical applicability within aparticular professional area. What accompanies the diversification of the approaches to the use of the CIT is the aforementioned proliferation of terminology yielding new variants of terms, e.g., the CI analysis (Gould, 1999), CI exercise (Rutman, 1996), CI study technique (Cottrell et al., 2002), or CI reflection (Francis, 1995). The flexibility of the technique, however, raised new questions, specifically concerning the validity of the methods, as exact descriptions of the data-analysis procedures were frequently missing in the earlier studies. As aresult, ateam of researchers from the University of British Colombia (UBC) (Butterfield et al., 2005, 2009) introduced arefined version of the technique known as the Enhanced Critical Incident Technique (ECIT). One of the adjustments the ECIT research procedure brought is keeping more exact records of the data, including taping during oral testimonies, to achieve their higher descriptive validity. This approach allows not only for retrospective accuracy checks, but also for more exact raw data, more specific data analysis, as well as enhanced exhaustiveness and trustworthiness of the results. With this in mind, the researchers defined nine credibility checks (Figure 2) for the final stage of the procedure. Enhanced Critical Incident Technique: Nine credibility checks 1. Audiotaping interviews Enhancing accuracy of the account 2. Interview fidelity Following established protocols and using interview guides 3. Independent extraction of CIs Collecting and analyzing by adifferent person 4. Exhaustiveness Keeping alog with statistical information of each interview 5. Participation rates Keeping arecord of the participant number with every CI 6. Placing incidents into categories by an independent judge Randomly choosing asample of aCIs set for an independent assessment 7. Cross-checking by participants Conducting asecond interview with participants for follow-up questions 8. Expert opinions Submitting the chosen CI categories for an expert confirmation 9. Theoretical agreement Comparing emergent categories with relevant scholarly literature and articulating any assumptions underlying the study Figure 2:ECIT— Nine credibility checks. OPEN ACCESS 46 STUDIE ZAPLIKOVANÉ LINGVISTIKY 1/2023 1.3 LATER DEVELOPMENTS New trends in the development of the CIT emerged around the turn of the millennium when the method further evolved, as Butterfield et al. (2009) put it, from “uncovering context” to “capturing meaning”. This, according to the authors, lead to changes in the CIT range and terminology. New studies of the CIs, originally mere descriptions of the events, started taking participants’ reflections, comments and interpretations into account. This approach set up anew direction in the use of CIs for the future, treating them as significant life events and allowing for amore profound introspection into the participants’ experience. Correspondingly, aredefined term— a“revelatory incident”— was introduced as an alternative to the CI in selected studies as aresult (Keatinge, 2002, p.34). In this form, the use of the CIT spread into further areas and disciplines, encompassing intercultural studies (e.g., Apedaile & Schill, 2008; Brislin, 1986; Cope & Watts, 2000; Spencer-Oatey, 2013; Tripp, 1993; Wight, 1995), information literacy research (Hughes, 2012), forensic criminology (Matoušková, 2013), and the like. 1.4 CRITICAL INCIDENTS AS AN AVENUE TO PERSONAL GROWTH The use of the CIT in intercultural studies significantly contributed to the work with CIs with new paradigms and perspectives (in Spencer-Oatey, 2013). Selected studies capture the term “critical” as self-defined or self-interpreted “turning-points in aperson’s life” (Tripp, 1993, p.105), or as “moments of prime importance” (Cope & Watts, 2000, p.112) mostly associated with extreme behaviors or emotions that get interpreted by the participants. Based on this, CIs are now also viewed as atool to accelerate personal growth, for example to boost the general “process of learning and growing self-awareness” (ibid., p.113), to “develop an increasing understanding of and control over professional judgement” (Tripp, 1993, p.24), or to enhance intercultural competence. Correspondingly, varied CIs from intercultural encounters have been collected, analyzed, and sorted into relevant categories (Spencer-Oatey, 2013) and applied to promote intercultural dialogue through training courses or materials in the form of exercises, role-plays, simulation games, or as a“culture assimilator” (e.g., Brislin, 1986; Wight, 1995). Varied methodological approaches to the use of CIs in the intercultural field can be found. For example, Spencer-Oatey & Davidson (2013) introduced afour-step portfolio guiding the participants of the CIs through an analysis of their experiences structured into reporting about them, reflecting on them, and reevaluating them in order to use their insights