Fostering Interculturality and Global
Perspectives at Brookes through
Dialogue with Staff
A BSLE Project Report
Valerie Clifford
Hamed Adetunji
Martin Haigh
Juliet Henderson
Jane Spiro
and
Jane Hudson
July 2010
2
Fostering Interculturality and Global Perpsectives at Brookes
through Dialogue with Staff
A BSLE Project Report
Executive Summary................................................................................................... 5
Introduction ................................................................................................................. 7
Methodology ............................................................................................................... 8
Findings..................................................................................................................... 10
1.
Staff
identity.................................................................................................................................................. 10
Career ..................................................................................................................................................................10
Time ......................................................................................................................................................................11
Fluidity and Acculturation .........................................................................................................................11
Identity Continuum........................................................................................................................................13
Induction .............................................................................................................................................................13
2.
UK
University
Culture
and
Educational
Values ............................................................................. 17
3.
Educational
practices
at
Oxford
Brookes
University .................................................................. 20
Staff Perceptions of Student’s Lives and Expectations ..........................................................20
Engaging Students with Independent Learning...........................................................................22
Supporting Students ....................................................................................................................................25
Curriculum Design for Independent Learning...............................................................................25
Summarising Independent Learning ..................................................................................................29
Discussion................................................................................................................. 29
Main Messages and Recommendations .............................................................. 31
What
do
overseas
staff
value
in
our
education
system? ................................................................ 31
What
could
we
learn
about
staff
development
needs
of
staff
recruited
from
abroad? .... 31
What
staff
development
opportunities
could
be
made
available
to
increase
the
cosmopolitanism
of
Brookes
staff?.......................................................................................................... 32
What
could
we
learn
from
approaches
to
education
in
other
countries? .............................. 32
How
could
Brookes
become
more
cosmopolitan.............................................................................. 32
What
could
we
do
to
ensure
continuing
dialogue
between
the
diverse
staff
at
Brookes?
................................................................................................................................................................................. 33
Appendix 1 ................................................................................................................ 34
Fostering
Interculturality
Research
Interview
Schedule............................................................... 34
3
4
Executive Summary
This project was funded by the Brookes Student Learning Experience
Strategy in 2008-9 and carried out by the Centre for International Curriculum
Inquiry and Networking (CICIN). The objective of the study was to engage
Brookes academic and academic-related staff (international staff, local staff
with international educational experience and local staff without international
educational experience) in a dialogue about their experiences of education
overseas and their experiences of teaching in the UK, and to enter into a
mutual learning space where new curricula and pedagogy could be
envisioned for Brookes
Staff were invited to participate in the study by attending three ‘dialogue’
meetings and an away day. Fifteen participants were also interviewed to
follow-up in-depth on some of the issues raised in the meetings.
The discussions and interviews highlighted the extent to which staff members
use their experiences at other institutions, both inside and outside the borders
of the UK, as a way of making sense of their experience at Brookes. Although
experiences differed many saw the UK university culture as offering students
more independence in learning than other systems, with students being
expected to manage their own learning, and to have a variety of learning
abilities and to be creative. Staff from other systems were impressed by how
student-centred UK pedagogy is, the amount of support given to students and
the friendly, collaborative relationship between staff and students. This was
seen to be underpinned with a general ambience of supportive, engaged
caring and openness towards students.
A further, unexpected, aspect that was followed-up was the shifting identities
of the staff involved in the study. The international staff mostly identified
themselves as ‘local staff with international experience’ and described moving
into a UK academic identity. We illustrate these identity shifts on an identity
continuum which can be seen to parallel ideas on culture shock and brings
into focus the possibility of participants’ responses as ‘performance’ to
demonstrate their enthusiasm and mastery of the host culture.
While the original ideas of the study to enter into a mutual learning space
where new curricula and pedagogy could be envisioned for Brookes proved
idealistic a number of recommendations to make Brookes a more
cosmopolitan university have arisen from the study which we hope will be
taken forward by the university.
Recommendation 1: That staff induction include a ‘buddy system’.
Recommendation 2: That an evaluation be carried out of the new website for
staff recruited from overseas and any necessary upgrading implemented.
5
Recommendation 3: The development of a wider range of staff development
opportunities addressing cultural issues.
Recommendation 4: Procedures be put in place to engage students in the
programme and module curriculum development process.
Recommendation 5: Senior management sponsorship of cosmopolitan
initiatives at Brookes.
Recommendation 6: The retention/addition of staff common rooms to facilitate
informal staff interaction.
Recommendation 7: Senior management sponsorship of initiatives to facilitate
informal staff interaction.
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Introduction
The objective of this study was to engage Brookes staff who have teaching
and teaching related roles (whether international staff, local staff with
international educational experience or local staff without international
educational experience) in a dialogue about their experiences of education
overseas and their experiences of teaching in the UK and to enter into a
mutual learning space where new curricula and pedagogy could be
envisioned for Brookes. The project is in line with the Equality Challenge
Unit’s recommendation that higher education institutions monitor and seek to
better understand the experiences of black and ethnic minority staff1 .
The question had arisen at the Global Perspectives Conference at Brookes in
June 2008 as to how much local and international staff interact and share
their ideas. An interview study of staff and students carried out at an
Australian university (Clifford, 2010)2 had highlighted the wealth of
international experience among university staff and how little this is shared
and used to enhance curricula and pedagogy. The students in the study
expressed the view that the staff were the most important factor in the quality
of their education and that if staff were not ‘internationalised’ then there was
little hope of their curriculum being so. HESA figures (2007)3 for the UK
indicate that 26% of academic staff are now international.
Questions underlying the project were:
• What do overseas staff value in our education system?
• What could we learn from approaches to education in other countries?
• What could we learn about staff development needs of staff recruited
from abroad?
• What staff development opportunities could be made available to
increase the cosmopolitanism of Brookes staff?
• How could Brookes become more cosmopolitan (promoting a
commitment to the common good and to the equal standing of all
individuals)
• What could we do to ensure continuing dialogue between the culturally
diverse staff at Brookes
1
Leathwood, U. M. and Moreau, M-P. (2009). Experiences of black and minority ethnic staff
working in higher education: literature review 2009 Equity Challenge Unit, accessed on 11
May 2010 from http://www.ecu.ac.uk/publications/experience-of-bme-staff-in-he
2
Clifford, V.A. Ch 13 The Internationalised curriculum: (dis)locating students. In E. Jones
(ed.) Internationalisation and the Student Voice. London: Routledge. (2010).
3
http://www.hesa.ac.uk/index.php
7
Methodology
Statistics supplied by the Directorate of Human Resources indicated that
Oxford Brookes employs a significant number of staff with international
experience. At the time the figures were requested in 2008, Brookes had 148
senior/research/teaching non-UK staff and 17 UK staff who were working
overseas immediately prior to commencing at Brookes. The figures for
support staff were 122 and 15. These numbers do not account of staff that
completed their studies abroad, travel regularly for their research, etc.
After securing ethics approval personal letters of invitation to join the project
were sent, by Human Resources, to all teaching-related staff members who
had joined Brookes from overseas, these included international staff and local
staff returning home after working or studying abroad. A general invitation was
issued to all other teaching-related staff to join the project through emails and
Onstream, the university’s weekly online magazine.
