Authored and curated by Dr Catriona Cunningham, Academic Development Partner, University of Sterling.
This Thematic Series resource is an output of the Advance HE Scottish National Priority Plan.
The aim of the Thematic Series are to strengthen core academic capabilities of staff through the sharing of effective practice and focused theory, and to support institutional enhancement of learning and teaching, complementing and further building on their existing in-house work. Topics are identified by the Scottish sector, and resources are authored and curated by colleagues from Scottish institutions and aim to guide practitioners to relevant material and experiences to support them in developing their own teaching practice.
What is the intercultural curriculum?
The intercultural curriculum is many ways an aspirational curriculum, aiming to challenge the dominant western approaches to learning and teaching and make explicit the value of our individual diverse learner experiences. Underpinned by scholarly thinking of interculturalism in higher education, this resource seeks to explore the changing shape of our curriculum across the western world in ways that help us redefine the purpose of learning and teaching in higher education in a time of growing polarisation and distrust. The intercultural curriculum can offer hope in times of darkness (Bengsten & Barnett, 2017).
What is its Purpose?
- To enable different voices across the curriculum to enter into dialogue with one another
- To encourage plural approaches to learning and teaching
- To promote the decolonising of the curriculum
- To bring together different intersectionalities
- To embed UKPSF Professional Values into the heart of curriculum
- To create a community of diverse leaners across different learning spaces (online, TNE, on campus)
What is this Thematic Resource?
Each of these resources offer through podcast, blogpost, think piece and reflection a different perspective of what the intercultural curriculum means and enables. What each of these resources have in common is the interconnection between the personal and the professional persona of the teacher – there is a strong sense of identity that lies at the heart of the intercultural curriculum for all. Given the impossibility of defining the intercultural curriculum, this resource instead seeks to offer four different ways of approaching learning and teaching with an intercultural mindset. We could be stronger and argue that in fact this is the only way to approach learning and teaching given the diversity of our higher education landscapes. Each perspective offers a personal story that explains how interculturalism – as an approach, a process and an identity shaped that teacher and helped them become who they are today. Yet each invites you in to share their story, and offers ideas and principles to help you think about how you are also shaping intercultural curricula in your own context. The intercultural curriculum is closely connected to Internationalisation of the Curriculum, Equality & Diversity and Transnational Education and resources on these pages may also be useful when thinking about why and how you might create your own intercultural curriculum. The intercultural curriculum is questioning, about the individual but also about exchange across and between learners and teachers. This resource shows the way the personal interweaves with the professional, and also the way in which the single story is challenged by us all.
This resource is a useful one to consider for the UKPSF dimensions A2 and A4 but especially for the Professional Values V1 and V2 as we really encourage you to reflect critically on the diversity of your learners and the impact on how you teach as well as your curriculum.
Examples of the Intercultural Curriculum
There are overlapping themes, as identified above, but each resource highlights a different aspect of the intercultural curriculum, to enable you to reflect on how it might work in your context.
The importance of confidence
Dr Marita Grimwood draws on her years of experience in academic development consultancy where she has worked in a number of different institutions with academic colleagues to enhance their intercultural skills. Here she shows how important it is for individual colleagues to be able to develop their confidence in working with different learners, regardless of their own backgrounds. Her sensitivity here is highlighted bearing witness to her own intercultural competence, but also thereby revealing why the intercultural curriculum matters so much. She argues convincingly that in our diverse classrooms, where we are often teaching large groups, we cannot hope to engage with each learner as an individual or even know what their own stories are. However, by developing openness as a teacher and by being human (link to resources on role of affective education), we can create conditions in our classrooms in which respectful exchanges can occur. The intercultural curriculum is therefore knowledge, and guiding principles but also about being aware of yourself as a teacher, of your own assumptions and being confident that you are open to who your learners are, as well as what they can teach you. From this perspective, being a critically reflective teacher is key to creating the intercultural curriculum. However, there is also an important link to Equality & Diversity and it is clear that the intercultural curriculum is underpinned by the values of our teachers and learners.
