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Teaching at UK
Vol. 2, No. 4 (Spring 1996)
| Table of Contents | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Teaching in an Internationalized Classroom | Infusing a Global Perspective | Creating a Univ. Studies Cross-Cultural Course | Selected Bibliography | Suggestions |
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| Table of Contents | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Teaching in an Internationalized Classroom | Infusing a Global Perspective | Creating a Univ. Studies Cross-Cultural Course | Selected Bibliography | Suggestions |
To say it's a small world at the University of Kentucky is to cite the obvious.
A professor from educational policy studies is in Kazakstan on a Fulbright, professors from the College of Agriculture are taking students to China and France this summer, and a professor in geography recently communicated with scholars in Australia, Britain, Finland, Ireland, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, and Switzerland -- all in one week. Students and scholars are coming to the University of Kentucky from more than 100 countries. About half are from Malaysia, China, and India, but nations ranging from Argentina to Zimbabwe are represented. And UK students (about 250 per year) are going to the other UK, and to Austria, Australia, Ecuador, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Trinidad, and many other countries.
But have we changed our teaching because of our international connections and milieu? How can we use the available international knowledge and experience to excite Kentucky students about the wider world? How do we start a dialogue that includes a variety of perspectives?
Two types of grants (Internationalizing the Curriculum grants in 1993-94 and 1994-95 and Global Grants in 1995-96) have offered faculty a small incentive to internationalize their classes. The first set of grants came from a U.S. Department of Education Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language Project. The Global Grants are ongoing awards from the Office of International Affairs, which also encourages international travel for faculty to explore linkages and support for on campus programs that will enrich the internationalization of UK.
Funding was given to new cross cultural or international courses as well as courses with potential for an added global perspective. Sometimes faculty members used grants to purchase materials for a new cross cultural course for University Studies, such as Russian Folklore or African Art. Sometimes professors purchased videos to internationalize a course, such as Biology 102: Human Ecology or Sociology 355: Women and Men in Society. A student in the Honors Program received funding for a committee of faculty and students to develop a syllabus for a new course titled Women's Voices in Non-Western Cultures. A sociology professor, leading a graduate seminar on Post-Communist Society, used his grant money to purchase materials which would be useful to TAs taking the seminar from geography, sociology, and political science who were then expected to infuse what they learned into the introductory undergraduate courses they taught.
Articles in this newsletter by Dyk and Miller, both grant recipients highlight one particularly powerful internationalizing strategy-- utilizing international students as resources.
A recent Chronicle of Higher Education Point of View, titled "What foreign students contribute," points out that questions posed by foreign students in an international relations class challenge assumptions. "Foreign students," Goodman writes, "tend to ask questions that require addressing the values underlying strategy and tactics.... And they are very good at getting the rest of the class to see how action plans framed in Washington on such key global issues as the environment and nuclear non-proliferation often fail to take into account the social and cultural dynamics in the regions where problems are the most acute." Goodman quotes one of his students, who asked: "Americans recognize that there is Asian art and Asian food. Why don't you also recognize that there is an Asian way to approach human rights?" Dyk and Miller go beyond including international students who may be in internationally focused classes to purposefully including a comparative perspective in an American-focused class (Dyk) and carefully turning a previously American-focused class into a cross-cultural course (Miller).
Of course, there are many other ways to internationalize a course, for instance, by setting up a speakerphone interview with a person in another country or by making optional assignments which allow students to use the foreign language they are studying in a non foreign language class or by using foreign newspapers, magazines, films, and the Internet as resources. Whatever the method of internationalizing, the value of being introduced to diverse, international perspectives seems clear. As Schiffbauer writes in Teaching in the Internationalized Classroom, which is excerpted in more detail elsewhere in this newsletter: "When students leave the college classroom to take their places as citizens, parents, employers, and workers, the maintenance of this dialogue has the potential to shape a world in which tolerance, understanding and cooperation will characterize human relationships." May teaching/ learning ideas for internationalizing and the ensuing dialogue bloom!