The staff members were invited to attend three ‘dialogue’ meetings and an
away day. These meetings were intended to serve as forums for international
and local members of staff to share perspectives on learning and teaching
and to raise issues or questions to be further explored by the group. Nearly all
of the approximately thirty staff members who expressed an interest in the
project and attended the first forum had migrated to the UK from other
countries. As the involvement of local staff was crucial to meeting the project’s
goal of facilitating dialogue between local and international staff, local staff
members were approached to join the discussions. Local teaching and
learning representatives from schools were targeted specifically, in hopes that
this would increase dissemination of the ideas discussed at the forums.
Despite expressions of interest none attended the forums but a number
agreed to be interviewed.
Following the three dialogue meetings an interview questionnaire was
designed and piloted to delve further into some of the issues raised and to
gain specific examples of diverse curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. In
total, 15 interviews were conducted (six local staff and nine international staff)
by the principal investigators and the research assistant. Of the six local staff
three had worked overseas. The transcribed interviews were returned to the
interviewees for verification. At an away day, the project team presented their
preliminary analysis of the interview data and discussed these with the project
participants in attendance.
As five staff members, all from different disciplines, were working on this
project a discussion of data analysis techniques led to a decision to each look
at the data through our own techniques to see what perspectives the
techniques gave us on the data. The techniques used were: thematic
analysis; problematic analysis; linguistic tools and Textstat. The thematic
8
analysis drew on the ideas of grounded theory4, coding the transcripts and
looking for coherence and contradiction in the themes. In the problematic
analysis the transcripts were read in relation to concerns of interculturality and
global perspectives, diversification in terms of practices (teaching, motivating,
admissions procedures, assessment criteria etc.) providing a logical
framework for analysing narratives arising from the material. The linguistic
tools used were: negative and positive connotation in vocabulary choices, and
verb forms connoting aspiration and suggestion – such as modals (they
should, you have to), conditionals (I’d like to, if I could I’d --), and opening
clauses such as I think, I believe, it’s important that. From these the data was
classified into positive, negative, aspirational, and suggestion. Textstat is a
software application that analyses texts by ranking word frequencies. The
interview transcripts were analysed, both individually and collectively, and the
word frequency data scanned for the use of value-laden and positive-negative
action oriented words. Common keywords were then restored to their exact
textual contexts, in this case, in order to explore interviewee’s use of language
in discussions concerned with materialistic / systems-oriented matters and
connected with social, vocational or spiritual matters.
The data we drew on was the notes and summaries from the three dialogue
meetings, the interview transcripts and the initial form on which participants
had written the issues that concerned them. On pooling our ideas we found
that the themes we had drawn out were similar and blended together. The
themes were: Brookes image; the UK university culture; educational values;
educational practices and self identity. We then took a theme each to analyse
in depth under the headings of Negative, Positive, Aspirational,
Accommodation and Resistance.
In this report we introduce the perspectives of the staff who participated in the
project on: their reasons for coming to Brookes; what they found when they
got here; their views of UK educational practices and their enactment at
Brookes; and their own identity.
N.B. Quotes from interview transcripts are labelled with the identity number of
the interview and with either ‘Int’ to indicate an international staff member or
‘UK’ to indicate a local member of staff. Also, in this report ‘international’
refers to all non-UK staff whether they are from Europe or further afield.
4
Strauss,
A. and Corbin, J. (1994). Grounded theory methodology. In N.K. Denzin and Y.S.
Lincoln, Handbook of Qualitative Research. London: Sage, pp.273-285.
9
Findings
In the first section we introduce our research participants through their
discussion of their shifting identities. In the second section we present the
participants’ views of UK higher education culture and values and then focus
specifically on how they see these perspectives enacted at Brookes.
1. Staff identity
As staff members joined the project they were asked to identify themselves
as:
• International staff
• Local staff with international experience
• Local staff with no international experience.
The majority of staff identified themselves as local staff with international
experience although many of them were international staff by origin. This
immediately brought into question our categorisation of staff, so we became
curious about how people viewed the transition from international to local.
This was one of the dimensions that we investigated further at the interview
stage and at a dialogue meeting focused on development of our international
professional selves in order to build a deeper understanding of our role in the
international community.
Career
Although ‘identity’ has many facets, the project participants focused on their
academic identities saying that they were born overseas but that all of their
current career had taken place in the UK, so their identity as academics was
situated in the UK. Some had come to Britain for postgraduate study and
stayed on so had all their working life in Britain, others held their first
academic posts in Britain whether as young academics or as a result of a
career change.
When I came here I started a new career, so that part of my
academic identity is purely located here . . . I came here
originally on a two year contract and I had leave from my
institution . . . things changed after two years and I sank roots
here. (ID2-Int)
I am [ ] by nationality. I did my MA in [ ] and my PhD in England. I
have only worked in academia in England. . . . Also I wanted to
live in Britain and the academic system is less hierarchical, less
inflexible. . . I am a local member of staff . . .because I’ve only
worked really full-time in Britain.’ (ID19-Int).
I started the transition stage . . . when I came over [to work] . .
.the moment [felt moved from non-local to local] was when I
started as a student at Brookes. (ID12-Int)
10
Time
The transition period from being an ‘international’ person to being ‘local’ took
place over a varying number of years. For some it came with the recognition
that they felt comfortable in Britain and saw their future there:
It happened very quickly. I was living in [ ] and it suddenly
occurred to me that I felt more at home here than I ever did in [ ].
. . I just felt that Britain tolerated eccentricity, in a way that I
thought was healthy and that it had an opposition style of
government which I thought was healthy . . . I’m pretty much
settled in the UK and that’s why I consider myself local’ (ID4-Int)
I would say it’s somewhere between a point between five and ten
years after leaving [ ] . . .but you note the difference in cultural
identity by going back, . . . so each year I went back to [ ] I felt
more of a stranger there and then got stronger feelings when
coming back to Oxford of returning home. (ID29-Int)
I think that I started as an international member of staff, although
I have been here for about four and a half years when I joined
Brookes. I still consider myself an international staff member . .
.The more I stay here though the more I become local I guess.
(ID28-Int).
Fluidity and Acculturation
However, transitioning to a new identity was not unidirectional or exclusive,
many of the interviewees moved in and out of identities as they spoke.
At some point I realised that I was here for a significant period.
That’s when I began to see myself as local. . . . I have to say I
still don’t see myself as being local, I’m still not of here. (ID2-Int)
One participant began the interview with a clear identification with his country
and as a European and a multi-cultural person but later in the interview
claimed ’I’m now I think fully English’ and felt that ‘the British bit
acknowledges that I’ve been here a very long time which has had an impact
on my identity (ID29-Int). He described his transition over 28 years, having to
lose some of his inherent behaviours such as:
The way you criticize people . . .because the [ ] are very direct
and I upset people an awful lot in those early months because I
would say things like ‘That was crap, go and do it again’ and
people would go [shocked] and I learnt to pack in lots of fluff and
say ‘Well, that was good but perhaps next time you might
consider doing . . . ‘ and other things around politeness . . . about
queuing behaviour, you can never say please and thank you too
often but can easily use it not enough . . . sense of humour very
different. (ID29-Int)
He saw the transition as a
11
‘gradual process . . . Your language starts to shift . . . so that
initial dreams were in [ ] and they eventually turned into English,
so now I’m definitely completely and entirely English and [ ] is my
second language, so now when I go to [ ] I struggle . . . there are
now lots of words I don’t have the [ ] equivalent any more,
especially on the technical side but also on how language
develops over time so they use words that I don’t know the
meaning of that have developed since I left . . . anyway I’m now I
think fully English.’
