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Karima Ramji (International coordinator, UVic Co-op and Career Services): I would say that
given the diverse cultural backgrounds of the students that are in the classroom, one
of the first things lecturers can think about is get a better understanding of the cultures
that these students come from. And that will then enable them to be able to strategize
and determine “how do I make their classroom experience most effective?” With the four
dimensions of cultural intelligence: the motivation, the knowledge, the strategy and the behaviour,
I think those fit in really well when it comes to thinking about “how do I interact with
my students more effectively?” Because if this student comes from a certain culture,
and the instructor is aware of the cultural norms from where they come, then they are
able to plan out their lectures in a way that they are acknowledging those different cultures,
as well as making sure that the students are comfortable with the cultures that they are
engaging with. So then the instructor has the ability to say “what will this student
be comfortable with? And how can I tailor my lessons so that they are able to contribute
and gain from that experience?
We saw an example of that in the session this morning, where one of the faculty members
asked about how to help students who might be coming from a culture that’s very high power distance. So coming from a culture
where the role of the student and the role of the professor – there is a big gap between
those two roles. And you come from a culture where you wouldn’t question that, you wouldn’t
put your hand up or engage, because that could be seen as disrespectful of the professor
or questioning the professor. So from the perspective of the faculty member, it may
seem like the student isn’t engaging. It might be that the student is falling behind,
but the professor doesn’t know, because the student isn’t asking questions and the
professor can’t determine that. And in the session today some of the students who are
from that kind of culture gave some very helpful suggestions to that faculty member about how
to best manage that. Their suggestion was to take those students aside, in private,
quietly, do it alone and not in front of the whole class so there isn’t any exposure
or embarrassment in front of the group. And that’s an effective way to get the check-in
that you want, as an instructor, to be effective, but also in a way that supports and respects
the culture that’s in the classroom.
The Foreign Affairs website has a section called the Centre for Intercultural learning.
And in there, someone could explore what certain norms are in various countries. And so if
you picked a certain country, you would see what the management style is like, what is
conversational style like, what is the dress code, how do people greet each other. So that
is a good way to get a good understanding of what are the social and cultural norms
for that particular context. That can give an instructor a really good basis to start.
I think there is a lot of literature out there on cultural intelligence that people can read
about. There are articles on how to work with students in different contexts, which can
be very helpful as well. I imagine various teaching and learning centres might centres
of resource and support, and I think that would depend on the institution. I know at
the University of Victoria, we’ve had a Learning Without Borders program, which has
been offered through the learning and teaching centre here, which supports the internationalization
of the campus and the curriculum. And we received some seed money with a grant from that program
which helped us further our work in cultural intelligence – so that’s been another
place of resource and support and might exist on other campuses as well.