Understanding the multicultural academy: collaborative critique
Cally Guerin
Докладчик
University of Adelaide
ауд. 6, Административный корпус
2014-03-14
18:35 -
18:55
Ключевые слова, аннотация
Increasing
academic mobility results in universities containing diverse cultures and
languages, potentially enriching academic workplaces, but also creating new
challenges.
This interactive workshop employs 'collaborative
critique' (Guerin & Green 2013) to understand the new university
environment. It brings academics together to share experiences, to assess the
challenges of the multicultural university, and to formulate practical
responses. Participants work collegially to develop their own
auto-ethnographies, with the aim of building practical strategies for intercultural
competence.
Тезисы
Ever
increasing academic mobility – the ongoing movement of students and scholars
from their home environments to universities all over the globe – has created
highly diverse teaching and research environments in tertiary institutions
everywhere, with our everyday academic dialogues being regularly conducted
against a background of different cultures, different ethnicities and different
languages. There is huge potential in this mix to enrich our workplace academic
cultures, and thereby to collaborate with colleagues in more productive ways.
But all too often we fail to develop this potential; we remain locked in our
own interpretations about other people's behavior, and we lack the tools to
review and refine our understandings.
To address
such issues – as academic developers at a research-intensive Australian
university that has long embraced internationalization – we have developed an
approach that we refer to as 'collaborative critique' (Guerin & Green
2013). Collaborative critique is a type of situated, reciprocal peer learning
(Wenger 1998; Boud 1999; Boud et al. 2001) that brings academics from diverse
disciplines together to share their experiences. The aim is to critically
assess issues in the working environment, and to collegially formulate
strategies for addressing the challenges that arise. The role of facilitators
is to draw attention to the relevant theory, raise problematic scenarios, probe
into responses that may prove too simplistic or impractical, and ensure that
the discussion proceeds in an atmosphere of cultural safety.
This interactive workshop uses collaborative
critique to explore the multicultural academy with the aim of building
intercultural competence. To this end, participants work together to develop
their own auto-ethnographies, seeking to describe their values and behaviors in
systematic, rule-governed ways. They will take away from the workshop practical
strategies to operate successfully in the internationalized university.