However, he also stated during the interview, ‘but at the core I’m still
[x] and that’s what I hold on to’. (ID29-Int)
Another staff member also spoke about the difficulty of returning home to
work, as an ‘outsider’. He would need to take local qualifications at home and
saw the ‘system is very, very tight and rigorous . . . so it is very difficult to
come as an outsider and back into it’. (ID19-Int)
However, one staff member used the word ‘foreign’ to describe herself. She
saw the term ‘international staff ‘ as politically correct, ‘that brings very
positive connotations, international means cosmopolitan, international means
open, you can learn from each other, you can share and there is a respect,
there is something positive’ where as ‘my experience here is more that I feel
like a foreign member of staff, and foreign brings about all the connotation of
being different, of being strange, of being alien, and not positive’ (ID25-Int).
She felt that ‘it’s very easy to put people into categories . . . and by this label
you are to a certain extent indicating that they are different’. She also
discussed that:
when you are in your own country, you don’t think about yourself
as [ ] person, you never think about it, you just live like a girl or a
woman, you have friends, you have a family . . . these kind of
identity labels and suddenly you come here and you’ve got this
other identity label, which for some people is the dominant one
and for some people will be the only thing they think about you. .
. . because one thing that an international staff member definitely
wants is to be normal is to be treated as normal and didn’t want
to have this label because usually its not a label that would give
you an advantage.
This participant saw her experiences as due to the lack of international
experience among her colleagues and a ‘very narrow perspective . . . they
don’t see me as me . . . they see me as a foreign person’. She thought that
integration was seen as the job of the immigrants, not something that the
‘majority’ staff needed to put effort into.
The staff member had sought overseas experience as ‘in my home country . .
.academia is seen as a discipline with out borders . . . if you are operating
seriously in academia you can’t just operate within the borders of your
12
country’ (ID25-Int). Others spoke of the need to step outside of your own
culture to be able to learn about your own culture.
Some spoke of the identity crisis among the English with the moving away of
Scotland and Wales. A Scottish staff member felt that there was no category
for her as she was not international and not local, seeing UK as the nearest
identity ‘I do live locally but that’s about as far as I would describe myself as
local. I guess that is quite interesting because I have been here for ten years.
. . . so I’m somewhere in between the categories that you have’. (ID32-UK)
Some staff still identified as international ‘part of my study was in a different
country, part of my study was here. So I worked there and worked here so I
can say I’m an international staff member, yes.’ (ID23-Int)
Identity Continuum
The identity journeys of the project participants could be visualized as a
continuum on which they may shift back and forth:
Foreign
International
International transitioning to local
Local (British/UK/English) (formerly international) with international experience
Local (British/UK/English) with international experience
Local (British/UK/English) with no international experience
Induction
Participants discussed their initial difficulties and disorientation on arriving in
Britain and their differing experiences of settling in.
I came into Brookes from a hot [ ] summer and I travelled to
Brookes in a blizzard of snow, I spent 4 hours stationary on the
M40 in a motor vehicle. It was freezing cold, there was snow
everywhere, people were on holiday because it was in-between
Christmas and New Year. I felt about as foreign as I could
possibly feel. I was under-clothed and unprepared . . .I felt
foreign. I was dislocated. I didn’t have any of my possessions
and I walked into a house that wasn’t mine with unfamiliar
furniture and none of the normal comforts. . . I then found that the
institution I was in was opaque to me, I couldn’t understand how
things worked. (ID2-Int)
I also expected, I think naively, that as an [x] coming to work in
the UK I would find the culture to be fairly easy to integrate into. I
assumed that I spoke a common language and that the practices
I was used to would not be wildly different but that was a bit
naive . . . actually I found frequently I wasn’t speaking the same
language at all . . .the practices were very different. (ID2-Int)
An awful lot of cultural learning to do. Linguistically . . . all the
technical terminology you have to get use to. (ID29-Int)
13
Participants also discussed the need for explanations for a myriad of things
such as P45s, National Insurance numbers, opening bank accounts, how the
national health service works etc.
While some people found hospitable colleagues and systems others were not
so fortunate.
Within hours I had a colleague from [ ] whose position I was
taking over, had come to visit me in my new home. A few days
later another colleague came to visit me and took us to the local
supermarket. Then a few days later when I first arrived in my
office there were big welcome banners up for us in the office, so I
felt welcomed. (ID2-Int)
I couldn’t understand how things worked . . . I had no ideas how
decisions were made. I couldn’t figure out how to get things done
. . . I would ask questions . . . and the answers were unclear.
(ID2-Int)
The initial experiences of local staff also varied:
My experience wasn’t a very good one. I think one of the big
things is social, lack of social circles . . . I would’ve liked to have
found out from other people where are the good eating places in
Oxford, where are the good things to do, what sort of things there
are for academic staff, was there any social events where we all
get together? (ID32-UK)
I think I was incredibly lucky. I don’t think that most staff now are
as lucky as I was. First of all I was given a developmental
timetable, I was put on the Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching
in Higher Education, but I wasn’t ever thrown in at the deep end.
The first term . . . I was doing seminar work on a module with
very experienced and very caring academics . . . I had got two
people who were interested in what I was doing, that had seen
my enthusiasm. (ID37-UK)
Some departments have their own induction processes such as:
We had a folder in [department] which provided information
about how things worked trying to make explicit how various
practices worked in our team like all having lunch together at
12.30 everyday, that included academic and support staff.
Practices about if anyone went more than 200 miles on a work
trip they had to bring back something edible like chocolates or
biscuits or something. All these sorts of things that ordinarily
would not be spoken about were written down in a folder. I was
then given that document and asked to update it from my own
experience. A nice way of doing it. My perception about induction
was that it was very well thought through, I knew it was being
14
monitored by the head of the Unit and that he and [mentor] talked
about it on a regular basis and it was documented. It was very
positive for me. (ID2-Int)
Not for teaching and learning because I’d already got experience
so I didn’t do the postgrad certificate but I did have what our
School calls an induction which was sitting down with the finance
person for the School who was in charge, who talked about
health and safety, display screen set up, kind of getting in the
right position at your desk, it was just kind of ticking boxes of
things I need to be told. . . I had a lot of experience before so I
knew what I was doing in terms of planning lectures and all that
kind of thing, but if I hadn’t had that experience and I’d had the
induction that I’d had, without all of that experience there’s no
way I would have survived, it would have been horrific, because
you’re just left to get on with it so you go into your first lecture, I
was never observed . . . I was told that I’d be observed and who
by but that never happened and that was a bit of a
disappointment because I wanted feedback on my teaching so
that’s the main thing that I think should be different. (ID35-UK)
A much appreciated practice was that of mentoring:
My induction was that I had a mentor, I walked into a quite small
unit, there were only four of us as [x] in the unit. It was a large
open plan office . . . I was given a desk next to [mentor] and we
worked closely together. I was conscious that she was looking
after me all the time, she was giving me work all the time, she
was giving me work to do and giving me space, she was training
me up for various tasks and so forth. That process worked for
quite a long time so we ended up becoming quite close
colleagues over time. There was an initial 6 month period where
she was training me and mentoring me. (ID2-Int)
But I also had, through research, there’s a young researcher
mentoring type scheme. You got a mentor for your first three
years and so my mentor was in the office next door and he
mentored me for sort of everything really, research as well as
teaching and stuff. (ID35-UK)
I think my answer to that is that I found it a very positive
experience and I don’t think that there is anything I would have
changed about it. It included social aspects, I was invited to
dinner with people. People attended to a lot of my needs, and
they were clearly very conscious that I wasn’t from here and I
didn’t have roots here or a support network around me in this
country . . . I wouldn’t change anything, what I would like to see
about it is that it was more of a typical induction in the institution.