in practice. In contrast, Keatinge (2002) developed aform to analyze CIs from the perspective of an observer guiding the researcher to document the CIs as athree-step process. This process consists of brief descriptions of the situation, an analysis of the following action as well as adescription of the outcome of the action. The purpose of this study is to absorb the personal insights of individuals and show the CIs as alearning process occurring on the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral levels, which, if elevated to the metacognitive and meta-behavioral level, leads OPEN ACCESS DAGMAR SIEGLOVá 47 to explicit realizations and controlled behaviors. Using acorpus of data, adidactic model will be proposed and described as atool applicable for wide-spread educational use across disciplines contributing to foster individuals’ personal growth. 2 METHODOLOGY The data used in this study are written narratives by Czech higher education institution (HEI) students from business English courses specialized in management, motivation, and intercultural communication taken from alongitudinal study launched in 2017 and further expanded by an Erasmus+ international partnership project CIICPD (Critical Incidents in Intercultural Communication and Promoting Diversity) running between 2020 and 2023. The participants were master’s degree students 22–25 years in age specializing in economics and management. Each student completing the language course since 2017 contributed with three CIs, building adatabase of nearly 400 narratives up to date. All CIs refer to situations the students were facing in varied international settings when foreign languages were used, for example, during their studies or internships locally or abroad, in their free time, or during travels. In their testimonies, written in English, the students used apredefined form applying the 3RA tool (Spencer-Oatey & Davidson, 2013, p.1), based on which they structured their analyses into four sections: Report— Reflect— Reevaluate— Act. This allowed them to not only include the description of the participants, settings, scene, and the experienced event (Report), but also add their reflective accounts upon the experience (Reflect), followed by their realizations of their roles and learning (Reevaluate), including descriptions of lasting decisions made, behaviors changed, and actions taken (Act). Based on six CIs selected from the data corpus as samples clearly illustrating the CI as acyclical process, aCritical Incident Cycle model (Figure 3) will be proposed in the following section and subsequently described as apedagogical model for teaching and learning across disciplines. 2.1 CRITICAL INCIDENT CYCLE (CIC) The structure of each of the student testimonies reveals asequence of mutually interacting human processes. In particular, every CI consists of adescription of acritical moment that triggers an affective reaction. This reaction corresponds to the situational interpretation and is further reflected in how the person decided to react in the actual moment. The immediate interpretations and actions then get reevaluated as new realizations are made, controlled behaviors planned, or changes in actions and thinking implemented. Following this logic, five stages of how CIs are processed by their participants can be observed and described in each of the analyses, dividing the CI into areactive and reflective part. The reactive phase starts at the critical moment when adeviation from normality is noticed. This moment triggers emotions that result in an affective reaction and activate cognition when implicit immediate understanding of the event is sought. Based on the momentary interpretation substantiating for the emotion the OPEN ACCESS 48 STUDIE ZAPLIKOVANÉ LINGVISTIKY 1/2023 person then makes situational decisions choosing suitable behaviors that lead to aspontaneous reaction. The reflective phase then starts with metacognition when the person’s impulsive interpretations and behaviors get reassessed and reevaluated in retrospect. Reaching explicit understanding of the event further reflects in metabehavior when adjustments are planned and implemented to control the person’s behaviors, decisions, and actions thereafter. This cycle repeats as aspiral process accumulating new critical encounters over the course of aperson’s whole life. To facilitate understanding of the proposed Critical Incident Cycle (CIC) model illustrated in Figure 3, individual stages of aCI will be explained in detail below. Figure 3:The Critical Incident Cycle. Critical moment: The basic CIC starts with the occurrence of acritical moment. An incident qualifies as critical at the moment the participant is confronted with adeviation from his/her normative experience, i.e., an unexpected situation extending beyond what the person regards as normal based on his/her previous knowledge, experience, or behaviors adopted in life. This deviation