Teaching International Students – Case Story April 2010
Creating an introductory module to develop skills and knowledge
My name is Professor Helen Higson and I have worked with international students for over 20 years in a Midlands university. Originally, I lacked enough cultural capital to understand what support international students needed to benefit most effectively from their study in the UK. The event that triggered my own learning happened when I put a group of international students (half from Greece, the other half from Hong Kong) together, assuming that their international backgrounds would be enough to enable them to work together. My perplexity at their inability to do this started me working out strategies to deal with this issue and many others.
My first intervention was to develop a foundation module specifically for overseas students. I wanted to bridge the gap between their educational backgrounds and what was expected of them in terms of learning culture in the UK. This module has gradually evolved into one which is embedded into the curriculum, and which links to a range of other modules. This has meant I could focus on getting students to develop areas which they typically find most difficult. The students practise analytical writing in English; they learn to reflect, challenge and debate; and the module gives them new knowledge about UK history, culture. The purpose is to address the skills and values which lie behind many of the concepts they will meet in their degree.
Feedback from students is positive and warm. There has also been an improvement in their performance: students now do better in some of the tasks they previously found difficult.
I have changed, too. During these two decades, intercultural awareness has become central to my practice and my research life. Over time, I have developed a framework, drawing on others’ ideas and taking their findings as my guiding principles. I was influenced by Herzfeldt (2007) who showed that your ability to work across intercultural boundaries increases incrementally with the number of international experiences you have. These might be learning a language, study or working abroad. This finding confirmed for me that both home and international students need to build up their intercultural abilities and draw upon their own experiences.
Then I looked to Ippolito (2007) who described how international students brought different learning backgrounds which are just as valid as UK-centric models. We should not operate a deficit-model, assuming that international students need to change their methods of learning.
Finally, Welikala & Watkins (2008) wrote about how classrooms needed to create learning experiences which were flexible and accessible to students from a wide range of backgrounds. Each student brings a complex and individual ‘story’ and each needs to encounter learning approaches which inspire all students to cross international or other boundaries.
Bjorkman, I. and Budhwar, P.S. (2007), Human Resource Management and the performance of foreign firms operating in India, Employee Relations, Vol.29 (6), pp.595-610.
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