2020 #4 Learning Across Cultures (Eds. Mikk/Steglitz)

Learning Across Cultures Locally and Globally by Barbara Kappler Mikk
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While this book is geared toward international and study-abroad programs, there are many essays within that will be helpful for anyone who teaches international students. There are places where the prose could have been curtailed and occasionally the boos seems like a thinly veiled advertisement for NAFSA (Association of International Educators--and the publisher of the book).

Depending on the needs of the reader, mileage will vary in terms of the relevance of each chapter. Jeremy Geller's "Terminology and Intersections" is a good primer for those new to the concept of interculturalism. Geller's parsing of "international" vs. "global" is a useful mindset for considering approaches to curriculum and pedagogy. Shanton Chang and Catherine Gomes offer valuable insights in their contribution, "International Student Identity and the Digital Environment." In addition to an overarching application of "mobile" and "interesecting" identities, the authors make several sound recommendations for how best to approach integration and use of digital platforms with a student cohort. This particular essay has immediate relevance to our current situation in 2020. Most importantly, the authors remind us that a student's self-identification in terms of culture (broadly defined) is central, and that even seemingly innocuous terms like "international student" can mean something different to the student than those who use the terms most frequently. Katherine Punteney introduces the concept of "intercultural competence" and continues some of the threads implied in the previous essay. As with the Shang/Gomes essay, Punteney's "Social Psychology in Intercultural Contexts" offers strategies and recommendations, notably four "essential strategies for creating safe and inclusive learning environments" (based upon Marcia Baxter Magolda's work).

While Yuliya Kartoshkina's "Neuroscience Behind Intercultural Learning" is interesting, it does seem to be a bit of an outlier in the collection. She takes a pro-learning styles approach and advocates for an understanding of neuroplasticity as an educational goal. Also valuable is the note that people with a shared culture often display shared neurological patterns.

Tara Harvey's "Design and Pedagogy for Transformative Intercultural Learning" is one of the more robust essays of the book, both in its clear delineation of best practices, as well as a 7-step adaptation of Dee Fink's backward course design principles. This would be a valuable essay to share with anyone involved in a curricular review process, and would offer a clear-cut and specific approach to "reverse engineering" (or backward design) for instructors, rather than just a general philosophy of considering "learning outcomes when constructing your syllabus". Barbara Kappler Mikk and Thorunn Bjarnadottir's "Intercultural Facilitation" is likewise a very useful offering for teachers. There are also helpful ideas about facilitation that could be implemented by students themselves in discussion-based classes and seminars.

"Mindful Reflection in Intercultural Learning" by Linda Gross and Michael Goh presents a few helpful models, specifically IDEO/Tim Brown's "T-shaped" competencies model, and Ash and Clayton's 2009 DEAL model for critical reflection. The former needed a bit more contextualizing, particularly in terms of distinguishing between disciplines and systems. The essay, however, provides a meaningful prelude to the work of James Lucas and Scott Blair that follows. In "Learning Outcomes and Assessment" the authors clearly differentiate between assessment and evaluation--something that is often overlooked in higher education. The subtext here is that if "grading" is assessment, it deserves to be inextricably tied to learning outcomes but should also be done in such a way that the feedback is geared toward continuous improvement in the student. What the authors don't say, but is implied, is that instructors should consider their own ability to give *timely* feedback when considering what is assessed in a course. There's a clear intention to align Bloom's taxonomy levels in learning outcomes, assignments, types of evaluation, and types of assessments.

Lucas and Blair echo the work of the others in describing the features of a global (rather than "international") focus, and perhaps the most salient is that the global:

conceptualizes culture from multiple perspectives and layers, with culture becoming more than race or nationality and involving a knowledge of self, one's place in greater society, and the biases, privileges, and implications of that place. (208)

As a whole, the collection admirably keeps this larger understanding of culture as a thread throughout the essays and has a transparent agenda in that regard. Most of the readings are accessible to those who are not entrenched in pedagogical theory, and each essay offers extensive bibliographies. The Appendix condenses the "take-aways" from each chapter, which is helpful for future reference and potentially for sharing out the information in a concise way across faculties and other cohorts who might find it useful.