With international borders still closed, it is difficult to find a more uniting and inspiring theme than the philosophy of Cross-Culturally Responsive Teaching (CCRT) and the phenomenon of a Global Educator.
In the month of May, we saw an intense and exciting week of Global Education at ANU. You can read more about the event series in our previous blog post.
The 3-day Coffee Course attracted roughly an average of 200 unique visitors over the three days, both educators from ANU and externally. With more than 50 inquisitive and fascinating comments from the Coffee Course community, the course showed just how critically important cross-culturally responsive teaching skills are to course design, assessments and feedback, student-teacher communication and overall course delivery. The Coffee Course resources are still available if you would like to catch up on its content.
In a timely fashion, the Strategies workshop was delivered by ANU cross-cultural expert Dr Marina Iskhakova from the Research School of Economics, ANU College of Business and Economics. The workshop captivated a wide audience with representation from all seven ANU Colleges and other academic units. The workshop taught us that irrespective of the delivery mode, research has shown that when students’ cultural knowledge is used, they feel more motivated, engaged with the subject and therefore demonstrate higher academic results.
For the big finale, we ran a unique Global Educators workshops, which gave participants the opportunity to hear from seven completely different, sharp-minded, engaging, provocative and inspiring speakers – Global Educators. They shared core values of national educational systems, reflecting deeply and profoundly on key elements that are shaping the mindset, mentality and behaviour of students who come to ANU from diverse countries and educational systems.
The CCRT series has given us all a lot to think and reflect on, as we continue our journey to become better Global Educators!
June 2021
Dr Marina Iskhakova, FHEA, is a Senior lecturer and program manager at the Research School of Economics, ANU College of Business and Economics.