Search

This paper reports on a semester-long study that explored the experience of a group of local and international students from multiple disciplines, and their teachers, in a core Intercultural Communication undergraduate course of 550 students in which there is an orientation to learning, teaching and assessment that seeks to develop students’ intercultural learning capabilities. To capture the experience of learning, teaching and assessment in a highly diverse Australian university, data were collected over the life cycle of the course. The research design was ethnographic and collaborative, involving the research team, members of the teaching staff, and members of the university’s learning and teaching unit. The data include interviews with students and teachers, students’ written assessments, and observations of weekly teaching staff meetings. The overarching finding of the study is that, to enable students to develop their intercultural learning capabilities, there is a need to rethink notions of experience and engagement, specifically to attend to the central role of language/s and culture/s in all students’ experience of learning, teaching, and assessment. Analysed examples from the data are used to illustrate four specific guiding principles underpinning this (re)orientation to learning. The study was one of two case studies funded by the University of South Australia as part of a larger project: Developing English Language and Intercultural Learning Capabilities.1

An increasing number of international students are studying in higher education in English-speaking countries, and many local students come from backgrounds where English is not their primary language. This is significant when we consider that as graduates, these students will be required to live, communicate and work with others both within and across multiple languages and cultures, in other words, interculturally, whether they choose to remain in their home country, or to live and work abroad. There exists the potential for learning through the exchange of linguistic and cultural resources and associated ways of knowing. However, the crucial role of languages and cultures in learning is poorly understood, and the ways in which students experience engaging with one another in their diversity could be enhanced (Tsui 2014). This paper reports on a semester long twinned case study which explored how undergraduate students and their teachers experienced an intercultural approach to learning, teaching and assessment in a core undergraduate course of 550 students. This was a collaborative, action-based research intervention which sought to enhance student engagement and experience through their intercultural learning, to see the world 'through other eyes' (Andreotti and Souza 2008). This involved designing learning and assessment activities that encouraged students to draw on their languages, cultures and knowledges and to engage with the course content and with each other through practices of reflection and reflexivity. Data gathered included students' written texts, observations of routine teaching staff meetings, and interviews with students and teaching staff. The analysis involved thematic coding, focusing on students' emerging capability to understand and act in light of their linguistic and cultural diversity. The findings highlight the nature and importance of intercultural capability and the need to rethink notions of 'student experience' and 'engagement' and to recognise the central role of language/s and culture/s in all students' learning. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

This research project involves school-based research towards improving the curriculum, teaching, learning and assessment practices in the teaching of Chinese or Indonesian in three independent schools in South Australia. The focus is on 'Change in Context', that is, how each school, in its own setting, has been able to change its practices of language learning over a two year period with the support of the RCLC team. The project is part of the SAISTPA National Asian Languages and Studies in Schools Program (NALSSP) Strategic Plan 2009-2012.