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From Modelling to Designing Intercultural Curricula
You now know that you have pretty decent intercultural teaching capacities. You have continued to develop an awareness of your own identity and are modelling perspective-taking. Students in your course have the opportunity to interact with different worldviews because you know that makes them smarter. You actively create opportunities to build relationships between ‘others’ and can recognize barriers to student participation – you’ve essentially mastered using your intercultural capacity to inform teaching practices. So now you must be wondering, “What’s next? How can I further internationalize in my course?” No fear, you are not alone. Dimitrov & Haque (2016) have some suggestions for “curriculum design competencies”. “Effective instructors are able…
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How Might Intercultural Capacity inform our Teaching?
Once we develop the capacity for intercultural competence, we can start to infuse the associated skills into our teaching practice. This can take many forms but all the elements connect to the group of knowledge and skills we associate with facilitation. Pedogogy is the study of leading learners and facilitators make a process easier. So, facilitation is the process we use to make the learning possible. In adult education, we know that our learners come with valuable prior knowledge, skill, and experience. We can draw on these to enhance the learning experience for both instructor-facilitator and student. How do we start facilitating? As an instructor, or facilitator, you may wish…
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What is Intercultural Teaching Capacity?
Intercultural teaching capacity is the ability to engage and support learners through difference in learning activities. Instructors who have intercultural capacity are able to bridge difference in the classroom and foster meaningful relationships with and among students. This is also called intercultural competency, but we like to think of it as a continual process instead of a checkbox. Instead of being just ‘competent’, we need the capacity to work with intercultural relations effectively, and those skills change and grow with each experience as we nurture them. Hence we can be capable or have the capacity to be interculturally competent. Reasons why instructors may wish to develop their intercultural capacity is…