Internationalizing the Curriculum II

Pamela A. Zeiser, University of North Florida
William A. Jennings, University of Tennessee
D. Christopher Brooks, St. Olaf College
John C. Berg, Suffolk University

Participants in the Internationalizing the Curriculum II track took a broad approach to considering how we can foster multicultural diversity and intercultural understanding in our communities, courses, and students. Participants generally agreed that empathy was the primary goal of international education. Substantive knowledge is also important, but empathy is needed in order to motivate students to acquire such knowledge. Consequently the underlying theme of the track was how to encourage and sustain enthusiasm for the international dimensions of politics. Narrower topics included a range of foci including teaching for empathy, technology, bringing administrators on board, syllabi construction, and terminology.

Active learning is a particulary valuable way to build empathy and motivation. Christopher Van Aller and Pamela Zeiser presented active learning techniques for international relations and comparative politics courses. Tina Mavrikos-Adamou and William Jennings also emphasized active learning, particularly as it employs information technology resources such as web access to international news.

Lichao He’s analysis of global issues syllabi demonstrated clearly the lack of a disciplinary center of global studies courses given their heavy reliance on concepts and theories from international relations and comparative politics.

Hayward Walker offered a critique of universal conceptual categories and suggested that attentiveness to limitations can improve cross-national education. Carolyn Shaw presented her on-line, cross-cultural peace-building simulation pairing

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and Canadian universities. Christopher Brooks offered research demonstrating that the study of comparative politics improves students’ levels of intercultural sensitivity in both on-campus and off-campus courses.

Renford Reese and Elaine Rodriquez both gave presentations on community projects to increase multicultural tolerance and diversity. Reese’s “Colorful Flags” program seeks to increase tolerance in multicultural communities by teaching K-12 students basic language phrases and key facts for the many cultures living in Los Angeles. Rodriquez’s I-CAR program helps Hispanic and Latino immigrants to better acculturate and integrate in Chicago.

Together, this variety of presentations caused participants to consider a number of topics key to internationalizing our universities and courses so that we may ultimately produce global citizens. In many cases, we are not only attempting to imbue in our students knowledge of the world and its cultures, but also empathy for those cultures. A number of participants valued activities that encouraged students to “walk in the shoes” of another culture.

The track also discussed the use of technology and resources to improve our students’ knowledge of the world. Shaw’s peacebuilding simulation utilizes technology new to most participants and highlights the advantages it provides. Papers by Bruce Pencek (with Scott Nelson) and by Kirsten Allen and Anne Osterman served as important reminders that faculty must not only be aware of technology and resources, but direct our students to it. The discussion also reminded all of us of the need to avoid the use of technology for its own sake and to employ technology effectively and purposefully while not overwhelming students.

Frequently the examples of active learning shared by track participants were time-intensive and involved considerable risk, especially when the techniques and approaches emphasized skills and process over content. The realities of our profession and institutional cultures dictate that we be aware of the potential consequences of such teaching to our students, our research agendas, and our performance evaluations. The need for support from administrators and colleagues is key – especially when cutting edge teaching techniques end in “magnificent failures” (Van Aller).

As we continued our discussion, we also came to realize the fuzziness of and multiple meanings behind many of our terms: internationalize, multicultural, intercultural, tolerance. In the face of overuse and misuse, we need to promote some degree of conceptual clarity to our students, colleagues, administrators to avoid having them dismissed as meaningless buzzwords.

Summing up the presentations and discussions, we concluded that the primary goal of Internationalizing the Curriculum is to develop intercultural sensitivity and empathy. In the words of participant Renford Reese, we are attempting to “break the bubble of mistrust” as we educate. Active learning, conversation, technology, and strategies of connection are tools that can enable us to achieve this goal.