requires aseries of immediate processing and reactions. The critical moment is usually defined in the reporting part of the incident as adescription of the situation as awhole, including the participants, setting, scene, and the pertinent deviation from the norm. Emotion: The confrontation with the critical moment triggers an immediate affective reaction in the form of strong, either positive or negative, feelings. Emotions are part of the reactive phase of the CI, which the participants describe as varied affects or METABEHAVIOR adjusted action CRITICAL MOMENT noted deviation CRITICAL INCIDENT CYCLE EMOTION affective reaction COGNITION implicit interpretation BEHAVIOR spontaneous action METACOGNITION explicit understanding r e fl e c t i v e r e fl e c t i v e r e a c t i v e r e a c t i v e r e a c t i v e a c t i v a t e f e e l i n g s a c t i v a t e p e r c e p t i o n a c t i v a t e d e c i s i o n a c t i v a t e e v a l u a t i o n a c t i v a t e p l a n n i n g a c t i v a t e g r o w t h OPEN ACCESS DAGMAR SIEGLOVá 49 feelings, such as pleasant or unpleasant surprise, shock or astonishment, discomfort or pleasure, disappointment or satisfaction, pride vs embarrassment or humiliation, sadness vs happiness or joy, stress or arousal, fear or relief, to name afew. Cognition: The emotional reaction then stimulates cognitive efforts seeking understanding, interpretation, or meaning of the event substantiating for the feelings in order to react. These perceptions are construed on the base of the participants’ previous experiences, their range of existing knowledge, as well as their sociocultural background. As part of the reactive phase, quick spontaneous judgments and first-hand realizations of social roles, identity, beliefs or values are made, preparing the participant to take an adequate step. In the testimonies, the participants describe them as their first primary reasoning, which includes interpretations as justifications for their attitudes, decisions, and actions adopted in the upcoming course of events. Behavior: The first implicit interpretations yield acorresponding behavioral reaction drawn from how the person understands the current situational context. These include various spontaneous acts that did or did not happen with minimum or no hesitation, for example, decisions made, strategies set, and actions taken or not taken. The participants describe them as immediate reactions they saw adequate or meaningful in the current moment. Metacognition: After the first emotional, cognitive, and behavioral reaction, the experience becomes asubject of further contemplation allowing for the application of wider knowledge, experience, or research. The person starts ametacognitive process of critically reevaluating her/his own primary interpretations and performance in order to gain more explicit understanding of the situation. Based on this, s/he can formulate the lesson learned and set up decisions, strategies, and plans to keep control under analogic situations in the future. The reflective part of the testimonies includes admitting and revising errors in judgement, biases, and misinterpretations in wider contexts, for example, redefining social roles, identities, personal beliefs and values, as well as gaining self-esteem, self-realization, visions, and motivation for learning. Meta-behavior: Upon reevaluation and critical assessment of the implicit interpretations and momentary reactions in agiven situation, the person starts recognizing and defining desirable behaviors. The newly gained experience thus carries alearning force transferable to future performance in wider areas of the participant’s life and leads to positive behavioral changes. Meta-behavioral processing described in the data shows the participants’ enhanced ability to think before acting, i.e., to monitor, control, regulate, or correct their future behaviors. These behaviors are implemented with avaried degree of delay. Some of the testimonies report about concrete behavioral changes either in concrete situations or implicitly. Some narratives indicate adetermination for adjusted behaviors in the future, and others are at the stage of unrealized plans, showing each participant’s momentary unreadiness to execute their decisions. In sum, the data show both examples of implementation of apositive change into the participants’ everyday actions, i.e., aclosed cycle with an evincible outcome, as well as examples of adefined desired action with postponed (unhatched) implemenOPEN ACCESS 56 STUDIE ZAPLIKOVANÉ LINGVISTIKY 1/2023 comes of this experience, including gaining practice in the job, learning new skills, and gaining self-confidence: Anyway, the turning point came about aweek later, when my boss was on his vacation, when Ifinally started to know what Iwas doing and what it was good for. Imust say that at that moment Ifelt Imade abit progress— not only in terms of experience, but also in terms of ego. The boosted confidence is further accentuated in the conclusion of the student’s testimony showing his readiness to accept new challenges with amuch higher trust in his abilities: “Irealized that if Iwant something, Ican do it, and if someone believes in you, you can do it even faster.”