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A new initiative:‘Teaching International Students’
Dr Fiona Hyland
ESCalate,
Subject Centre for Education
QUILT Conference
University of Cardiff
8 February 2010
A presentation in 2 parts:
Listening: The ‘Changing World’ project & IaH
Acting: A new national initiative –
Teaching International Students
A Changing World: the internationalisation experiences of staff and students (home and international) in UK Higher Education
Fiona Hyland, Sheila Trahar,
Julie Anderson & Alison Dickens
http://escalate.ac.uk/5248
Aims
To explore the perspectives of students and staff on:
• what the terms 'internationalisation' etc, mean to them,
• the extent of internationalisation within their institution,
• the effects on teaching and learning,
• their challenges & successes.
Methods
• 15 Focus groups in February to May 2008
• 5 locations with participants from across UK
• A range of disciplines e.g. Business, Engineering,
Education, Sociology, Arts, English, Mathematics
• Separate groups of international & home students
• Topic guide
Key Challenges as perceived by staff & students in the study
Student Interaction
Teaching & Learning Issues
Curriculum
Entry Requirementsfor Students
HEI Strategy &Staff Buy-in
Internationalisation
HEI strategy & staff buy-in
• “internationalisation means recruitment; it means reaching out and pulling students in". Staff
• “probably in a lot of cases the people who decide how many students (as many as possible) are not the people who then have to deal with them... So I think the problem is basically that the system has become too financially driven without, you know, care for the quality” Staff
Entry requirements
• Concerns about how English language tests (IELTS, TOEFL) are used, what scores are required
• “one person I lived with actually … it’s a sad story, because she was doing a music course, and she actually had to quit her course because she couldn’t cope. I was like ‘Well why did the University let her in?’ – I, kind of, got a bit angry… they really shouldn’t have let in if her English was so bad that she couldn’t cope with the course.” (Home Student)
The Curriculum
• For the international marketplace
• Embedding internationalisation vs tagging on extra modules / case studies
• Different disciplines, different approaches
• Accreditation restrictions
• Graduate attributes
Teaching & Learning
“Yeah, when I came to the lecture room it seems like white people sit at the back, white people, and then in the middle some like me, yellow coloured people, and then at the front, black people. And when they divide groups, just like Malaysia students will go with Malaysia students. Muslim students would like to go with Muslim students. White people will get white people together.. people are still sitting (like this) for a whole year” International Student
Teaching & Learning
• Staff suggestions: what worked for them
• Group work was seen as challenging, but effective when encouraged
Student Interactions
• Cultural cliques
• Language
• HEI and degree course barriers
• Cultural differences in socialising
Student: I guess we didn’t mention it (alcohol), because it’s so obvious, it’s just there.
Student … my interpretation of the word sociable is: helpful, supportive, friendly, maybe patient, things like that. It turned out to be different here.
Moderator what is it here, your perception?
Student As experienced in my hallway, it means being able to drink more than 10 pints of beer an hour. If you can do that, you’re very sociable. Otherwise, you may be intermediate.
Internationalisation at Home
We don’t do it actually (make the effort to get to know international students). I mean that’s the problem. It’s also our responsibility to find out and we don’t actually do it, we find so many excuses, like ‘I have to do this, and this, and this’. (Home Student)
Generally, this is a positive report: internationalisation enriches lives
So no matter how much I might have tried it’s only by having students from Ghana, from Nigeria, from Taiwan and from India who when they talk about (their contexts) you can begin to understand the parallels and the contrasts and comparisons and it brings a dynamic to the learning that is so real, so alive, so energised, that no textbook, no amount of me preparing to remember to say ‘oh and in Singapore it might be different, oh and in Canada they do this'. There’s no way that I could have created that. That is a very dynamic and creative element of the learning for students and for me. (Staff)
Conclusions
Student Interaction
Teaching & Learning Issues
Curriculum
Entry Requirementsfor Students
HEI Strategy &Staff Buy-in
Internationalisation
IaH through the Curriculum
• Internationalising the lecturer?
• Sanderson (2008)
• Teekens (2000)
• How ‘local’ is the content?
