MA Education for a Sustainable Environment

The course unit aims to develop students’ critical intercultural thinking and intercultural competence in international education. Students will build critical understandings of intercultural-related key concepts, theories, studies, and practices and thereby use ‘intercultural’ as a critical, political, and inclusive approach to ‘international’ and international education. Key concepts and discussions such as large and small cultures, essentialism, ethnocentrism, epistemic injustices, and intercultural ethics will be introduced in sufficient detail in order to allow students to apply them in analysing various topics and phenomena in intercultural and international education.

The unit aims to:

develop students' intercultural competence by: 

• Exploring a critical intercultural understanding in and for education;
• Developing an awareness of intercultural ethics and the issue of epistemic injustice in the knowledge-work (e.g. teaching, learning and research) of education.

Student will acquire knowledge of the key concepts of critical intercultural thinking and be able to use and apply these conceptual lenses to analyse practical topics and issues in international and intercultural education. Students will be able to evidence their abilities of understanding, analysing, and reflecting on intercultural topics, learning, and experiences in a specific educational context, demonstrating their development of critical intercultural thinking/perspectives. They will be working independently and collaboratively through diverse, interactive classroom practices that will be beneficial to them in employment in a variety of educational, intercultural, international careers.

Syllabus (indicative curriculum content):

This course unit will introduce the following content areas:

• The key concepts, theories and philosophies of intercultural thinking; 
• Latest and original intercultural studies in education such as: critical approaches to understanding students’ intercultural experience, intercultural personhood, mindfulness for intercultural communication, and intercultural ethics;
• The issues and topics in the intercultural knowledge-work of education, including (but not limited to): epistemic injustice, language as a carrier of power and violence, curriculum internationalisation, and knowledge democracy.
   

The course unit is delivered in a sequence of ten interactive teaching and learning sessions (2 hours including a mixture of 1 hour lecture and 1 hour activities) with additional two tutorials reviewing the learning of the course unit and preparing students for assessment.  

• Demonstrate a critical understanding of the key concepts, theories and philosophies of intercultural thinking in education
• Understand the latest discussions and approaches in intercultural studies 
• Develop an awareness of the key issues in the intercultural knowledge-work of education, and the need for an intercultural ethic to address these issues

• Develop intercultural competence as an important dimension of global citizenship education in and for international education
• Practise analytical, critical and political thinking skills for understanding the intercultural knowledge-work of education 
• Reflect on intercultural experience and intercultural knowledge-work
• Use an intercultural thinking to critically examine the practical topics and issues in intercultural communication and international education
   

• Be able to discuss and debate the issues in intercultural communication and international education
• Communicate and work with people from diverse cultural backgrounds with ethically-oriented intercultural competence 
• Conduct research to identify relevant literature appropriate to classroom activities and assessment
• Employ ideas and evidence from scholarly work in intercultural studies to support an argument

• Develop intercultural competence for thinking, learning and working in the increasing interconnected world
• Demonstrate conceptual, analytical and critical skills for analysing intercultural topics and using international knowledge-sources
• Collaborate with others in group tasks as a team

Individual feedback on Tii 15 days after submission 

Deardorff, D. K. (Ed.). (2009). The SAGE handbook of intercultural competence. London: Sage.

Dervin, F. (2011). A plea for change in research on intercultural discourses: A ‘liquid’ approach to the study of the acculturation of Chinese students. Journal of multicultural discourses, 6(1), 37-52.

Dovchin, S. (2020). The psychological damages of linguistic racism and international students in Australia. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 23(7), 804-818.

Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Heleta, S. (2016). Decolonisation of higher education: Dismantling epistemic violence and eurocentrism in South Africa. Transformation in Higher Education, 1(1), 1-8.

Holliday, A. (2006). Native-speakerism. ELT journal, 60(4), 385-387.

Holliday, A. (2018). Understanding intercultural communication: Negotiating a grammar of culture. London: Routledge.

Huang, Z. M. (2019). Learning from the ‘right’ ground of mindfulness: some insights for the ‘good’ interculturalist. Language and Intercultural Communication, 1-12.

Huang, Z. M. (2021). Intercultural personhood: A non-essentialist conception of individuals for intercultural research. Language and Intercultural Communication, 21(1), 83-101.

Huang, Z. M. (2022). A critical understanding of students’ intercultural experience: non-essentialism and epistemic justice. Intercultural Education, 33(3), 247-263.

Jones, E. (2017). Problematising and reimagining the notion of ‘international student experience’. Studies in Higher Education, 42(5), 933-943.

Kim, Y. Y. (2008). Intercultural personhood: Globalization and a way of being. International journal of intercultural relations, 32(4), 359-368.

Mignolo, W. D. (2011). Geopolitics of sensing and knowing: On (de)coloniality, border thinking and epistemic disobedience. Postcolonial studies, 14(3), 273-283.

Phillips, A. (2010). What's wrong with Essentialism? Distinktion: Scandinavian journal of social theory, 11(1), 47-60

Phipps, A. (2013). Intercultural ethics: Questions of methods in language and intercultural communication. Language and intercultural communication, 13(1), 10-26.

Ting-Toomey, S., & Kurogi, A. (1998). Facework competence in intercultural conflict: An updated face-negotiation theory. International journal of intercultural relations, 22(2), 187-225.