. This reflection demonstrates that to gain experience and develop professional skills and competences, one must step out of his/her comfort zone, accept new responsibilities, and exercise agreat amount of flexibility if one wants to succeed. It also shows that accepting new challenges has apositive effect on the student’s selfconfidence. Finally, it demonstrates the importance of international work experience that contributes to enhanced intercultural experience, knowledge, and competencies. 3.6 CRITICAL INCIDENT 6: STUDY ABROAD IN AUSTRIA The last situation, taking place in an educational setting, reveals the role of CIs in growing assertiveness as well as setting up one’s own values. This incident took place during the student’s bachelor’s degree Erasmus+ study abroad in Austria. The context of the critical moment is explained by the student in the in the following text: Iwould like to describe asituation, when Ifelt ashamed. Istudied there in English and the whole half ayear was ahuge challenge, as Ihad all classes with students from all around the world except of Economics, where were only Austrian students, whose English level is mostly C2. Before Istart to describe the incident, let me tell you something about myself. My parents invested in my German and English language alot. Ihave visited languages schools, went to England many times but unfortunately, Ihave never learnt so much as Iwould like to as Iam more technical then humanities person. Somehow, Iam stuck in B2/C1 level. During the semester we had to write thesis and Iwas the first student who handed it in. One week later during seminar, the mentor firstly praised me for handing it in so early and for nice wrapping and then he continued to criticize my English. The whole lecture theatre, full of almost 100 students have heard, how horrible my English is, that it is nonsense for me to be there and study this subject. As seen in this part, prior to explaining the situation, the student starts her testimony with revealing her feelings (emotion). After laying down the context, she justifies her feeling with aseries of explanations of the primary reasons for her feelings (cognition). She first expresses her frustration caused by troubles to achieve perfection in her English language competences despite her long-term efforts and her parents’ OPEN ACCESS DAGMAR SIEGLOVá 57 earlier investments in her language education. Then, she admits her low self-esteem based on her weaker language skills in comparison to the other classmates from the economics lesson. This self-perception, finally, is reflected in her interpretation of the critical moment from awider perspective (metacognition), that is, despite being praised for precision and perfect time management, she sees the teacher’s public criticism of her English as belittling and humiliating. This is evident from her further elaboration on the event. While accentuating her diligence and achievements from other language lessons and exams, she feels the teacher’s criticism unjustified as well as socially inappropriate. She, at the same time, practices aconsiderable degree of control and diplomacy by permitting the teacher’s good intentions to help her mobilize her study efforts first: For comparison Ihave been quite successful in other subjects. In the end of semester, Ilearned for the final exams over month and learnt 5 economics word every day and Ipassed the exam on grade 4. Imy opinion, he just wanted to give me some motivation threw his speech, what should have made me to think about myself and my English. Ialways persuade myself, that he really wanted me to try harder and improve my English… But Ithink he has not realized what he was saying in that moment and what impact would it have on me and my reputation. The student, nonetheless, dwells on the insulting nature of the teacher’s remark when describing her inability to find an appropriate reaction at the moment (behavior): Iwas the one, who was disgraced in front of another students. In that moment Ihave not done anything. Iwas completely caught out by that. Ihad no words which Icould have said in that moment. Feeling humiliated, as well as her inability to defend herself, seems to have mobilized the student into setting up future plans for improvement (meta-behavior). She first indicates achange in her attitude to criticism: “Ihave learnt that it does not matter how hard you try or how successful you are, there is always going to be someone who will criticize you no matter what.”. Then, she defines what she deems as appropriate teacher behavior in the respective situation: “In my opinion, if someone want to reproach you for your imperfections, he must communicate it in privacy.”