Encouraging inclusive practice – a practical approach by Dr Marita Grimwood
http://www.stephenbrookfield.com/workshop
http://www.utas.edu.au/engaging-students
Guiding Principles to strategic creation of the intercultural curriculum
This resource traces the route Professor David Killick has ploughed in terms of using the intercultural curriculum as a process to initiate institutional change and it is interesting that in his piece, he charts the move from institution wide strategic impact to this point in his career where he is focusing back on the individual learner relationships that are so critical to consider in the intercultural curriculum. The principles he outlines in his resources are related to his own personal journey and yet he offers them up as a set of principles that could be reshaped in another context. Could this be the start of a manifesto?
This brings us to another overlap here with the role of students as co-creators in the intercultural curriculum, an area of work that has been explored in Wendy Green’s global learning project (link) where we can find useful case studies showing how we can involve students in this process.
Context is everything
Professor Catherine Manathunga also traces her own very personal journey as a way to reflect on what the intercultural curriculum looks like from her perspective and also charts a shift away from the term ‘interculturalism’ with its implicit meaning of ‘between’ and advocates instead for the use of the term ‘transculturalism’, with its connotations of ‘crossings’. Her research focus has been on the supervisory relationship and she argues passionately and persuasively in favour of using different research methodologies, such as life histories and arts-based methodologies to enable teachers, learners and researchers to identify their stories, their positions and assumptions. Her blogpiece comes alive with metaphors of movement and of mapping. Her story, above all, reveals how the intercultural curriculum is at once the personal, political and professional interwoven into a pedagogy that embodies openness.
A transcultural doctoral curriculum? Blog from Professor Catherine Manathunga
Language Awareness
The final contribution in this resource is a think piece podcast by Dr Catriona Cunningham interviewed by Dr Mary McCulloch, who similarly draws on the notion of ‘transculturalism’ to question how we can learn from transnational education practices, amidst the growing ethical and pedagogical concerns. Her focus is on language and the troubling prevalence of English as the lingua franca, as well as dominance of western countries driving transnational (TNE) partnerships. This podcast uses four questions to explore the troubling aspects of the TNE context and is accompanied by a set of questions being used to run workshops at the University of Stirling for colleagues who are ‘flying faculty’ to their overseas partners.
‘It takes more than one language to tell a story’ (Jackie Kay) https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/threshold/
Dr Sara Camacho-Felix (LSE)
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/education/2018/03/13/tongue-lash-an-act-of-decolonising-pedagogy-through-hip-hop-poetry-and-dialogue/#
Adichie C. N. (2009): The danger of a single story. TED Talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg
Internationalising higher education
TNE resources
https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/transnational-education-toolkit
https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/International/news/Pages/the-scale-of-higher-education-transnational-education-2016-17.aspx
How would you create the intercultural curriculum?
We deliberately resist a singular definition of the intercultural curriculum because it is so context-specific and is also so deeply embedded in the values and life experiences of the individual teacher. However, as each of these four approaches make clear, the intercultural curriculum creates a space in which learners and teachers cohabit and where different perspectives are acknowledged, welcomed and learned from. These spaces for learning in higher education are invaluable in UK higher education in our times. However, we can identify four clear themes that emerge as important in the creation of the intercultural curriculum:
- The influence of stories in the plural – those of the learner and teacher – and an individual awareness and recognition of the role those stories have played in their experience
- The importance of self-awareness and knowledge in your identity as a teacher and as a learner
- The relational aspect of teaching – making connections across differences
- The role of questioning as a constant pedagogical process (yourself, your assumptions, your practices)
Contributors
Dr Catriona Cunningham, Academic Development Partner, University of Sterling
Professor Catherine Manathunga, Professor of Education Research, University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia
Dr David Killick, Emeritus Fellow, Leeds Beckett University
Dr Marita Grimwood, Independent Academic Development Consultant
Bibliography
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