I was conscious that my experience was pretty special. (ID2-Int)
15
At the dialogue meeting that discussed induction the ideal situation was seen
as having an individual mentor or buddy within your department who could
teach you how the institution worked.
A suggestion was to include a session on the multi-cultural/intercultural
orientation of Brookes in the university induction:
But I think one of the good points to have is an induction day
about the multicultural and intercultural approach that Brookes
has, because that could provide to all the staff from abroad, with
or without international experience, at the very beginning as well
as the general induction day, the intercultural, multicultural
induction day, then present that idea for staff. (ID10-Int)
Part of settling in also involved the attitudes and behaviours of staff already at
Brookes. At a dialogue meeting one staff member described international staff
as ‘new born’ when they arrive in the UK, that people did not consider that
they had existed before they arrived and did not ask about their previous
experiences. Some of the staff originally from overseas spoke of their
perceptions of the local staff and the cultural clashes that local people must
have to deal when international staff enter the university. ‘They can feel
offended . . .the other people are like invaders . . . Let’s face it, English people
are very much from an Island, they talk about ‘the continent’ when they talk
about Europe, and they feel a bit different all the time’. (ID10-Int)
A local member of staff (ID32) stated:
We have a few [international staff] . . . but we don’t see them as
international colleagues if you see what I mean . . . They’re just
colleagues but they can bring really interesting . . . I mean they
might bring little anecdotes to discuss over lunch or coffee about
experiences but once they’re here they very much see
themselves as being here and not as international colleagues . .
.They just sort of get on with it. I suppose, may be, that’s
because we don’t ask them about their experiences.
We asked participants how we could improve dialogue between local and
international staff and the question was found to be perplexing. Staff felt that
they talked to others because they had a common issue to discuss in their
teaching or research, not because they were from another country:
I’m a bit…struggling to see what the point is of…like I’ve talked to
lots of staff who I work with and they are international and some
are not international but I wouldn’t, like, discriminate, like as if I’m
only going to go and talk to these or those or anything, but I find
it useful to talk to people who are in my School or my discipline
area, as the need arises according to whatever I’m working on at
the time. But for me to go and talk to someone in say
Technology or Maths because they’re foreign seems a really
weird idea. (ID35-UK)
16
Generally participants did not see interaction between local and international
staff as problematic:
If you take our School everybody is from different countries, there
is enough dialogue going on. I don’t know about other Schools
but in [x] everybody says, my colleagues says, how they teach in
Bulgaria, another colleague says how they teach in Bangladesh,
another colleague says how they learn at Leeds, so in that way
we have this interaction going on all the time. . .There is no
problem in [x] . . . we have interaction in every level. (ID23-Int)
Several staff pointed to different forums across the university that fostered
dialogue about good teaching and learning practice, while others suggested
that there should be more such opportunities:
I still think that we don’t have forums to share good practice and
by that I mean both for staff and also for students. I really do
think that we’re missing a trick in terms of getting everyone
together and talking about how did you do this? How did you
overcome this issue? Like feedback. I bet there are some
schools that do this really well, what’s their secret? (ID32-UK)
One local staff suggested that perhaps:
now it might be that people who are not UK nationals are not
getting ASKe fellowships, reinvention fellowships, Brookes
teaching fellowships, because that’s what gets you into the
Minerva forum, there might be some reason why they might not
be accessing that. (ID35-UK)
We now turn to the participants’ perceptions of the UK higher education
system and specifically its enactment at Brookes.
2. UK University Culture and Educational Values
The discussions and interviews highlighted the extent to which staff members
use their experiences at other institutions, both inside and outside the borders
of the UK, as a way of making sense of their experience at Brookes. The
nature and context of their experiences differed: some international staff came
straight to Brookes from being students or staff overseas; others had come
via studentships or jobs at other UK institutions; some of the local staff had
worked overseas and for the others their experience was all based in the UK.
However, despite their varied experiences of education they had mostly
reached similar conclusions as to UK university culture. They saw it as
offering students more independence in learning than other systems, students
being expected to manage their own learning, to have a variety of learning
abilities and to be creative. Staff from other systems were impressed by how
student-centred UK pedagogy is, the amount of support given to students and
the friendly, collaborative relationship between staff and students. This was
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seen to be underpinned with a general ambience of supportive, engaged
caring and openness towards students.
The project participants valued independent learning and spoke of it as a
creative, egalitarian process of research and critical thinking.
Analytical and critical, questioning authority – I think these are all
attributes of the British education system (ID25-Int)
Independent learning I think is one factor that comes through a
lot. I came from [x] where there was a very prescriptive
approach to education . . . Then when I came here it suddenly
became quite apparent that people could do their own thing, well
to an extent (ID29-Int)
The term ‘originality’ was used to encapsulate the relationship, perceived by
staff, between learner, knowledge and learning suggestive of ‘deep’ change:
[In British education] there’s an emphasis on originality . . .
There’s an emphasis on creativity so the student actually creates
things instead of copying, more open-ended . . . the exams we
had in [x] are pretty much directive . . . when I saw an openended exam I was amazed and thought, wow, how do you
answer this? . . . a student is not meant to write yes or no to an
answer but marshall all the information and knowledge and views
and things that they have and then describe them in an essay
(ID4 – Int)
Staff also saw independent learning as fostered in the informal staff-student
relationships in the UK education system.
a happy relationship between students and lecturers; there is
no relationship of master and servant, it’s a collaboration and
friendly relationship . . . and I think that should be the case,
students must participate properly and with respect, and
lecturers must try to ensure that students treat them with
respect and contribute to the learning and teaching process
(ID25-Int)
What is interesting about the UK system is that it is
accommodative and participatory, it’s not very formal you know,
it’s not only on the basis of lectures, or the activities of lectures
and professors. My experience of it is extremely good, they have
small group teaching so you are encouraged to participate and
take part in the discussions. (ID28-Int)
Staff also noted the level of student support.
Some things that I think are positive are that there is a continuing
belief and some level of attention to pastoral care by personal
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tutors and that sort of thing was not part of my experience in [x]
(ID2-Int)
Support provided for students is great. Be it for special needs
students or for other students in general it is very good compared
to other systems/countries (ID28-Int)
The values underlying the educational approaches and personal aspirations
of the participants were analysed in terms of suric (good) and asuric (bad)
values (Srimad Bhagavdgita Canto 16). The espoused values were found to
be generally asuric, focusing on caring, openness, freedom to self-develop,
support and respect.
I would say the caring attitude, that might be a strange thing to
say, but actually feeling strongly about how the students are
doing, how the student’s progress and what they’re getting out of
it is important I think. I’m not sure that’s a key distinctive feature
of British education, but it seems to be one of the predominant
ones and it should always be about what the student needs and
not about what the staff need. (ID32-UK)
I think that the British education . . . has a very human approach
in general which is good in some way because you are not
considered like a learning machine? (ID10-Int)
However, these values were held in a context of wider pressures of the higher
education sector in terms of decreasing funding ‘more driven by money than
ideology’ (ID29-Int), the tensions between teaching and research, and heavy
workloads.
