Culture and Pedagogy: international students and inclusive practices in local HE classrooms

1. Culture and Pedagogy: international students and inclusive practices in local HE classrooms Dr Yvonne Turner University of Newcastle Business School YT/Lanc/Sept 2007

2. The context: cultural epistemologies, cultural pedagogies • Epistemologies derive from socio-historical and cultural contexts – emic, not etic • But: the influence of European scientific empiricism engenders notions of universality • Interpretivist views – important to disaggregate scientific ‘truths’ from human processes of investigation which are enculturated • Constructionist views: social mediation of mind – pluralizing knowledges • Pluralism culturally situates not only behaviours and T & L practices but constitutes learning differently within local contexts • Cross border travellers possess well-developed, valid but diverse notions of what knowledge is, how we can come to know it and how we can meaningfully (legitimately) express it within educational settings • Effective mutual knowledge discovery / learning can only take place when epistemological beliefs are transparent and all participants are equally enabled to participate (Woo, 1993; Bruner, 1996; Brown, 1998; Smith, 1998; Batelaan, and Gundare, 2000; Woodrow, 2001; Murphy and Ivinson, 2003; Halstead, 2004; Turner, 2006) YT/Lanc/Sept 2007

3. HE Internationalization and cultural practices at institutional level • Internationalization: a pervasive but contested metaphor used to describe increasing international flows between local academies • Local orientations exist on a continuum from Symbolic to Transformative: increased international traffic does not necessarily imply increased inclusivity (Bartell, 2003; Turner and Robson, 2007) • Long-term, sustainable internationalization is underpinned by cultural reciprocity (Yang 2001, 2002) • Internationalization in Anglophone nations has tended to be driven by competitive, knowledge transfer stimuli rather than cooperative, reciprocal, knowledge-sharing (Van der Wende, 2001; Luijten-Lub, Van der Wende, and Huisman 2005) • little evidence that increased international traffic is renegotiating underlying local constructions of e.g. ‘learning’, ‘teaching’, ‘student’, ‘teacher’, ‘assessment’, ‘participation’, etc in the light of increasing diversity or that appropriate funding is hypothecated to support this (Welch, 2002; Teekens, 2003; Stone, 2006) YT/Lanc/Sept 2007

4. Teachers, power and practices in (culturally) diverse classrooms • HE Pedagogy and Practice in the UK:relatively untheorized, governed by ‘folk pedagogies’; cultural pedagogy under-discussed within much of the HE literature (Bruner, 1999; Simon, 1999; Gabb, 2006) • Academic Development reinforces ‘generic skills’ orientations to teaching and learning tasks(Rowland, 2001, 2002; Trowler and Cooper, 2002) • Teachers’ World Views:shape what happens in the HE classroom(Samuelowicz and Bain, 2001; De Vita, 2002; Sanderson, 2004; Walker, 2004) • Implicit Theories of Learning:past experiences determine how teachers teach and learners learn(Claxton, 1996) • Anglo Academic Practicesmarginalize social, cultural and affective aspects of learning, isolating a focus on cognitive development(Hufton, Elliott and Illushin, 2002;Egege and Kutieleh, 2003; Turner, 2006) • Unequal Terms of Engagement:Teaching and learning happens on the teacher’s / ‘hosts’ terms rather than within a negotiated, inclusive space - privileging of colloquial local self-stereotypes alongside negative stereotypes of cultural others who participate in local systems(Pritchard and Skinner, 2002; Biggs, 2003; Burke, 2006) YT/Lanc/Sept 2007

5. Conclusion: teasing out some of the teaching and learning challenges in diverse settings • Culturally Problematize Pedagog(ies): re-examine local practices and their validity for diverse participation; explore the impact of implicit local values on what constitutes learning and the shape of learning spaces, assessment practices, knowledge dissemination etc • (International) Students and (Cultural) Diversity: establish inclusive practices to provide equal access for all students – international students don’t need anything that any other student doesn’t need • Academic Practices: Considering what gets Discussedin the Classroom: issues of balance between technical aspects in T & L e.g. citation, plagiarism, academic writing skills, decoding local T & L practices and assumptions, establishing intellectual rationale for orientation • Reciprocity: classroom power dynamics; knowledge transfer vs. knowledge sharing; Internationalization at Home / Abroad; Student integration / cultural peer support; languages in use etc • Defining the Boundaries around the Learning Experience: evaluating the contribution of social and cultural learning within educational settings YT/Lanc/Sept 2007