As a family sociology professor, I teach an upper division, elective course on American families. In order for students to understand the social context and diversity of families, I believe they need to be provided with a historical and cross-cultural perspective of family members' roles, responsibilities, norms, and expectations. One method I have used to accomplish this goal is to enhance their awareness and knowledge of families in other countries. By comparing and contrasting various dimensions of international families, such as gender roles, typical paid and unpaid work, and parent-child interaction, students come to gain a better understanding of their own social context and an appreciation for why family life may differ in other parts of the world from American students' experience of family. By infusing a global perspective, students' understanding of ethnic subcultures within the United States is also increased.
The college classroom s certainly an appropriate place for international exposure. Many American students, particularly those from homogeneous rural communities, have not had the opportunity to interact with people of diverse cultures. In addition, with the globalization of our economy, students must be prepared to engage in business with people from dissimilar cultural backgrounds. In fact, an impetus for m incorporating a global perspective into my family course was the recent influx of Japanese with the opening and expansion of the Toyota plant in nearby Georgetown in Scott County.
With the assistance of a Japanese undergraduate student who had taken my class and was interning at the Japan-American Society of Kentucky, I was able to bring a thirty-minute video, The Japanese Family: The Life of the Businessman, into my class. Through a one-credit-hour reading course on comparisons of American and Japanese families, Ayumi Okawara helped me understand the cross-cultural similarities and differences in the lives of Japanese families. She was able to gain insight into her culture and the changing roles of men and women, and I was able to develop discussion materials to accompany the video we had selected.
Now, as I present the unit on Asian-American families, I can amplify subcultural norms and expectations by presenting the Japanese family video, which depicts the pressure for education, disciplined lifestyle, and strong intergenerational family ties. Using information developed with Ayumi, I can guide the discussion on cultural comparisons. We usually have an animated discussion, and there is often a student with a family member employed by Toyota or from Scott County who can present a personal perspective on the cultural comparisons.
Another successful method for infusing a global perspective has been to invite international graduate students to present research in a class discussion. This interaction can provide a professional development opportunity for the graduate student in addition to expanding American students' awareness of family life in other countries.
For several years, I invited an Indonesian doctoral student, Siti Kusujiarti, to share with my family class her dissertation research on the roles of Japanese men and women . Immediately, her petite size and Indonesian accent sensitized students to be attuned to a different perspective on families. To establish the social context of Japanese family life, she introduced us to cultural norms and expectations stemming from Muslim religious beliefs. The roles and relationship of men and women and subsequent expected behaviors could not be understood apart from this foundation. Siti prepared a slide presentation on people and their homes, rice fields, and markets. Students found her discussion of the amount of work women were expected to engage in quite fascinating. By observing another culture through the eyes of a native scholar, students could ask questions and come to a clearer understanding of how families were both similar and different across cultures.
Thus, through tapping resources and expertise of international undergraduate and graduate students, coupled with quality video productions presenting cross cultural perspectives, I have been able to enhance students' ability to compare and contrast social circumstances and to understand families in their context.
DMT 247: Interdisciplinary Approach to Dress is taught in the College of Human Environmental Sciences in the Department of Interior Design, Merchandising, and Textiles. In 1990 when I began teaching the course at UK, it was designed for merchandising majors only. At the conclusion of that first semester, I decided to invite international students to attend a class and to wear or bring examples of their culture's traditional dress. The response to the international students was so positive that I began to think of ways to expand that one brief visit into a project that would require international and U.S. students to interact one-on-one.
I phoned the Office of International Affairs to share my idea about pairing U.S. and international students. At that time OIA had a Culture-Sharing Partners Program which had a similar objective, so I decided to incorporate Culture-Sharing Partners in to my course requirements and applied for a mini-grant from OIA to internationalize my course.
DMT 247 i s a sophomore level course required of all majors and minors in merchandising, apparel and textiles. Department faculty could see the potential this course had for cross-cultural listing in University Studies. Not only would the cross-cultural credit increase student enrollments in the department; it also discourage insular thinking among merchandising students by adding a truly interdisciplinary focus. I was encouraged to develop the Culture Sharing Project (CSP) and pursue cross-cultural approval.
