GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES: USING WHAT STUDENTS SAY TO ENHANCE OUR PRACTICE

Juliet Henderson jhenderson@brookes.ac.uk

Jane Spiro@brookes.ac.uk

Student voicesdiverse individual local global

collective

Student opinion as tool in curriculum design enhancing students’ deep learning about freedom and citizenship (Dewey, 1966)

Synergy resulting from ‘bottom up’ construction of what is right within institutional structures (Habermas,1979)

A force of change key to co-construction of new learning cultures

One voice among many

‘So often it just takes one person to change the situation’

Some aims of internationalisation?

To prepare students for:‘… performing (professionally, socially, emotionally) in an international and multicultural context.’Nilsson (2002:22)

To develop global perspectives in the curriculum. This involves:‘… taking a broader, more critical view of experience, knowledge and (…) the links between our own lives and those of people throughout the world’

Bournemouth University (Brookes IoC website)

Gathering student voices

Semi-structured interviews with 8 – 12 broad focus questions

Students in the following disciplines: Languages, Planning, Architecture, History, Communication, Education, Sports and Coaching, International Relations

46 students in small groups from pairs to 6

Interviews conducted June – Dec. 2007

Interpreting student voices

‘bottom up approach’: (grounded theory)Data as starting point: theory emerges from analysis

Theorised approach: Starting with graduate competences and coding alongside these

Blend the two approaches to form an integrated response

Emerging frameworks

Emerging theory Graduate competence

Tower of Babel: shattered knowledge

Value diversity of language and culture

‘Them’ and ‘us’ : clashing universes

Awareness of their own culture and its perspectives and other cultures and their perspectives

(University of South Australia)

Attitudes to doing and accomplishing

To be equipped with the skills of enquiry and analysis: to think (Rivzi 2002)

Stereotyping To respect and empathise with other people, their culture, values and way of life (Nilsson 2003)

Ethnocentrism Ethnocentrism

Responding

Content within subject disciplines Pedagogy: activities, task design and

assessment Outside the class environment

References

Dewey, J. (1966) Democracy and Education, London: Free Press; Macmillan

Habermas, J. (1979) Communication and the Evolution of Society, London: Heinemann Educational