While independent learning was seen as the ideal underpinning of a university
education it was recognised that it was not unproblematic and that the student
experience has now changed with paid work, family and social life competing
with their studies and student attitudes changing.
In the next section we look at how the staff saw the ideals and values being
played out in educational practices at Brookes.
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3. Educational practices at Oxford Brookes University
The staff reported Brookes as giving out a very definite image of itself. A
number of staff transferred from older universities recognising and welcoming
the fact that Brookes was a young university with an excellence reputation for
innovative teaching. Mostly they expected to do a high level of teaching but
one expressed dissatisfaction with this and the negative effect that had had
on her involvement with research. The geographic positioning of Brookes had
been an inducement for some international staff to come.
Staff Perceptions of Student’s Lives and Expectations
The staff expressed enthusiasm for independent learning but also realised
that it was not unproblematic in practice. They recognised that they are now
working with students in a competitive environment, many students are no
longer full-time, often having paid work and family commitments as well as a
social life to manage and so have different ideas about the role of ‘student’.
Concern was expressed as to how this would impact on student motivation. In
class staff were aware that students were texting and using social networking
tools to pursue their social lives. The staff felt that motivating students to
engage with their studies was crucial to the development of independent
learners.
I think we’ve got a problem with the culture of how students think
about learning, which is that it’s not high enough, students don’t
give it quite high enough priority . . . because they’re juggling all
sorts of things . . . it used to be that students’ main activity was
being a student and then we started to get students taking on
part-time jobs . . . being a student is just one section of their lives
that’s competing with lots of other things . . . [which] are now
brought right into the university . . . as they are doing [computer]
practical you are competing with their need to look at Facebook
and check their emails and run their social life. (ID36-UK)
At the dialogue meetings the expectations and motivation of students was
raised and this was followed up in the interviews. Staff diverged on how they
experienced students’ attitudes, some saying that this may reflect if the
discipline was a ‘recruiting’ or ‘selecting’ area. Some saw their students as
highly motivated, knowing that they will be going into a highly competitive
work environment and will need good grades to obtain employment, but other
staff saw students as strategic learners who put their effort into study that
would earn them grades, rather than valuing the educational experience per
se.
I think it would probably be true of some students but I wouldn’t
like to generalise without asking them. I think that some of them,
I certainly have heard some students come in with that kind of
attitude, that they are not going to do very well. And it seems to
be something that has been fostered, either in the home or at
their sixth year college or school. Coming with that attitude, I
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don’t think it’s necessarily anything that Brookes has done or the
University has done, the students are already coming with that
mind set and of course that would be detrimental to any forms of
progression. (ID32-UK)
This is not true of all students, some are highly motivated. There
is a group that is content to pass. There are many reasons that
they are not inspired. They think, ‘I always get a 2-2, that’s it’.
This is not unique to Brookes. (ID33-UK)
Oh no that’s definitely not the experience in [ ] – they’ve got to
get a 2.1 otherwise they’re a Nobody. They’re highly motivated to
get a 2.1 and there’s a certain segment who are highly motivated
to get Firsts. And that’s every year, definitely. (ID35-UK)
I would say very motivated by marks, less motivated by what
they think they’ll get out of the educational experience, so they’re
strategic . . . .So like if group work doesn’t go very well they won’t
treat that as a learning experience . . . you learn a lot more when
things go badly.’ (ID35-UK)
Some staff related student expectations to the institution rather than to the
person.
I think that’s an interesting question and I would say that students
have low expectations but not of themselves. They have low
expectations of Oxford Brookes. I would say that very often
students have extremely high expectations . . .There are more
and more students who contact module leaders and they
challenge the marks that they get. They get a mark and they just
send an email saying ‘Oh I’m very disappointed, I think I should
get at least five points more’. This would be just unbelievable in
another institution and I think it leans to the fact that we do treat
students like customers so they think they can have these
expectations that they will get high marks . . . then they are not
happy because maybe on some other module they put similar
effort and got much better grade. (ID25-Int)
. . . so many people in this place who feel . . . they have a
complex . . . they feel, ‘Oh Oxford Brookes, we are not as good
as Oxford University’ and we are always compared to Oxford and
they have this thing that Oxford Brookes is not good enough.
(ID25-Int)
Some participants took up the analogy of treating students as customers
saying it gave students the wrong impression about education:
There is a lot of talk about the student as a consumer, I don’t
think this is right . . . [if] I go into Marks and Spencer and I buy a
shirt . . . I don’t actually have to put much energy into it . . . But
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if I’m a student I actually need to learn some hard things . . . to
overcome conceptual barriers (ID2-Int)
Engaging Students with Independent Learning
The staff were very aware of the importance of higher education in their
students’ lives, describing it as ‘learning for life’ (ID19-Int) and ‘preparing them
for life’ (ID23-Int) to be inventors, change agents and leaders. The staff saw
an urgency in getting that message across to students.
For me the only thing to point out to them is that ultimately what
they are learning is also valid for life which is of course incredibly
abstract, and it’s like an old woman saying that to them, but it is a
lot of the skills that they will be learning that they can use later on
. . . And often I’ve told students . . . if you want to miss this
opportunity it’s your loss. And some students really take this on
and others don’t. . . I don’t know how to motivate them then. You
can only give them the opportunity to learn. (ID19-Int)
The institute is preparing them for life and they will be the future
inventors, they are the people who can change, . . . but the
institutions which motivate the student for life are saying you are
capable of occupying high position in your country . . . they
develop the candidate. And they apply for high positions. (ID23Int)
So I think we have to talk about it in the inductions, it’s important
that they work hard because it’s not like college, it’s not like high
school, it’s not about receiving from someone, it’s also about
reading, it’s about dialogue, it’s about exchange of ideas and so
on. I think they have to understand that . . . the students must
understand the benefits of the course that they do, . . . and it’s
not very easy to achieve . . . so additional effort is needed on the
part of lecturers to explain why the course is so important, the
course is vital for their future career, and so on. (ID28-Int)
Several staff spoke of the importance of setting high expectations of students
as soon as they entered university. One described it as the ‘unfrozen moment’
(ID37-UK) where students are open to change in their learning, to new
expectations and stepping into hard work. This is the moment when they
should be introduced to the complexity and contestable nature of knowledge.
Staff were concerned that too often first year studies confirmed students’ high
school understanding of what learning is that they would ‘get filled up with
wisdom and knowledge’ (ID10-Int).
When they come to university there are much higher expectations
placed on them and I think we need to make it clearer what the
expectations are and also I think, students need to take more
seriously the idea that learning is not a spectators’ sport. So many
of them, you know, sit back and watch, when in fact they're not
going to learn anything that way. (ID4-Int)
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Several staff felt that ‘we’re not challenging the students enough’ (ID19-Int),
‘so we should challenge them more’ (ID25-Int), and this should start in their
first semester of study to introduce them to new ways of learning and new
ideas about knowledge.