The primary objective of the Culture Sharing Project is to expose students to cultural diversity on campus. The structure of the project requires partners to meet four times a semester and complete a written report after each meeting of approximately one hour. The four meetings are purposefully spread over the semester (about every three weeks) to encourage interaction over a period of time. A list of questions and activities is handed out to students to encourage evenly spaced meetings and the development of a relationship rather than just completing a course requirement. This emphasis on a relationship parallels possible situations students may encounter upon graduation and full-time work.
The project has its challenges -- for the instructor and for students. There is always some initial resistance when DMT 247 students learn that they will need to find a partner from a culture different from their own. Students often want to fall back on the one international student they know from a past or current job, lessening the overall effectiveness of the project. Since few students relish writing assignments, the students and instructor are challenged to overcome this hurdle, too.
The project ends when the DMT 247 students complete their Culture Sharing Project Notebook, which includes a two-page summary paper that synthesizes their experience and is followed by the four reports completed over the semester. One consistent comment from U.S. students in the summary paper is their belief that this was one of the best experiences they have had at UK. Several also mention that this was the first opportunity to get to know an international student, perhaps even their first experience talking to an international student. One student commented, "The main benefit form this project was that I was able to go up to a person from another culture and talk to them. Before I was too scared."
There have been many changes in the project since its first semester. For instance, the project was originally called the International Student Project because enrollment in the class was completely comprised of U.S.-born students. The original project required five meetings and was heavily supported by a graduate student from OIA who paired American and international students and organized an icebreaker at the beginning of the semester. Support from OIA got the project off the ground and also gave the instructor the confidence to go it alone. Now students secure their own partners, and the course is supported by a departmental TA who grades the CSP reports.
The Culture Sharing Project is consistently rated by DMT 247 students as first or second best out of all course activities, including films, videos, and small discussions. The course, now accepted for cross-cultural credit in University Studies, fills each semester with 50 or more students.
Althen Gary, ed. (1994). Learning across cultures. Washington, D.C.: NAESA Association of International Educators.
This excellent, totally revised edition of an earlier book, published by the largest professional association concerned with the advancement of international exchange, includes a number of relevant chapters. Perhaps most interesting to instructors would be the chapters on Managing a Multicultural Classroom and Multiculturalism and International Education: Domestic and International Differences; but the chapters on Cultural Differences on Campus and Promoting Culture Learning on Campus also include important insights and ideas.
Goodman, Allan E. (1996). What Foreign Students Contribute. Point of View in The Chronicle of Higher Education. February 16, page A52.
This opinion piece by the dean of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University makes a case for the presence of international students on our campuses to help make universities into classrooms for world citizenship.
Hunger TeachNet (which will become Development TeachNet) is a quarterly newsletter published by the Interfaith Hunger Appeal, 475 Riverside Drive, Suite 1630, New York NY 10115-0079.
The articles in this newsletter are often by college professors who describe course development with a global perspective. For example, the theme of the January 1996 issue is "Developing a Global Curriculum: Interdisciplinary Perspectives." One article has a course description for an internationalized Health in Contemporary Society class and another explains how women in development issues are used in an introductory statistics class which follows a critical mathematics literacy approach.
Schiffbauer, Judith. (1995). Teaching in the Internationalized Classroom: An Instructor's Guide. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky.
Funded through the Internationalizing the Curriculum project, this booklet was designed to aid English 101 and 102 instructors as they try to teach both U.S. and international students effectively. The booklet focuses particularly on methods to integrate non-native speakers of English into classroom discussions and group projects and to identify approaches which will assist both native and non-native speakers of English in developing their writing skills.
Summerfield, Ellen. (1993). Crossing Cultures through Film. Yarmouth, Maine: Intercultural Press.
This book is a valuable resource and how-to guide for anyone who uses film in class. It was the basis of an interesting brown bag discussion about using film, which OIA sponsored several years ago. It is worth reading, even buying, for both the introductory chapters on evaluating films and on pedagogy and for the later chapters on specific topics such as unlearning stereotypes and great walls of difference: the international arena. In fact, just reading about the various films described is fascinating.
