Pedablogue, by Harvest Bird
teaching beyond tips and techniques
CrossCultural
13 June 2004, 12:41 pm
Two years ago, when I began studying for my tertiary teaching diploma, I wrote an essay about the cross-cultural environment of the New Zealand Studies classroom, arguing that it was a meeting place that foregrounded the cultural interactions that were implicit but submerged in other classrooms. The New Zealand Studies teaching and learning enviroment was necessarily a synthesis of the teacher's cultural context (both pedagogical and personal), and that of the students. Given that at the time I wrote it, almost all of my students were from mainland China, the synthesis was made even more interesting due to the disparity in representatives between the two cultures that were meeting (that is, there was one of me, and twenty or more of them).It was a helpful exercise to reflect on the mixing that took place, its demographic lopsidedness and all the complex negotiations between students and teacher, since students wanted to pass the course, but many did not want to learn about or engage with another culture, either as a learning environment or in a wider social context.
These days I think more about how the whole of Foundation Studies itself is a cross-cultural environment. In the classroom, the patterns of engagement I describe above are repeated in various ways, altered from setting to setting by the variations in teacher, curriculum and students' cultures of origin.
But, just as pertinently for staff, there is a cross-cultural environment for the teachers as well, one that is just as contested and fractious as that of the classroom. Staff from a state secondary teaching background work alongside those whose culture is university academia, while still others come from a language-teaching background where the principles of academic inquiry are dramatically mediated by practical and economic concerns (given the precariousness of the language school network, where private providers compete over a client group whose numbers fluctuate frequently).
These are my partisan impressions--writing of course from what might be seen as the academic "camp"--of a workplace cross-culture whose diversity is a perpetual challenge. Each of these groups holds a different set of beliefs about the nature of the work they do and the students they do it with, and of course within each group is further diversity, disagreement and dissent. Many staff feel and act defensively, emerging from systems and positions that have exhausted them, but bringing with them many of the points of view that they sort to escape in the first place.
Each student is taught by a mixture of staff, of course, meaning that the cross-cultural environment I described two years ago arises itself from a prior series of cultural crossings. What the students experience in the classroom is thus triply-diverse (and, if one wishes to take a potentially less positive slant, triply-conflicted).
Since, to my mind, it's the disciplinary and departmental conflicts and debates that will determine much of what students are taught as undergraduates, the crossed and recrossed environment they experience with us is a realistic beginning for them and thus in many ways the best start we could provide.
(But damn if it's not tiring for their teachers.)
Thinking
11 June 2004, 11:12 pm
Here are some thoughts I posted on the t4t4t blog about potential uses of blogs in undergraduate courses, and here is the response (with comments) from one of the other group members.I've got the hunch at the moment that it might actually be easier and more productive to incorporate a blog into coursework and assessment than, say, requiring message board participation, since I've seen first hand the way even the most regulated message boards can quickly get crazy and (as I said in the cited entry), antisocial.
Turnaround
10 June 2004, 2:03 pm
The prep lit students have disappeared and with them my lecturing duties for the rest of year. This week is their study week; next week I will see them in the exam room.I'm back in the international wing of bridging programmes, with one new arts class and one new New Zealand Studies class, both made up entirely of Asian students, mostly from China.
It's not been a bad feeling, to leave the lecture theatre, made tolerable by the realisation that, having been in the classroom-teaching part of my job for three years, I now have a fairly good idea of what to expect. I think this gives me some relative confidence in the classroom, which in turn has a positive effect on student reaction. No-one seems surly or jittery, both usually sure signs that the vehicle's brakes are about to fail.
One of the things I notice most with this complete change of academic scene is the way my in-class demeanour has changed, especially in a tutorial environment. In both cases (local and international students) I want to put students at their ease. With local students this is often done by appearing laconic, optimistic, informal, aware of pop culture and by being both the calmest and the toughest person in the room. There's lots of direct eye contact with students but it's all done with a smile (lord help me, I nearly said "a twinkle").
My international students need something quite different to feel comfortable. They look for a teacher who is serious and focused, with a constant reiteration of commitment to their (at this stage) lofty academic aims. At the same time it's necessary to be both gentle and kind and, while humour is appreicated, anything with an edge is not.
When I first started teaching international students, although I could sense that this was the teacherly attitude they were looking for, I couldn't muster it up. It seemed contrary to my ideas about what university teaching ought to be, which at that time were based on my own experience of study and tutoring, all in a context of local students only.
A few years at the coalface and, while it might not be second nature, it comes on and off like a familiar garment, and it no longer feels fake. The last part is the thing I needed to overcome before I could do my job with any peace of mind.