I had some students, two years ago, who said to me, they’d
worked hard and we made them work hard and they really
enjoyed it. It was a great class, there were all these lads and in
the end they loved it. And they said someone should have made
us work harder in our first year and second year. And we didn’t
learn enough. . . they felt, they didn’t read enough, they weren’t
pushed hard enough and it’s an endless debate we have in the
[x] department about this. How many books can we make them
read per week? How many assignments can you give them and
there’s a lot of resistance to overload them, which I understand,
but also the student body in general is quite resistant, because a
lot of students have to work so they feel they’re a bit
overburdened with everything. . . And the people who come in
are good, they’ve got an A and two Bs, that’s what I would say is
challenge them a bit more, intellectually. (ID19-Int)
The participants saw students’ confidence as important in their response to
independent learning in terms of their willingness to take risks.
But if I'm a student I actually need to learn some hard things,
things that might be hard or difficult, I have to overcome
conceptual barriers that I haven't done before. . . some students
come against these barriers and because either of a lack of self
confidence or unwillingness to try or unwilling to take risks or
something like that, they kind of say, . . I can't do whatever it
might be. And it's a pity because they can do it but they have to
be able to think about it a little bit. (ID4-Int)
Some staff saw students previous low level of success in school as leading to
low expectations but also felt that this is where the higher education institution
needed to be motivating the students by having high expectations of its
students generally.
I think that in order to motivate our students, and I think that we
definitely need to motivate them more, is by sending a very clear
and very strong message who we are as Brookes, who we are as
a university, where we position ourselves in the higher education
sector and sending a message what are our standards because I
think that students are not getting this, and some students who
come here who are very capable when they meet a number of
students who are maybe not that capable, they think well what is
the standard of this place? (ID25-Int)
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Others talked of building up a culture of the expectation of success within the
student group and building motivation through stressing the relevance of
modules to careers/employability, ensuring that students had ‘products’
relevant to their cvs e.g. portfolios of work, publications, conference
presentations, prizes.
Well, I think having a journal there, flagging up to students
employability issues during modules, having careers embedded
in modules . . . . It really does motivate people, having a portfolio
that they’ve got to submit as part of their honours module in the
third year, having that as a kind of, you can take this to an
interview and whatever, it’s got all of your stuff in, all your
evidence, I think that motivates people. . . . final products
motivate people – an article that’s published, a presentation at a
conference that they did, their portfolio. (ID35-UK)
I have students developing interactive websites on themes
they’ve researched in . . . I’ve got students who are developing
trail guides in conservation and heritage landscapes . . . my stuff
is all sort of aimed at real world scenarios. (ID35-UK)
In engineering in their final year project they make things that
give them true freedom, they come up with their own proposals,
they plan and they build cars, they build engines, so a lot of
independent learning – that is the strength of our system here.
But it’s very expensive. (ID23-Int)
The embedding of research in the undergraduate curriculum was seen as
another way of making many of these things available to undergraduates as
well as postgraduates.
I think some students do have low expectations, for example . . .
students do not have the confidence to write for these journals
and you have to say to them ‘hang on, this is good, this is really
good work, why don’t you try and put it in for the journal’, and I
think their own expectations are relatively low and unless you
really put the extra effort in to say to them look, you could aim for
this, if you just changed it in this way you could reach that
level…their expectations, their confidence is low for sure. (ID35UK)
Another issue in relation to student engagement was the ‘large-scale
operation in the first year’ (ID36-UK).
And the first year is when they get least investment really per
head, because they’re in huge modules they’re tramping around
campuses and nobody knows who they are, and I think that if we
had a lot more contact with the students, more opportunities to
discuss face-to-face in the first year that’s our chance to, you
know, perhaps change their attitudes about what they’re getting
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in to. . .I think in the end students will be more independent if
they have more access to staff early on. (ID36-UK)
Supporting Students
With the diversity of students in higher education now a gap was perceived
between the skills and abilities students have at A-level and the skills and
abilities they need in their first year at university. The participants saw a need
to talk to students to discover these gaps and to plan to cover them.
They’re often too embarrassed to say, we can’t do that, so one of
things we need to do is be aware of that gap and do something
about it. (ID29-Int)
Some staff saw the need to scaffold the students’ learning giving them the
appropriate level of challenge and the necessary support to develop, for
‘building [self-directed learning], you would scaffold this through a programme,
so students can be given far more support in the first year but this would
diminish over time’ (ID37-UK) and yet seeing the tension in this presenting
knowledge in ‘simplistic form and then only later do we look at the complex
forms and its contestability. And I think that sometimes students find that
really difficult because we [have] confirmed their understanding of what
learning is about . . . that its not self-directed, it is not contestable’ (ID37-UK).
The staff also recognised the real tension in providing the ‘step-by-step
approach which . . . will help the weaker students to get through, to pass, but .
. . is demotivating for the very talented and capable student . . . how do you
make sure that the brilliant students are not bored and the weaker students
can catch up?’ . . . By spoon-feeding you can de-motivate the students (ID25Int).
An important element in the support of students was the informal, friendly
staff-student relationship here described as a partnership:
. . . here we try to treat students like partners and we say to
them look you’re adults, I’m treating you like an adult that’s why
you have to behave like an adult, and there’s a dialogue so it is a
partnership which I think is very valuable. (ID25-Int)
Some staff saw their own behaviour as important seeing themselves as role
models for their students:
Unless we have higher aims as teaching staff our students will
not have a higher aim, it’s very simple, unless I work hard I can’t
expect my students to work hard. And if I don’t aim to solve a
problem then I can’t expect my students to solve a difficult
problem. (ID23-Int)
Curriculum Design for Independent Learning
Other factors in the higher education environment likely to lead to ‘good’
independent learning were considered to be: student involvement with
25
curriculum development; particular teaching strategies (including blended
learning, field-based work, role play simulations, group work and study
abroad); and feedback and assessment.
Student involvement with programme design was seen as very important for
building students’ independent learning and crucial for gaining insights into
how students learn.
I think we need to be pushing for more flexibility in how we
deliver programmes . . . continues to be an emphasis on full-time
undergraduates and very traditional modes of delivery, lectures
seminars . . . I think that we need to be pushing much harder in
involving students in the development of their own programmes .
. . so we can get better insights into improving their experience
(ID2-Int)
. . . when the university put working parties together to invite
students into working parties and programme development, and
you wouldn’t want completely untrained, which is what we do at
the moment, we ask students ‘what do you think about this’ - and
we take it quite seriously - but . . . it’s a bit of crapshoot about
who we ask and what response we get where as if students are
involved, and the pedagogy is built, then by the time they are in
their second and third year they’re making really valuable
contributions to those working groups, to programme
development, so I think that it’s quite useful to think about that.
(ID37-UK)
The inclusion of students on committees and the listening to the student voice
was also a foreign concept to many staff, but much praised:
. . . definitely the student voice and it’s not very common in other
places. In [x] for example everything’s very hierarchical and
students don’t have that much voice, so the committee structures
where students are part of the committees – it’s very democratic
and I think it’s wonderful (ID25-Int)
Various aspects of curriculum were seen as also contributing to the
development of student independent learning, including the modular system,
coursework-based curriculum and problem-based learning approaches.
The modular system to me, it does encourage students’
independence because they are very, they are quite self
interested and self motivated (ID32-UK)
I think we can help students to be independent . . . if we give
them some cases and problems to solve they may be
encouraged to come up with some independent thinking . . . it’s
also important to relate our teaching and assignments to practical
problems. (ID28-Int)
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Blended learning was also seen as an important part of the process although
not unproblematic:
I think that they’re already very independent, yes. We do a lot of
blended learning I think particularly in health . . . I’m also chairing
an information management class group, which helps provide
information to students, so can help with IT, so students can
study and work quite independently even when they’re not here.