. After that, she plans for an ideal reaction in analogic situations: “Next time Iwould behave differently. Ishould have solved it with the director of University or at least tell him that the mentor behaves inappropriately.”. Finally, she points out the progress toward her personal growth: First of all, it really motivated me alittle bit to learn more. Ilearnt alot for the final exam, which Ipassed. But Ialso had to think about my personality and Irealized that languages are not the field of study that Iam good at. This situation, like the others above, positively affected the student’s personal growth. Firstly, she acquired aset of soft skills, such as coping with criticism or the principles of proper communication, manners, and diplomacy. Secondly, this incident allowed OPEN ACCESS 58 STUDIE ZAPLIKOVANÉ LINGVISTIKY 1/2023 her to become aware of the areas of improvements in her personal skills set, especially language skills or assertiveness. By realizing her personality traits together with her strengths and weaknesses, she can better direct her carrier path and study efforts in the future. 4 DISCUSSION AND FURTHER IMPLICATIONS The CIC model, as proposed in this study, suggests adidactic approach that can help accelerate the process of learning and personal growth through an analysis of asequence activated by the mutually interactive human processes in aCI. The model adopted in the educational setting guides students to be able to become aware of their feelings (emotion), understand their primary interpretations (cognition), and recognize their unmediated reactions (behavior) in varied critical situations. Based on this, it helps them further reevaluate their performance from awider perspective (metacognition) and plan for the implementation of positive change in their everyday performance (meta-behavior) thereafter. As such, the model suggests an extended application in multiple fields and for multiple purposes with obvious ethical issues in mind, that is, while working with personal stories, sharing CIs must be voluntary, topically regulated, and presented or used as adidactic tool strictly upon the participants’ consent and anonymously. To begin, each CI analyzed above enhanced in the students aspecific set of competencies that fall into the category of the so-called 21st century skills defined in the strategy documents of nations and international organizations (e.g., Chládek, 2015; MŠMT ČR, 2001; OECD, 2019) as key competences essential for coping with the challenges of arapidly changing world. The data show that the CIs the students experienced helped them develop their critical thinking, problem solving, communication and cooperation skills; the students also learned how to interact in intercultural settings, exercised flexibility, tolerance, and respect; they adopted manners and diplomacy and also had to step out of their control zone or take over responsibility for their tasks and actions. Needless to say, these so-called soft skills can be utilized not only in the students’ current globally interconnected academic or professional careers, but also in the new professions expected by many professionals or organizations to take the lead in the job market in the Industry 4.0 future (e.g., Brynjolfsson, 2014; NÚV, 2018; NVF, 2016; Schwab, 2018). Secondly, besides skills and competences, each experience discussed in this paper turned out to be avaluable contribution to the development of the students’ personality traits and character. The students progressed in terms of self-confidence and self-esteem. They reasserted their social roles, identity and values, or realized their talents and ambitions. Some learned the principles of working discipline and focus, others fair play and respect to rules. And most of the situations, while emotionally challenging in nature, ultimately carried amotivational character for learning, working, or practicing hobbies, and helped the students set adirection for their future. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that CIs experienced in varied settings led to strengthening social networks that the students build and count on in their perOPEN ACCESS DAGMAR SIEGLOVá 59 sonal as well as professional lives. In some of the cases, students reinforced their friendship bonds, others built international partnerships, or defined their social roles. And they learned the necessary principles to foster these bonds through the aforementioned skills, such as cooperation, communication, tolerance, or respect. Last but not least, this study highlights the significance of CIs for life-long learning. Each CI, as shown above, contributes to abetter awareness of aperson’s emotions, thoughts, and actions, which helps to regulate human conduct in analogic situations to come. In other words, aCI never leaves aperson the same. By triggering aseries of covert and overt processing, every