On his interculturality modules, Chris positions himself as a co-inquirer, inviting all participants to share in the reflective process of becoming intercultural. Students close these modules by writing a critical reflection, giving voice to their learning. These modules decolonise the curriculum, foster belonging, develop academic skills and offer inclusive assessment.

Teaching area

Decolonising the curriculum

Course

Master’s in Applied Linguistics and English Language Teaching: Language and Culture in Intercultural Communication optional Level 7 module, with around 6–11 students, co-taught with Jo Osborne

Intercultural Encounters module, University-wide Level 5 Progressive Futures optional module, with around 25–50 students, about half international

Description

For both modules, I embed reflective questions into the students’ weekly reading tasks so they can learn the practice in preparation for writing a critical reflection. In the seminars, we then look at the key intercultural themes and corresponding conceptual tools covered in the reading and I ask: ‘How did these themes or concepts affect how you understand culture, yourself, another, and/or your own learning?’ I tell them that I am not the sole authority or expert in the class. I can explain intercultural concepts and guide and assist in understanding, but each student must ultimately come to make sense of their intercultural learning through their own lived experiences and cultural frames. In this sense, I’m interested in giving voice to the ecologies of knowledge and relationality that circulate in a class, and which produce and reproduce conditions of learning (Arrondelle et al. 2024).

In the seminars, I’m not aiming for convergence. I’m not teaching the students to think or understand as I do. It’s the opposite – I want divergence because the differentiation and iteration of understanding make learning more complex, alive, inclusive and resonant. This approach empowers student voice. We each become a developing intercultural expert; we learn from each other, making sense of our intercultural space through conversation. I italicise this term as I draw its meaning from Stuart Hall, who explains in interview:

I come to the present, to who I am, by a different route from yours; and therefore, our conversation has to recognise that… different histories have made this conversation possible. I can’t pretend to be you. I don’t know your experience. I can’t live life from inside your head. So, our living together must depend on a… conversation (Hall 2007: 151).

I seek to honour and respect such conversation as a mode of critically reflective enquiry. Guided by a series of intercultural principles of engagement, the practice of conversation is not to enable students to pass judgement on the different ‘routes’ and/or selves that constitute the lived learning space, i.e., we are not there to fix, frame, categorise or reduce different selves or life stories in ways that may potentially harm or other. Instead, conversation invites us to ‘stay with the trouble’ (Haraway 2016) of creating intercultural fellowship, to be attentive to one another in ways that are present, unexpected and inherently messy. Through conversation, we are invited to tend to the cultivation of kinship and selfhood as a radical act of trust: trust that other ways of being and becoming may emerge that render us different, even to ourselves. For me, this is constitutive of a genuine intercultural encounter.

On these modules, then, analysis and evaluation are not external-facing acts but ones which are turned inward. They become modes of creative re-engagement with one’s own ‘route to the present,’ and this involves a deeply private encounter with the selves and senses that emanate through conversation.

In a typical critical essay, you bring different authors into dialogue and assemble an argument. On the intercultural modules I teach, I invite students to extend this by drawing on and voicing their own experiences, using these to problematise and ‘break open’ the various themes, concepts and theories we cover. Rather than using reflective writing models such as Gibbs, I use guided questions and a ‘rhizomatic’ approach (Deleuze and Guattari 2013) to help students think about their reflection and how it relates to their learning on the module. I encourage students to explore a concept, break it apart, trace new links and bring themselves into emerging frames of enquiry. I may ask:

• Where are you present or excluded in this concept?
• How do your lived experiences problematise or extend this concept?
• How might your thinking with this concept reframe how you understand your own lived experiences?
• Can you hold compassionately other perspectives and experiences revealed during seminar conversation? How does this ‘thinking with difference’ generate new ways of tending to yourself and others?

Outcomes

Decolonisation of the curriculum and anti-racist pedagogy

The module empowers student voices.

Fostering sense of belonging

Every student’s experience contributes to learning.

Student engagement

All participants talk in groups in class.

Academic skills and student support

The students learn reflective writing techniques.

Inclusive assessment

Rather than just assembling arguments from the reading, the students bring themselves into the frame in the reflective writing task.

Comments

Feedback from students

The intercultural encounters module was an elective I had chosen purely based off the fact that the title and content seemed interesting and as a sociology student I thought it could have a lot of crossovers to my degree. What I didn’t expect was that it would completely change my way of thinking, and that was for the better. Not only was the module great academically but the content is also imperative for day-to-day communication and interactions with peers and fellow students. It dismantles colonised and hierarchal socio-cultural structures in a macro perspective but I found it most useful in rethinking how micro interactions can be influenced negatively by those larger social frameworks. I reflected in a group discussion with peers in a seminar about ‘imagine if everyone had this knowledge, the world could work so well if we all learnt how to just communicate without the preconceived, socially structured perceptions’. The course allowed me to interact with so many different people and learn about their cultures but also allowed me to reflect on my own intercultural experiences. This type of learning can be used and applied to every single aspect of life and subject area.

(Skye Marzell)

I… want to thank you for introducing me to reflective writing. I truly enjoyed linking language theories with my own personal experiences. It was the most memorable and enjoyable assignment I did during my time at the University of Sussex. Now, as a teacher, I encourage my students to write reflective essays as well, and I can see how much they enjoy the process and benefit from it.

(Sayyora Usibalieva)

I struggled with the essay task due to the ambiguity of what was being asked, the structure I have used for previous essays could not be applied to this one, which therefore led me to explore with a more open approach.

My mind is very rigid, and I have developed a formula for essay tasks that did not work with this one, which added to the challenge and forced me out of my comfort zone.

If given the option of a more ‘safe’ essay, I know I would have chosen it, but ultimately found this assessment to be an empowering experience, and I have created something that I am proud of. It gave me freedom I otherwise would… not have given myself.

(Ashleigh Jennings)

Links

Stocking, C. (2026) ‘Holding Space: Principles for Critically Reflective Intercultural Learning’, Learning Matters blog, University of Sussex (accessed 6 October 2026)

The Reflective Toolkit from the University of Edinburgh has guidance on reflective writing and how to facilitate it.

References

Arrondelle, D. et al. (2024) ‘Knowledge Equity: A Framework for Critical Reflection’, National Centre for Research Methods (accessed 15 March 2026)

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (2013) A Thousand Plateaus Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translated by Massumi, B., Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

Hall, S. (2007) ‘Living with Difference’, Soundings 37: 148–158

Haraway, D. (2016) Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Durham: Duke University Press