Cultivating Students’ Global Perspectives through Course Design with an Emphasis on the Affective Aspect of Learning – Learning and Teaching Initiatives funded by the UGC

Abstract:

The global challenges of our century underscore the need for students to be able to value diverse cultures and perspectives, empathise and work with others dramatically different from themselves and solve problems that transcend national borders. While the academic departments at EdUHK are being strongly encouraged to enhance their courses to cultivate students’ global perspectives, some lecturers remain uncertain about how to achieve this goal meaningfully. This TDG addresses an urgent need of empowering lecturers to improve their understanding of global perspectives and facilitate their reflection on appropriate course design and successful delivery. Over the past decade, the “affective turn” (Clough, 2007) in social sciences and the humanities has resulted in educational applications that show how emotional responses and sensory perceptions can maximize affective engagement in the classroom (e.g. Cavanagh, 2016). This project proposes that the integration of such an approach with internationalisation of the curriculum can effectively cultivate students’ global perspectives, which includes not only knowledge of different cultures, societies and global issues but also affective attributes conducive to intercultural empathy, efficacy, and tolerance. The project will develop an instructional framework for cultivating students’ global perspectives. It will demonstrate the impact that a due emphasis on the affective aspect of learning has on students’ development of intercultural competence (including knowledge and attitudes). Finally, the project will develop case studies and other resources highlighting the participating lecturers’ best pedagogical practices. This cross-disciplinary project will include team members from nine departments across all three faculties, including five Teaching Award recipients, together with two external Co-Ss from North America specialising in cultural psychology and global citizenship education.

Code:

T0239

Principal Project Supervisors:

Keywords provided by authors:

Start Date:

01 Nov 2020

End Date:

30 Apr 2022

Status:

Completed

Result:

The project team conducted surveys among a majority of the students to provide an empirical test of our pedagogical framework, i.e. would affective engagement in course activities predict more gains in positive global attitudes and global knowledge? Among the 255 students across 13 different activities and classes who filled in their post-class surveys, 97.4% reported that the class activity had increased their curiosity, interest, respect, and/or sympathy for people of other cultural backgrounds a lot (21%), a moderate amount (49%), or a little (27%). During the class, students reported high levels of positive and sympathetic emotional engagement, while negative emotions were less experienced. Finally, the team found that the more that students experienced "positive" or "sympathetic" emotions during the class period, they were more likely to INCREASE in both their "Cognitive cultural competence" and also "Affective cultural competence." Negative emotions had a small NEGATIVE effect on affective cultural competence scores. The final conclusion the team can draw is that by aiming for affectively engaging pedagogical activities, especially those that evoke positive and sympathetic emotions, the teachers became more likely to positively influence both the affective and cognitive aspects of students’ Global Perspectives.

Impact:

In terms of effects on students, it is reported that according to student reports, the pedagogical activities implemented by our teachers successfully raised students’ interest, curiosity, and respect for other cultures (by self-estimation), while also teaching them new knowledge about other cultures. The pedagogical activities were also successful in evoking affective engagement, especially positive emotions and sympathetic emotions. Participating teachers were also positively affected, leaving final comments such as “The project taught me that there was a stronger link between developing positive global attitudes and learning through positive, engaging activities than I thought. It was also inspiring to hear from the other teachers about the different ways Global Perspectives were taught in other disciplines.” The project findings have been disseminated in a conference and internal sharing with learning & teaching committees at EdUHK. An open-access e-book with a collection of teacher reflections, and an academic journal article, are in progress. More resources can be found on our website, https://cultivateglobalpers.wixsite.com/home.

Deliverables:

Books/ Book Chapters/ Journal Articles/ Conference Papers

Chatelier, S., Their, M., Buchtel, E. E., & Yu, E. K. W. (2021, December 8). Cultivating university students’ global perspectives using affective pedagogies. Paper presented at International Conference on Learning and Teaching 2021 (ICLT2021), Hong Kong, China

Seminars/Presentations/Sharing Sessions

Yu, K. W. E., Chatelier, S., & Buchtel, E. (2021, March 1). Cultivating students’ global perspectives through course design with an emphasis on the affective aspect of learning [Workshop]. The Education University of Hong Kong (https://cultivateglobalpers.wixsite.com/home/workshops-seminars)
CChatelier, S. (2021, April 13). Affective aspects of learning [Workshop]. The Education University of Hong Kong (https://cultivateglobalpers.wixsite.com/home/workshops-seminars)
Buchtel, E., Ho, W. Y., & Van Derminjnsbrugg, E. M. F. (2021, June 17). Cultivating students’ global perspectives [Workshop]. The Education University of Hong Kong (https://cultivateglobalpers.wixsite.com/home/workshops-seminars)
Banerjee, B. (2021, June 29). Sharing Padlet outlining activities: A case study [Workshop]. The Education University of Hong Kong (https://cultivateglobalpers.wixsite.com/home/workshops-seminars)
Buchtel, E. E. (2022, May 24). Sharing Session on Cultivating Affective Cultural Competence at Home: Local Activities for Getting Students Excited about Intercultural Contact. The Education University of Hong Kong.

Teaching and Learning Resources/ Materials (including online resources)

Project Website: Cultivating Students' Global Perspectives. (2021) https://cultivateglobalpers.wixsite.com/home

Financial Year:

2020-21

Type:

TDG