Reflections from a cross-cultural course development and teaching experience delivered primarily by an Indian faculty in the United States

ABSTRACT

As study abroad opportunities increase, so too are international teaching exchanges. This article describes the collaborative teaching experience of a course which was jointly developed and offered for Bachelors and Masters level social work students. The course aimed to explore the integration of Eastern and Western cultural understandings and approaches to promote health and wellbeing by examining the mind, body, and spiritual connections and exploring the integration of strategies for health and mental health systems. This paper outlines the process involved in developing and delivering a course which complies with both the curriculum standards of two institutions, and the professional accreditation standards by CSWE across international contexts. Evaluation of the student work through the use of a rigorous qualitative methodological approach demonstrates that the course was useful for the participants and at the same time, the experience was valuable for the authors. The student work reflected two central themes: First is a growing appreciation for the importance of a cultural humility perspective with special attention to an international perspective. Second, directly related to the course content which focused on the integration of Eastern and Western approaches to addressing mental health challenges as a social worker.

KEYWORDS:

• International course development
• teaching abroad
• social work education

Acknowledgement

We thank the administration and management of Rajagiri College of Social Sciences (Autonomous) and Nazareth College, Rochester for supporting the initiative.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kiran Thampi

Kiran Thampi is an Asst. Professor, Dept of Social Work, Rajagiri College of Social Sciences(Autonomous), Kalamassery, Kerala, India. Author has the teaching experience of fifteen years at both Undergraduate and Postgraduate levels in Social Work. He is an international visiting faculty and appointed as an adjunct faculty in Nazareth College, USA for Summer A 2015. Interest areas include international social work, development communication experiments, social auditing, participatory methods of research, pain and palliative care, and organizational practices in the voluntary sector. He is also coordinating the Rajagiri International Exchange programme (RIEP) in the Kalamassery Campus for the last eight years which covers faculty exchanges, student exchanges and collaborative research between the partnering Universities.

Jed Metzger

Jed Metzger is a Professor, Nazareth College, Rochester, USA. Joined the Social Work Department in 2005, leaving a 23-year full-time career in providing service to children and families involved in the child welfare system, children’s mental health system, and children infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. He has worked as an adjunct professor for the past ten years, first at the University of Buffalo, then at Syracuse University, and finally at the GRC MSW program .He is interested in the application of service learning to the development of civically engaged social workers. His primary areas of service and thereby engaged scholarship include kinship care giving, child welfare service delivery, international social work and macro practice aimed at addressing violence in the community.