single critical situation adds up to the growing pool of accumulated experience, knowledge, and skills, and thus spins the perpetual spiral of learning resulting in increasing abilities to deal with critical situations more efficiently. For this reason, the CIC model fits well the need in the area of human resources, management, or leadership as atool for professional training or coaching of employees, managers, or teams. Companies, organizations, and institutions can use the model for guiding their workers’ personal and professional growth, targeting their career paths, facilitating dialogue and cooperation at their workplace, and activating internal motivation of human resources to learn and work. CIs are equally applicable to language education. All CIs analyzed above were HEI student narrations about their experiences from varied social interactions in aforeign language used as anatural linguistic resource for varied activities in their language lessons. Through recalling and reflecting on significant life events at the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral level, both in writing or orally, students enforce their productive foreign language skills and build their situation-based, personalized, and thus more efficient sets of linguistic repertoire. As aresult, they develop individualized language competencies, boost their self-confidence, and raise their motivation for autonomous language learning. Thus, it follows that the CIC model can help to contribute to deeper understanding of the social role of languages. Indeed, each of the incident analyzed above can be seen as areflection of aseparate simple language management process, i.e., individuals’ discourse-based interaction (Nekvapil & Sherman, 2015) or “behavior-toward-language” (Fishman, 1971), in detail. The model, therefore, is applicable to the language management theory (LMT) (Jernudd & Neustupný, 1987; Kimura, 2014; Neustupný & Nekvapil, 2003) and practice as one of the possible data collection methods helping to capture individual stages of the simple language management process (Sieglová, 2022), including the related emotions, interpretations, decisions, plans, and their practical implementation. This can help enhance general understanding of linguistic, communicative and socio-cultural behavior of individuals applicable in awide array of applied fields, such as sociolinguistics, political discourse, or language learning and teaching methodology, to name afew. For all the reasons above, the CIC model is an ideal tool to be used in educational practice. It can serve both teachers for didactic purposes in varied subjects and specializations, as well as students as aguide to their self-advancement. In the form of structured analyses of written or oral testimonies or those used as case studies from avariety of situations or settings, the model can contribute to build the stuOPEN ACCESS 60 STUDIE ZAPLIKOVANÉ LINGVISTIKY 1/2023 dents’ emotional, cognitive, as well as behavioral intelligence by teaching them how to react to stimuli, process information, understand context, and regulate or control behaviors in varied professional settings or social interaction. As such, the model is well suited for pedagogy of the current unstable world described as vulnerable, uncertain, complex, ambiguous (VUCA) (Kraaijenbrink, 2018; www.vuca-world.org). It can help people and societies develop flexible skills and resistance to better cope with the complexity in the time of new technologies, environmental changes, pandemics, international conflicts, wars, and whatever the unpredictable future holds. REFERENCES Apedaile, S., & Schill, L. (2008). Critical Incidents for Intercultural Communication: An Interactive Tool for Developing Awareness, Knowledge, and Skills. NorQuest College. Brislin, R. (1986). Aculture general assimilator: Preparation for various types of sojourn. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 10, 215–234. Butterfield, L.D., Borgen, W.A., Amundson, N.E., & Malio, A.S.T. (2005). Fifty years of the critical incident technique: 1954–2004 and beyond. Qualitative Research, 5(4), 475–497. Butterfield, L.D., Borgen, W.A., Maglio, A.S.T., & Amundson, N.E. (2009). Using the Enhanced Critical Incident Technique in counselling psychology research. Canadian Journal of Counselling, 43(4), 265–282. Cope, J., & Watts, G. (2000). Learning by doing. An exploration of experience, critical incidents and reflection in entrepreneurial learning. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research, 6(3), 104–124. Cottrell, D., Kilminster, S., Jolly, B., & Grant, J. (2002). What is effective supervision and how does it happen? Acritical incident study. Medical Education, 36(11), 1042–1049. Eilbert, L.R. (1953). Astudy of emotional immaturity utilizing the critical incident technique. University of Pittsburgh Bulletin, 49, 199–204. Fishman, J.A. (1971). The sociology of language: An interdisciplinary social science approach to language in society. In J.A.Fishman (Ed.), Advances in the Sociology of Language (pp. 217–404). Mouton. FitzGerald, K., Seale, S., Kerins, C.A., & McElvaney, R. (2007). The Critical Incident Technique: Auseful tool for conducting qualitative research. Journal of Dental Education, 72(3), 299–304. Flanagan, J.C. (1947). The aviation psychology program in the Army Air Forces. AAF Aviation Psychology Program Research. U.S.Government Printing Office, Report No.1. Flanagan, J.C. (1954). The critical incident technique. Psychological Bulletin, 51(4), 327–358. Flanagan, J.C. (1949). Critical requirements: Anew approach to employee evaluation. Personnel Psychology, 2, 419–425. American Institute for Research. Francis, D. (1995). The reflective journal: Awindow to preservice teachers’ practical knowledge. Teaching and Teacher Education, 11(3), 229–41. Gordon, T. (1947). The Airline Pilot: ASurvey of the Critical Requirements of his Job and of Pilot Evaluation and Selection Procedures. Civil Aeronautics Administration, Division of Research, Report No.73. Gordon, T. (1949). The Development of aStandard Flight-check for the Airline Transport Rating Based on the Critical Requirements of the Airline Pilot’s Job. Civil Aeronautics Administration, Division of Research, Report No.85. Gould, N. (1999). Developing aqualitative approach to the audit of interdisciplinary child protection practice. Child Abuse Review, 8(3), 193–9. OPEN ACCESS DAGMAR SIEGLOVá 61 Hughes, H. (2012). An expanded critical incident approach for exploring information use and learning. Library and Information Research, 36(112), 72–95. Jernudd, B.H., & Neustupný, J.V. (1987). Language planning: for whom? In L.Laforge (Ed.), Actes du Colloque international sur l’aménagement linguistique / Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Language Planning (pp. 69–84). Les Presses de L’Université Laval. Keatinge, D. (2002). Versatility and flexibility: Attributes of the Critical Incident Technique in nursing research. Nursing and Health Sciences, 4, 33–39. Kimura, G.C. (2014). Language management as acyclical process: Acase study on prohibiting Sorbian in the workplace. Slovo aslovesnost, 75(4), 255–270. Kraaijenbrink, J. (2018). What does VUCA really mean? Forbes, 19.12.2018. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ jeroenkraaijenbrink/2018/12/19/what-doesvuca-really-mean/?sh=1b50d9e417d6. Matoušková, I. (2013). Aplikovaná forenzní psychologie. Grada Publishing. Miller, N.E. (1947). Psychological research on pilot training. AAF Aviation Psychology Program Research. U.S.Government Printing Office, Report No.8. Miller, R.B., & Flanagan, J.C. (1950). The performance record: an objective merit-rating procedure for industry. American Psychologist, 5, 331–332. Nagay, J.A. (1949). The Development of aProcedure for Evaluating the Proficiency of Air Route Traffic Controllers. Civil Aeronautics Administration, Division of Research, Report No.83. Nekvapil, J., & Sherman, T. (2015). An introduction: Language management theory in language policy and planning. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 232, 1–12. Neustupný, J.V., & Nekvapil, J. (2003). Language management in the Czech Republic. Current Issues in Language Planning, 4(3&4), 181–366. [Reprinted in R.B.Baldauf & R.B.Kaplan (Eds.) (2006), Language Planning and Policy in Europe, Vol.2: The Czech Republic, The European Union and Northern Ireland (pp. 16–201). Multilingual Matters.] Preston, H.O. (1948). The Development of aProcedure for Evaluating Officers in the United States Air Force. American Institute for Research. Rutman, D. (1996). Child care as women’s work: Workers’ experiences of powerfulness and powerlessness. Gender and Society, 10(5), 629–49. Sieglová, D. (2022). Critical incidents as awindow into simple language management. Language Learning in Higher Education, 12(1), 105–127. Spencer-Oatey, H. (2013). Critical Incidents: ACompilation of Quotations for the Intercultural Field. GlobalPAD Core Concepts. Available at: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/globalpadrip/openhouse/interculturalskills/cc_critical_ incidents_131127.pdf. Spencer-Oatey, H., & Davidson, A. (2013). 3RA Intercultural Learning Journal Template. ATool to Help Record and Reflect on Intercultural Encounters. University of Warwick, Global PAD Open House. Tripp, D. (1993). Critical Incidents in Teaching. Developing Professional Judgement. Routledge. Wickert, F. (1947). Psychological research on problems of redistribution. AAF Aviation Psychology Program Research. Government Printing Office, Report No.14. Wight, A.R. (1995). The critical incident as atraining tool. In S.M. Fowler (Ed.), Intercultural Sourcebook: Cross-Cultural Training Methods 1 (pp. 127–140). Intercultural Press. Dagmar Sieglová | Department of Languages and Intercultural Competences, ŠKODA AUTO University, Czech Republic <[email protected]> OPEN ACCESS