Wlodkowski, Raymond J. and Ginsberg, Margery B. (1995). Diversity and Motivation: Culturally Responsive Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
After an introductory chapter on relationships between culture and motivation to learn, the authors describe the components of a culturally responsive pedagogy for college classrooms. Their model includes establishing inclusion, developing attitude, enhancing meaning, and engendering competence. Within this framework, the book also offers practical suggestions on discussions, lectures, and cooperative learning in multicultural classrooms, as well as describing specific teaching strategies such as learning contracts and role playing.
Note: All of these resources are available in the Teaching and Learning Center's Library, Room 7, Gillis Building. Use the keyword command k=tl.puc. to electronically browse the Center's holdings on NOTIS.
Beginning of semester introductions: Use introductions and/ or personal inventories to ask both U.S. and international students to share international experiences.
Roll Call: Ask if your pronunciation of the student's name is correct, and demonstrate that you welcome international students by not asking them to simplify their names or use Americanized nicknames.
Addressing the Class: Speak slowly, audibly, distinctly. Make sure that students feel free to ask you to repeat if they don't understand; you may want to meet alone with international students to assure them of this. Track discussions and lectures on the board with key words and phrases.
Calling on Students: Call on students by name. Don't omit international students. Just as instructors should not allow non-participation by American students, international students should not be passed over because of the misguided assumption that they will feel embarrassed or singled out. On the contrary, even those international students who have difficulties with spoken English will be able to respond if you phrase your question carefully. If you can't understand a student's response, say so; don't try to solve the problem by speaking louder. Instead, stick with the conversation until you have a response that you do understand, even if it is incomplete and to a scaled-down or revised version of the question.
Set the stage for discussion: Make it clear from the start that differing opinions are welcome in your classroom. If students are initially unresponsive and class discussion lags, have students "free-write" about why they have not volunteered to speak (or, if they have, why others have not). Discuss theses answers in the next class period. This approach gives people an opportunity to explain personal difficulties with classroom discussion or acknowledge cultural differences that might otherwise remain undisclosed.
Make sure students fully understand assignments: Whether long or short, elaborate or uncomplicated, put all instructions in clear, written prose on the board, on e-mail, or on dittos. If an assignment is put on the board, insist that students copy it.
Institute a buddy system: Consider pairing Americans with international students on a rotating, bi-weekly basis. Ask the paired students to converse after each class, perhaps by e-mail. Instruct the American partner to answer the international student's questions about assignments, readings, word meanings, and references in class to things not yet clear or totally familiar.
Internationalize readings and paper topics: When possible, avoid assigning readings and paper topics that are narrowly focused on American culture. Readings on education, gender, crime and punishment, family, the environment, censorship, immigration, homelessness, and racial issues can all also be discussed in relation to the countries represented by international students in your classroom.
Be aware of culturally conditioned organizational patterns in writing: When the structure of international student writing appears confused and rambling, and the thesis is buried and hard to identify or is stated very indirectly, the writer may actually be following a culturally prescribed form of argument which is a great contrast to the linear organizational pattern followed in arguments of writers who are native speakers of English. An awareness of these different patterns can help instructors detect the core argument in an international students paper and discuss the organizational problem through specific comparisons to the linear English argument pattern. (Other cultural patterns are shown visually and described in the Guide along with many other suggestions concerning writing.)
Foster an international perspective: Involve international students through direct questioning. Is this (concern about the environment, censorship, sexually transmitted diseases) solely an American phenomenon? Does this problem (gender stereotyping, homelessness) ever occur in your country? How do your country's (schools, courts. public health concerns, etc.) differ form those described in the reading?
Point out the value of an international perspective: Encourage students to think about internationalization and its relevance to their own academic and career goals. Those American students who are interested in opportunities for study abroad during their college career will find the heightened awareness of and sensitivity to diverse points of view will better prepare them to live and study in another country. Students of all nationalities will be entering a global job market that will reward attention to these concerns and the ability to address them. While students, for the most part, enjoy the opportunity to work with peers from other backgrounds for its own sake, pointing out the practical application of such experience often helps even the most reluctant students to work with these ideas and concerns more willingly. Finally, help students realize that as they discuss ideas and problems from an international perspective, they are establishing a dialogue between themselves and people of cultural backgrounds different from their own in which they can participate throughout their lives.
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