990 resultados para intercultural awareness
Resumo:
The primary aim of this research was to consider the benefit of providing professional development in intercultural competence for general staff at Deakin University. While the question arose from a disparity identified in the University policies, the importance of this consideration was highlighted in an impending audit to be conducted by AUQA, in which internationalisation was a key theme.
In this pilot study, a range of professional staff members across Deakin University was interviewed to identify their strengths, weaknesses, aspirations and expectations on professional development in intercultural competence. Some recommendations were made about how to offer such training.
Resumo:
For thousands of years mankind has looked at the sky above to engage with the surrounding environment. The observation of solar, lunar and other celestial events guided settlements as well as human movements and activities, just as the cycle of the seasons influenced agricultural crops or dwelling. Archaeoastronomy includes many examples of fabrications in the landscape, constructed solely to observe the sky. The awareness of the sky can be particularly important in the contemporary landscape where the design of a sustainable environment has taken on a sense of urgency. This paper features a survey of several international and Australian archaeoastronomical examples and presents a vocabulary of contemporary interventions in the landscape designed to bring awareness of the sky from observation of celestial events. Some of the contemporary interventions are realized while others are deign proposals, in all examples the viewer is engaged in time-based perceptions of different landscapes aided by minimal constructions, which facilitate the observation of the daily sun path, lunar phases and star trails. A symbiosis between the land, the sky and the observer is established, bringing awareness of how the sky above engages the life on earth. This paper offers a fresh insight, drawing upon Indigenous wisdom as well as contemporary debates and literature, to appreciate the social and cultural significance of these places. By reading and appreciating these examples, and the cultures they are party to, new insights and avenues can be offered as to better design and manage our human environments.
Resumo:
The study reported in this paper examines the experiences of Chinese and Vietnamese international students in engaging in their institutional written discourse at an Australian university. The study highlights the significance of exploring the real accounts of the students as the ‘insiders’ and uncovering students’ individual potential choices and intentions as their ‘seemingly unrecognized’ values in producing their own texts in English as a second language. In particular, based on international students’ reflection on their intentions and potential choices in academic practices, the study signals how the taken-for-granted institutional conventions may contribute to silencing or marginalizing the possibilities for alternative approaches to knowledge and communication within the higher education institutional context.
Resumo:
In 2011, the Innovation and Next Practice Division (INP) of the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD) conducted a field trial on intercultural understanding in partnership with a research and evaluation team from the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University. The field trial was sponsored by the Languages, English as another Language (EAL) and Multicultural Education Division of DEECD.
The primary research question guiding the field trial was:
1. What is the impact on student outcomes of teaching and learning practice for intercultural understanding?
2. The secondary research questions were:
3. What knowledge and skills do both learners and educators need for intercultural understanding?
4. How is effective practice identified and measured?
5. What intercultural understanding capabilities can be developed at each developmental stage of children and young people in different cultural contexts?
In order to explore these questions, schools across Victoria were initially nominated by International Division, the Multicultural Education Unit and by regional directors and INP based on three core criteria, which included school culture, capability and connections within the school and the wider community. Following an expression of interest process, 26 schools, including one independent school and two catholic schools were selected. Participation in the field trial included the following aims:
• to stimulate thinking about current school policy and practice around intercultural understanding and interaction (ICU)
• to trial projects that support the field trial’s primary research question
• to evaluate innovative ‘next practice’ and consider its relevance for the education system
• to support the intercultural understanding general capability under consideration for inclusion in the Australian National Curriculum in 2013.
The field trial was implemented by DEECD INP from February 2011 to December 2011 over three stages.
Resumo:
This paper examines the EU-Australia academic mobility as an important contributing aspect of building the Smart, Sustainable and Inclusive European Union. It focuses on contemporary international encounters and intercultural interactions in academia in the context of an ever growing academic mobility between the EU countries and Australia. The EU–Australia academic mobility is the most visible manifestation of internationalization of education today. Academic mobility is a part of the continuing changes in the teaching and learning processes that academic institutions are undergoing globally. International flows of highly skilled migrants including international students between the EU countries and Australia have been steadily high in the last decades, and research on academic mobility is gaining importance and urgency worldwide. Putting a spotlight on the EU-Australia academic mobility, this paper is interested in identifying optimal conditions and favourable environments for enabling successful intercultural knowledge flows and promoting creative cultures and intercultural connections.
Resumo:
Climate change, global warming, rising sea levels, ice cap melting, carbon taxes and trading schemes etc. are all major environmental issues that confront the modern world. Universities are now trying to ensure that their students graduate with an understanding of environmental sustainability regardless of their field of expertise.
This study investigates 181 undergraduate and 155 post graduate business and law units from five schools within an Australian University to see how they embed environmental sustainability into their existing curriculums. It also examines how environmental sustainability fits into the scaffolding of the main Bachelor of Commerce degree and how each school plays its part into the overall development of graduates’ understanding of environmental sustainability. In July and December 2011 all unit chairs in the Faculty of Business and Law at Deakin University were asked if and how environmental sustainability was included in their units.
Of the 336 unit chairs that completed the survey, 37% of those unit chairs replied positively and of the remainder, the vast majority of these believed environmental sustainability was not applicable to their unit. However, measuring the effectiveness of the introduction of environmental sustainability into the curriculum is extremely difficult and this is often done by student assessment methods. Only 7% of the units actually carried out any assessment of the students’ knowledge of environmental sustainability.
The findings across the faculty were mixed, with Post Graduate units and Management and Marketing courses being very strong in embedding environmental sustainability into their curriculum. The Bachelor of Commerce Degree students, especially those with Management or Marketing majors received a good grounding in environmental sustainability.
These findings have implications for course and curriculum designers who are trying to effectively embed environmental sustainability into the scaffolding of their existing educational courses.