• CICIN, Oxford Brookes University
• Haigh (2009)
IaH and intercultural competencies
e.g. Stier (2003)
• Content – knowledge about other cultures
• Intrapersonal
• Cognitive e.g self-reflection
• Emotional e.g. avoiding judgements
• Interpersonal
• Communication competence
IaH and student interaction
• Doesn’t just happen you need strategic interventions (Leask, 2007)
• Managed (long-term) group work
• Mentoring/buddies
• Using learning outcomes which value cross-cultural learning
• Global citizenship schemes
At the same time, in 2008/9, a national initiative was being proposed …
Teaching International Students
• Run by the Higher Education Academy
• Funded through the Academy, UKCISA & PMI2
• 2 year project
The Team
• Janette Ryan
• Jude Carroll
• And many others across UK
Teaching International Students - Aims
• Raise the profile of teaching and learning for international students
• Establish a repository of national and international research
• Identify and disseminate information and guidance
• Provide guidance on staff development strategies
• Establish a network of interested people
The International Student 'Lifecycle'
Pre-arrival support
Employability & next steps
Life outside the 'classroom'
Teaching & Learning in the
'classroom'
Induction
Teaching Context
Teaching Approaches
Learning
Curriculum
Intercultural Competencies
Transition
A one stop shop…
Extract from Internationalising the Curriculum section
Strategies include:
• Considering with students how knowledge/content might be alternatively constructed in different cultures.
• Ensuring that learning outcomes include values and skills as well as knowledge.
• Discussing relevant ethical issues in international contexts.
• Giving time in sessions to considering how professional practices might differ across the world.
• Building-in experiential learning so that students can experience and reflect on the intercultural aspects of their learning alongside the core disciplinary learning.
Empathy Game – ‘Not knowing the rules’
Based on Leask, B. (2000). Teaching NESB and International Students of the University of South Australia, Teaching Guide. Adelaide: University of Adelaide.Also quoted in Carroll & Ryan (2005; p. 143)
Make a simple set of cards by cutting up paper and with different colour pens writing the numbers 1 - 10 on a few of them (draw a line under 6s and 9s to show which way is 'up'). On the remaining cards draw a few random marks such as black dots in some corners, green triangles at the base, perhaps a blue square in the top left corner and so on. Then divide participants into smaller groups of five or six people. Tell them to devise a simple card game based on Top Trumps or Snap. The rules need to be easy to learn and they need to use the numbers and markings on the card. The game needs to identify who is a winner and who is a loser in each round of play. Groups are bullied NOT to devise too complex a game! Allow groups to practise for three or four minutes until everyone is an expert. Then ask one person from each group to leave the room.Pass round the room a sheet of paper that specifies a change in the rules – for example, that all red numbers are doubled for everyone who has stayed in the room but not for the returner (i.e. a 3 becomes a 6 etc). Or that anyone with a green triangle is automatically the winner – which applies to incomer plus the remaining group. Or that black numbers don't count. The groups now play the game with the additional rule, until it goes smoothly - maybe a minute or two.Invite the people who had gone outside to return and re-join the game. The groups are instructed to be friendly but not to explain what is different, just play. The groups are allowed to play for a maximum of five minutes. After this, ask groups to discuss how they felt about the outsider; and ask the outsider to express how they felt. What was going on for the outsider? How much 'head space' was devoted to trying to understand the new situation? Ask groups to consider how they could have helped the outsider?
Provisional dates for collaborative Subject Centre events
• 5 March BMAF in Leicester
• 11 May ESCalate in Bristol
• 30 April Economics Network, LSE London
• May: Psychology
• June: Engineering
• June: Languages, Linguistics & Area Studies
Strategies for supervision & assessment
● A TIS / ESCalate event
● Tues 11th May 2010
● University of Bristol
● Facilitators:
Jude Carroll
Sheila Trahar
● http://escalate.ac.uk/6560
Further details from:
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/home
Activity
• Tell your neighbour about two cultural groups to which you think you belong.
• What are some of the characteristics of these groupings which you would need to bear in mind when communicating with people from other groups?
