Cultural Awareness:

Exploring staff intercultural competence for supporting a

diverse student group by

Dr Charles JuwahGeoff Goolnik

Catherine Ogilvie

Department for the Enhancement of Learning, Teaching and Assessment

RGU: DELTA

Content• Scene setting

– Globalisation and student diversity– Globalisation and student diversity – RGU experience– Pedagogical considerations– Dilemmas

• Exploratory study: Staff cultural awareness and intercultural competence (work-in-progress) – Preliminary findings– Preliminary recommendations

• Intervention strategies

• Conclusions• Further reading

Globalisation and student diversity

• Globalisation has led to:– Education across national boundaries and movement of

people across countries and continents– The cosmopolitan nature of universities and higher education

institutions across the world

• At Robert Gordon University (RGU) over 60% of our postgraduate students are international students.

Globalisation and student diversity - RGU experience

• Students have a range of diversified educational backgrounds and prior knowledge

• They have limited knowledge of the UK Higher Educational system and the British/Scottish cultures

• Some find it very difficult at the initial stages to effectively engage with academic and social life (a situation which impacts on the student’s learning experience)

• Some international students report (perceive) that their knowledge and experience are undervalued

• Students report that staff are ‘unaware’ of their predicament (and this impacts on the student’s learning experience)

• Their experience is characterised by a ‘disengagement’ with the academy

Pedagogical considerations

• All knowledge is socially mediated and grounded in culture (Lave and Wenger 1991, Vygotsky 1978)

• Integrates with Current “Graduates of the 21st Century” Enhancement Theme:A rounded graduate who is academically, professionally and interculturally competent and is able to adapt in a variety of contexts and situations

• It is recognised that student diversity/international students:

– enrich the learning environment as a good educational resource

– provide alternative perspectives on way of learning and working

• Learners from different cultures exhibit different:– Patterns of interactions with teachers and peers– Values (associated with their customs, traditions or belief)

Pedagogical considerations • There are conceptual and pedagogical challenges for

intercultural education and teaching– There is a need to recognise diversity in how students access

and engage with learning– We should show respect for the students (and their prior

knowledge)– We should provide inclusive and equal access to knowledge,

resources and technologies, etc.– We have to develop learning environments and situations

which promote quality relationships between the diverse cultural groups

– We need to identify effective facilitation methods that will bothengage and respond to the students’ cultural, language and academic needs e.g. What is the best intervention strategy when students get stuck?

Dilemmas Drawing on evidence-based practice, we are inclined topose the questions:

• Is diversity/international students – is this an awkward problem or a challenge?

• Are our staff ‘culturally’ equipped to effectively support students to achieve the required graduate attributes within a cosmopolitan learning environment?

An exploratory study • Are our staff in fact ‘culturally’ equipped to effectively

support students to achieve the required graduate attributes within a cosmopolitan learning environment?

• Exploratory study undertaken within RGU– Discussion held with twenty participants on the PGCert

Higher Education Learning & Teaching (HELT) course– Focused interviews were conducted with 6 academics (two

from each of the 3 Faculties. Two of the academics were international colleagues)

Preliminary findings• Staff reported difficulty coping with student diversity

related to:– mixed abilities in terms of academic literacy– limited or lack of student to student interactions during

tutorial sessions– ‘ethnic grouping/clustering’ in the classroom, etc.– language difficulties, etc.

• Staff were unaware of: – The ‘culture’ of their students– Their students previous educational cultural

background– The students’ value system as it related to:

• academic literacy (e.g. the concept of plagiarism, etc.)• interactions between teacher and student

Preliminary recommendations

• There is a need to support staff to develop intercultural awareness and competences to enable them further enhance the student experience within a multicultural environment

• We should develop multiple intervention strategies

Intervention strategies

• Organise development sessions on:– Understanding international students’ previous educational

backgrounds– Student adjustment to new academic cultures– Plagiarism

• Provide resources on:– Diversity and the culture of teaching and learning– How to support international students– Suitable audit tool(s)

Intervention strategies

• Use the rich and valuable resource of international academic colleagues to inform and enhance our:– knowledge of how students learn– pedagogic practices relating to teaching and assessment

– support for students (e.g. intra- and inter-cultural mentoring/buddying) to enable students achieve their potential and the required graduate attributes

Intervention strategies

• Engage staff in pedagogies that facilitate effective learning within mixed or monocultural groups– Teaching methods

• use diverse and focused approaches– Curriculum design to take account of cultural issues

• Incorporate cultural issues in course design• Internationalise the curriculum so as to reflect

diversity and contemporary (global) practices

AcademicAttributes

PersonalAttributes

Professional Attributes

*

Subject/ discipline knowledge:Apply concepts & practice to a global context

a) Self awareb) Culturally sensitive

a) Value diversityb) Aware of diversity & issues which are relevant and impact on professional practice*Intercultural competence, i.e.

Think global and act local!

A curriculum design that offers intercultural competence

Intervention strategies

Intervention strategies

• Aim for inclusivity– Understand differences and otherness– Understand both explicit and non-explicit “frames of

references” or reference points e.g. institutional and societal norms, values, beliefs, meanings, conventions, practices, etc.

– Acquire the language of academic discourse and modes of operation/engagement in both academic and societal settings

– Integrate new knowledge and learning into academic practice (Byram & Zarate 1997)

Thus, intercultural awareness provides the interface between declarative knowledge (knowledge about) and procedural knowledge (knowledge of how to)

Conclusions

• Cultural issues are important in fostering collaboration amongst multicultural learners (in all learning contexts and environments – on campus, online, blended)

• Devise intervention strategies to benefit all students

• Don’t regard diversity and international students as awkward problems – They’re rewarding challenges!

• Use diversity to enrich both the curriculum and to promote shared and collaborative learning

1. JUWAH, C., LAL, D. & BELOUCIF, A., 2006. Overcoming the cultural issues associated with plagiarism for International students. A Report for the Higher Education Academy – Business, Management, Accounting and Finance Subject Network funded Teaching Research Project.

2. GIROUX, N.D. (No Date). Critical Pedagogy. [online]. Available from:http://mingo.infoscience.uiowa.edu/~stevens/critped/giroux.htm

3. LAVE J. & WENGER, E.,1991. Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

4. MOLONEY, R., 2008. ‘You just want to be like that’ – teacher modelling and intercultural competence in young language learners. Babel 42(3), pp. 11–18

5. VYGOTSKY, L.S.,1978. Mind and society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

Further reading