There are problems with it too I think in terms of the digital divide,
particularly we have quite a lot of females here because it’s still a
predominance of females in [x], and the mother returning to study
who still has children tends to struggle, who might not have
access to the internet, fighting with their kids to use a single
computer (ID29-Int)
Assessment also featured in the discussions. One participant suggested that:
It’s also important to consider methods of assessment that may
help them to think differently such as coursework, so I’m very
suspicious about exam assessment in terms of measuring
independence. (ID28-Int)
Participants praised the transparency and feedback given to students:
What I think is good and what I think we should keep and
comparing with my other international experience is the
transparency which means that I think there is a big effort to be
fair and transparent in what we do. In other universities students
wouldn’t be able to see feedback or they wouldn’t be allowed to
ask a tutor ‘why they got this mark’ (ID25-Int).
However, one participant did not consider that we went far enough saying that
in her country of origin:
And on the work was a very detailed feedback – every person received
very detailed in all possible ways, and exams was something that they
receive. In [x] is a little different from here because we returned exams to
the students at least for them to see the exams and at least they have
the opportunity to see the question they answered and the comments
and ask you ‘why this and that’. (ID10-Int)
However, student attitudes to assessment were seen as problematic with
students not seeking or noting feedback on their work, not seeing that as a
learning experience. This comment applied equally to local and international
students.
. . . and that is to do with the other problem of students not
coming for feedback from assessment. They tend to think of
assessment as just something that they do, that they pass or
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they fail, they don’t seem to have an idea, it’s not in their culture
at the minute about feeling the need to do better, feeling the
need to progress, or how do they go about progressing what they
can’t. You’re gonna leave people behind before you even get
started. . . . (ID29-Int)
Another curriculum area discussed was that of group work, this now involving
multi-cultural groups with some students having English as their second or
third language. Staff saw a perceived lack of fluency with English language to
be seen by local students to indicate a lack of intellectual capability and led to
local students being reluctant to engage in group work with student who they
do not find easy to talk with or understand. This is unfortunate as the
international students often have a great deal of knowledge to contribute to
group work.
I know that what we perceive as your intellect, your intelligence,
your knowledge it can only by transmitted by your language, so if
your language is not very good, if you struggle then nobody will
take you as a clever intelligent person even though if you speak
in Chinese you might be brilliant, but if you can’t find the word
and if people can’t understand you then they will just assume. (ID
25-Int)
I think that what happens is UK students have this impression,
sometimes a stereotype but sometimes it is the case that the
international students are not as able as they are so they don’t
want to integrate with them and some students will even say I
don’t want to work on this assignment in an international group
because I want to get a good mark . . . so there is this perception
by UK students that the international students aren’t good
enough. . . and the perception comes mainly from the level of
English. (ID25-Int)
When I put students in a mixed groups with UK and international
sometimes they won’t even speak to each other . . . if we do
teach a lot of international things, and that’s one way UK
students are exposed to international, so then if you talk about
China in your lecture and you give a case study not only on the
UK but also on China then they maybe have something to talk
about with the Chinese students sitting next to them, . . . another
way is creating study groups which are mixed so never allow
students to form the group themselves because if you allow that
you will always turn out with UK groups separate and they don’t
want any foreigners inside. (ID25-Int)
That’s another issue for our school. Group work they hate it, they
hate working together, they’d much rather be independent and
do their own thing. For instance, one of the things they love doing
is an independent study module here it’s just them on their own
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working on a little project. So . . . to me the independent nature of
how they see themselves within the University is more of a
problem. (ID32-UK)
Some staff now see that addressing these perceptions and behaviours, to
build more cultural awareness and empathy, needs to be part of the
curriculum.
There are ways I think of setting assignments for students to do
particularly when they first come to set their expectations, set their
perspectives, UK students’ perspectives on international students and
the international students’ perspectives on local students. You can set
assignments that value the understandings and the difference that
international students bring. (ID37-UK)
Summarising Independent Learning
In these scripts independent learning emerges as a key, desirable feature of
UK education along with supportive staff-student relationships. This study
suggests that for independent learning to flourish in higher education
institutions there needs to be a clarity of goals and structure and a culture of
tutor engagement with the learner, while learners need a sense that
conscientious study will lead to good grades. An essential ingredient for
success will include setting high expectations of students at the beginning of
their university careers, with clarity in terms of goals and course design,
together with adequate scaffolding and student support. The multi-cultural
environment of higher education now also needs to be recognised and
curriculum developed that will equip students with the inter-cultural and team
work skills they will need to complete curricula activities competently. The
engagement of students in curriculum development was also seen as
essential.
Discussion
Data from this study highlights two distinct yet related areas - that of staff
self-identity and of their views on UK higher education.
Our findings reveal a pattern of the transitioning of international staff
identity from international to ‘local’. Parallels could be drawn with the
literature on culture shock5 where many people arriving in a new country
go through a honeymoon period of finding their new environment exciting
and fascinating [international], to a period of adjustment where they often
may first withdraw, react negatively to difference, miss the comfortable
spaces of their home culture, and then begin to adjust to different ways of
doing and viewing things [international transitioning to local]. Gradually,
5
Wikipedia. Culture shock. Accessed 26 July 2010 from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_shock
Kwintessential. The stages of culture shock. Accessed 26 July 2010 from
http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/cultural-services/articles/cultureshock-stages.html
29
many recover enthusiasm for their host culture, a process that parallels
their development of the skills needed to master its nuances and perform
its behaviours with success and confidence. Eventually, they achieve a
stage of mastery of both cultures and from this platform of bicultural
cosmopolitanism begin to shrug off the perceived stigma of the
‘international staff’ label and represent themselves as local staff (with
international experience).
In this study, relatively few participants retained vestiges of the ‘foreigner’
ends of the transition where accommodation and adjustment to the host
culture had either been rejected or was yet incomplete. Instead, most of
our international respondents belonged to the ‘enthusiasm/mastery’
phase of the culture shock cycle and much of their commentary seemed
designed to assure the interviewer of their embededness within their new
host culture. Their comments suggested a conscious effort was being
made to camouflage the ‘otherness’ in their background and to situate
their discourse in the framework of their adopted host culture. The views
on UK education that they offered could well be coloured by an intention
to demonstrate their integration with the local culture and a politeness in
not criticizing the current context in which they work.
Of course, this is a skeptical reading of the data. A more generous
perspective might have it, simply, that these international staff are
inherently confident, independent, adventurous, high achievers who
actively sought to move ‘from the comfortable spaces of knowing to the
uncomfortable places of learning’6 by choosing to work overseas at a
young university with a reputation for innovative teaching. There is much
truth in the above. However, there is also evidence that while some local
staff felt that they had some understanding of what they were coming to,
most international staff did not, those from English speaking countries
reported finding the transition more challenging than they had initially
anticipated. On arrival, to some degree or another, international staff
found themselves working in a university system that they didn’t
understand and having to operate in a country where everything was
unfamiliar and social support was minimal. The participants’ focus on
talking about their arrival experiences could be interpreted as an
unfulfilled need to talk about their transition experiences. They acquired a
new identity as an ‘outsider’. The importance they attach to the first year
experience of the students again could mirror their own transition
experiences. However, these staff had chosen to come to the UK, and to
Brookes, and those who redefined themselves from ‘international staff’ to
‘local staff with international experience’ described their ability to reach a
level of comfort with the values and pedagogy of their new environment.
