Jo uses a student-centred flipped model of teaching, focusing on the knowledge and experience the students bring with them, a vital element in decolonising the curriculum that also promotes student engagement. The reflective writing assessment allows students to reflect on how the theories shape their own understanding.

Teaching area

Seminars

Course

Optional Level 7 module: Language and Culture in Intercultural Communication. Small seminar group of both home and international students. I teach this module alongside Chris Stocking, Assistant Professor in English Language Teaching.

Description

Here are some of my approaches to teaching – they’re all interrelated.

Make the space comfortable

When meeting a new class I like to approach the ‘getting to know you’ stage by inviting conversations about the students’ previous discipline-related experience (or discipline- adjacent experience), their expectations from their studies and what they think their areas of interest and/or their knowledge gaps might be. Helpfully, the intercultural focus of this module lends itself to students drawing on experiences from all areas of life.

Throughout the course, I also like to look for what we have in common. It’s good to focus on commonalities rather than differences, as you do naturally when you’re getting to know someone. We talk about the cultures we might share, for example:

• Living on campus
• Having siblings
• Speaking more than one language
• Previous work experience
• Enjoying yoga.

The rationale behind this focus on the knowledge and experience the students bring with them and what we have in common is threefold:

1. Supporting students in taking ownership of their part in shaping our classroom culture, wider university culture and in feeling confident adding their voices to the culture of their chosen discipline
2. Creating a peer support network in which they can learn from each other
3. Allowing me as a lecturer to consistently reflect on and question any preconceptions I may have of my students that are rooted in the prevailing narrative of ‘West teaching a deficient Other’ that can be found in much academic research into international students in UK higher education.

I believe it is good practice to actively ensure that my interactions with my students are informed by their individual needs and preferences and not any possible reductionist ideas around what I imagine their previous life and educational experience to have been like.

To this end, I apply the same rules to questions about the country we come from or our ethnicity as I would to any other social context and am unlikely to ask where students are from unless I know them well enough for it to be a social question rather than a ‘lecturer to student’ question. I would then only ask if it were pertinent to the conversation, and the question came from an interest in their individual multivarious life experience.

Scaffolding the teaching

I give clear information on the Canvas site (the University’s Virtual Learning Environment) so the students know what they’re doing and the expectations of the module. I always provide questions so the students can focus their reading on what they need to know. They don’t need to read every article or chapter from start to finish. The students say they find this useful and it helps to reduce their workload.

Participation

The seminar questions often encourage students to explain concepts in their own words. I provide a glossary of key vocabulary from the reading to help them (see box). Sometimes this is a document to support them as they explore the themes of the seminar and sometimes it is an activity. I may ask them to work in small groups, pairs or alone (according to their preference) to match slips of paper with the concepts to their corresponding definitions. This allows me to monitor and check understanding. I can then provide an answer sheet so students can check if they’ve matched the terms correctly.

Consolidation

The assessment task is reflective writing, so following each class the students have the option of doing a short piece of consolidation writing and personalising the theories and concepts we’ve discussed. For example, they might reflect on the concept of identity and essentialist definitions of culture and how the discourse/frameworks/theories have an impact on their life. This could be considering their previous experience or how reflecting on these concepts shapes their understanding and experience of their own cultural identity, that of others and/or their perception of others. This helps them prepare for the assessment but also allows us to review each week’s previous topic and address any questions before we continue to build on it and introduce other concepts or theories. If the topic feels too personal, they can opt to review and discuss the concepts that interested or didn’t interest them. This consolidation and review also provides a space for students to seek peer feedback at the start of each class and to negotiate what is comfortable for everyone within our classroom culture.

Outcomes

Decolonisation of the curriculum

The intercultural focus of this module lends itself to a decolonial approach. My teaching focuses on the knowledge and experience the students bring with them. The approach has received good feedback – students appreciate the student-centred flipped model, which gives them the confidence to express their opinions.

Student engagement

I include a variety of participation modes, including group and pair work, and opportunities for peer feedback. The seminar discussions have been well received, with students feeling respected and supported in finding their own voice.

Comments

Reflections from Chris Stocking

It is encouraging to see that the students have understood and enjoyed the flipped learning approach. Given that the course is designed to help students reflect as much as possible on their own interculturality, the decision was taken not to include a lecture component during the seminar but to instead devote the two hours to discussions and tasks based on the weekly readings. This was done so that the students could take time to reflect on the readings, linking the concepts to their own lived experiences; then, during the seminars, they could share their thoughts. This gave the students the opportunity to encounter different ways of making sense of interculturality.

We included comprehension and reflection questions for each reading to ensure that the students reflected on key concepts and brought their personal reflections to the seminars for discussion.

We feel that we should use this method of exploring concepts through reflecting on them in all our teaching.