Participants’ perspectives, despite explicit questioning, did not allow us as
researchers to discover ’a mutual learning space where new curricula and
6
Phillips, D.K. et al. (2009). Trying on-being in-becoming. Four women’s journey(s) in
feminist postructural theory. Qualitative Inquiry, 15(9), 1455-1479.
30
pedagogy could be envisioned for Brookes’. We had hoped their experiences
would challenge our own assumptions and our taken for granted attitudes and
values. It may be that a different research design is needed to discover what
international staff would recommend as an approach to learning and teaching,
what they would prefer to do differently and what different values they hold.
Some of these topics bubbled beneath the surface at the group discussions
but they did not assert themselves in our interviews. Often, we do not see
what we do ourselves as ‘different’ from the norm nor are we able to articulate
it. In the words of Robert Burns:
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion. 7
In this case, that gift was not awarded. Perhaps, if the environment were more
welcoming to difference, more celebratory as suggested here, then staff might
hold on to and share their insights and discoveries with us. Nevertheless the
data has given us valuable insights into staff views of making Brookes a more
cosmopolitan environment through: induction; continuing professional
education; staff interaction spaces; and student involvement with curriculum
development. A number of recommendations have been drawn from these
findings.
Main Messages and Recommendations
What do overseas staff value in our education system?
The main attributes of the UK education system that are valued by the
overseas (and local) staff in this study were: independent learning; studentcentred pedagogy; and support for students. The alignment of these attributes
with their own values led to them wanting to be here and, mostly, identifying
as ‘local’ academics.
What could we learn about staff development needs of staff
recruited from abroad?
The participants in the study recruited from abroad saw induction as essential
when they arrived at Brookes. Some had experienced the one-day or half-day
formal university induction but most valued being allocated an individual
mentor or buddy available on a daily basis to show them how things worked at
Brookes and to explain such things as P45s. Information prior to arrival would
have been welcomed on issues such as housing, banking, reallocation grants
etc. The new website for international staff may now meet some of this need.
Recommendation 1: That staff induction include a ‘buddy system’.
Recommendation 2: That an evaluation be carried out of the new website for
staff recruited from overseas and any necessary upgrading implemented.
7
Robert
Burns (1786)) final verse of the poem “To a Louse: on Seeing One On A Lady's
Bonnet At Church” retrieved in Dec. 2008 from: http://www.robertburns.org/works/97.shtml.
31
What staff development opportunities could be made available to
increase the cosmopolitanism of Brookes staff?
The topics suggested for such staff development include:
• teaching multi-cultural groups of students
• developing curricula for culturally diverse student populations
• regional inductions for staff teaching overseas.
Activities that could aid this development might be:
• building more emphasis on cultural sensitivity and awareness into the
Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching in Higher Education
• micro teaching from cultural perspectives
• expanding staff language classes, especially for languages of the
regions in which Brookes is active
• more active and supportive engagement with international staff
teaching exchange programmes
• valuing students knowledge and backgrounds for example by featuring
them on departmental web-pages
• ensuring Teaching News carries articles that address cosmopolitanism.
Recommendation 3: The development of a wider range of staff development
opportunities addressing cultural issues.
What could we learn from approaches to education in other
countries?
Despite explicit questions in the interviews and at dialogue meetings we were
unable to elicit from the participants ideas or examples from their previous
experiences that they would like to see incorporated at Brookes. The
participants were focused on talking about their experiences here and, as
shown, had made a commitment to being here. This could be variously
interpreted as discussed above. However, there was a strong interest in
learning from students and involving them in the curriculum development
process.
Recommendation 4: Procedures be put in place to engage students in
curriculum development teams.
How could Brookes become more cosmopolitan
There are already many multi-cultural themed activities around Brookes’
campuses:
• the Business School holds a multi-cultural student induction day at the
start of each academic year
• the Westminster Institute of Education canteen has a cultural theme
day once a month
• the food hall at Gipsy Lane site offers food from different areas of the
world
• the catering outlets are part of the fair trade movement
• a human rights film festival is held annually
• Brookes TV regularly screens items with international content
• Erasmus exchanges are encouraged
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•
•
university partnerships with other countries, including the exchange of
teachers with universities in international learner source nations
international visiting scholars, in some cases offering classroom
sessions.
Other suggestions made were:
• more language classes for staff
• student communities and staff running sessions for staff on their
languages and cultures
• exhibition areas for photographs, images, poetry, staff and students
contributing.
Recommendation 5: Senior management sponsorship of cosmopolitan
initiatives at Brookes
What could we do to ensure continuing dialogue between the
diverse staff at Brookes?
The project participants indicated that they found it very difficult initially to
integrate socially at Brookes. Ideas for opening up ways for more informal
communication to take place included a debating society for staff, a staff
sports day, staff football (or other sports), a deans football match, picnic days,
and creating staff common rooms.
Recommendation 6: The retention/addition of staff common rooms to facilitate
informal staff interaction.
Recommendation 7: Senior management sponsorship of initiatives to facilitate
informal staff interaction.
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Appendix 1
Fostering Interculturality Research Interview Schedule
Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed as part of the research project. We
are seeking ways to integrate the knowledge and expertise of staff with
international experience at Brookes to enhance learning and teaching. The
first questions are about you and your induction into Brookes, the second
section is about learning and teaching and the third section about how to bring
about change.
A. About You
If relevant:
1. How would you describe yourself, as:
An international staff member
A local (UK) staff member with international education
experience
A local (UK) staff member with no overseas educational
experience
2. Can you tell me about your international experience of studying,
teaching and research?
3. [If relevant. At what stage did you start seeing yourself as a ‘local’
member of staff and why?]
4. If relevant:
What were your expectations when you came to work in the UK?
5. What were your expectations when you came to work at Brookes?
6. Can you describe your initial experiences of Brookes?
7. Can you describe your induction to Brookes?
8. What would you have liked to have been different about your initial
experiences and your induction?
B. About Learning and Teaching
1. What do you see as the distinctive attributes of a good British
education that need to be retained?
2. From your experience, what ideas would you offer to Brookes to
improve:
•
Student learning
•
Student independence
34
•
•
•
•
Curriculum development
Pedagogy
Research into teaching.
Have you other suggestions you would like to make to improve
learning and teaching at Brookes?
3. In some of our discussions it has been suggested that Brookes
students have low expectations of themselves. Do you think that this is
true, and why?
4. If yes, what do you think could be done to motivate students to aim
higher?
About change
1. What aspects of learning and teaching do you think are negotiable at
Brookes, i.e. that it would be possible to change?
2. How much freedom do you think you have to develop your own ideas?
3. How do you think Brookes could recognise the experiences of staff
(and students) from abroad?
4. In what ways do you think that the resources of the local Oxford
community could be used to involve staff and students in intercultural
dialogue?
5. If relevant – Very few local staff have volunteered to participate in this
project. How do you feel about that?
6. What could be done to encourage dialogue between local and
international staff?
7. What are the three things that would improve your life at Brookes and
why?
Conclude
Is there anything else that you would like to talk about that we have not
covered?
Thank you very much for participating in the interview. We will send you a
copy of the interview script to check for accuracy and if you have thought of
other comments you wish to add.
We look forward to seeing you at the next Dialogue meeting on 23 April.
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