Reflecting critically on the critical disposition within Internationalisation of the Curriculum (IoC): the developmental journey of a curriculum design team

ABSTRACT

Internationalisation of curriculum (IoC) practices promote students developing knowledge of other cultures, attitudes, values and ethics. This conceptual article argues that embedding critical reflection in the IoC program – through integrating insights from both IoC thinkers and critical reflection literature – may allow educators and students to not only gain understanding and/or competency in other cultures but better address questions of privilege, power and colonisation and thereby interrogate their own normative cultural understandings. Borrowing from debates within IoC pedagogy, as well as from Ahmed’s work on critical reflection, this article also argues that cross/intercultural understanding should be understood (and taught) not as a competency but a disposition towards thinking, analysing and understanding the world which is based on critiquing the ‘self’ and its relationship with the ‘other’.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical pedagogy
• critical reflection
• curriculum
• inter- and/or cross-cultural competency in higher education
• Internationalisation of Curriculum

Introduction

The internationalisation of curriculum (IoC) has become a dominant theme within higher education (Arum & Van de Water, 1992; De Wit, 1995; Knight, 1994, 2004; Leask, 2013a, 2013b; Qiang, 2003; Teichler, 2004; Volet & Jones, 2012). Commonly defined as entailing the ‘incorporation of an international and intercultural dimension into the content of the curriculum’ (Leask, 2009, p. 209), IoC arguably promotes that the local, national, regional and global contexts of both students and institutions should all become productive for pedagogical transformation (e.g., Leask, 2013a, 2013b; Leask & Bridge, 2013). While the IoC has thus been analysed from numerous pedagogical standpoints (see, e.g., Barnett & Coate, 2005; Clifford & Montgomery, 2014, 2017; Huang, 2006; Knight, 2013), its common practices may overly prioritise students’ development of competencies in cross/intercultural understanding, paying less attention to their development of critical dispositions towards their own culturally normative – and perhaps problematic – epistemologies (knowing), praxes (action) and ontologies (self-identity).

In this exploratory conceptual article, we engage Ahmed’s (2004, 2007a, 2007b) insights of interrogating ‘whiteness’ in order to meet the challenge of ensuring that IoC interrogates knowledges of ourselves and our own cultures as much as our knowledges of other cultures. The article has four interlinked objectives, namely, (a) critique IoC models that primarily emphasise the achievement of competencies, (b) investigate how Ahmed’s work can assist a move away from such a competency focus, (c) demonstrate how competency-based cross/intercultural diversity or IoC documents developed by universities can, despite declared values and aims, problematically cover over sites of oppression and contestation, and then (d) propose a disposition-focused pedagogical framework which can be used for a revised IoC informed program. Here we suggest five pedagogic principles to enable the cultivation of a non-competency-based model for critical reflection inspired by Ahmed’s work. This aims to facilitate the development of critical dispositions which lead to structural action rather than rumination, and are productive across all institutional domains, including those considered integral in the IoC.

The article is divided into four parts. Firstly, we consider the current approaches identified in the literature around the IoC conundrum of how to promote the interrogation of normative cultural assumptions as much as the understanding of other cultures (see, e.g., Leask, 2010). Secondly, we set out our methodology in approaching these issues. Thirdly, using Ahmed’s (2004, 2007a, 2007b) work on whiteness we tease out hidden assumptions and failures in the current approaches to IoC, and finally make all of this into a concrete example through the story of our developmental journey of designing, for an Australian regional university, an IoC-informed Masters-level program examining social change and international development.

The IoC and the problem of competency-based training

The literature on IoC can broadly be categorised into two interlinking areas, namely, the conceptualisation of internationalisation (and globalisation) in higher education, and the pedagogical implications of such conceptualisations for curricula, particularly with regards to competency-based education models. These are elaborated in turn. The early phase of conceptualising internationalisation emphasised ‘the multiple activities, programs and services that fall within international studies, international educational exchange and technical cooperation’ (Arum & Van de Water, 1992, p. 202). This was modified by Knight who argued for integrating an ‘intercultural dimension into [all of] the teaching, research and service functions of the institution’ (1994, p. 7). Van der Wende proposed that the IoC program should also examine the challenges related to the ‘globalisation of societies, economies and labour markets’ (1997, p. 18; also see Knight & De Wit, 1995; Welch, 2002). Framing pedagogical practice in terms of globalisation can be problematic however (see, e.g., Andreotti, 2011a, 2011b; Clifford & Montgomery, 2014, 2015; Nilsson, 1999; Schultz, 2007). Andreotti (2011a, p. 381), for example, stresses the need for ‘decoloniality’ and ‘diversality’ in global citizenship education so as to ‘address ethnocentrism, ahistoricism, depoliticisation and paternalism in educational agendas’. Camicia and Franklin (2011) interrogate the influence of neoliberal cosmopolitan ideals in the curriculum. Clifford and Montgomery stress the need to counter problematic framings by using Mezirow’s (1997, 2000) concepts of transformative learning to enhance dispositions towards learning to include ‘knowledge of self, and of self in relation to others, and [of] seeing personal change as a necessary precursor to social change’ (Clifford & Montgomery, 2015, p. 48).

Despite these interrogations, disciplines such as business, psychology and nursing, which have seen an increase in international students, can tend to respond to IoC imperatives by incorporating activities-based cross/intercultural competency training into their curricula (Knott, Mak, & Neill, 2013; Mak, Daly, & Barker, 2014; Woods et al., 2013). This assumes that IoC can be translated as requiring that students attain competence in engaging with diverse cultural (and Indigenous) perspectives in both global and local settings. That is, IoC becomes in practice the incorporation of cross/intercultural competence into teaching design and practice. This, however, has been critiqued from a number of standpoints. For instance, Volet and Jones (2012) note that it may result in the homogenising of international students, whereas others critique the focus on individual ‘competencies’ as opposed to tackling structural oppression (Abrams, & Moio, 2009; Furlong & Wight, 2011; Razack & Jeffery, 2002). Also problematic is that a focus on attaining cross/intercultural competencies may keep student attention on learning about others – that is, on developing knowledge of other cultures, attitudes, values and ethics – or about global conditions, as opposed to bringing into critique their own cultural assumptions (Leask, 2010).

This is not a constitutive problem of IoC, of course. Multiple fields such as education, social work, philosophy and justice studies do subscribe to pedagogies that question power, dominance and oppression – often independently of any IoC program – and ask students to interrogate their own worldviews in relation to such issues. Our focus, however, is to show how exploring a thinker such as Ahmed, who actively theorises on how the (re)production of knowledges operates when otherness and difference are conceptualised, may provide a productive resource for the further development of IoC programs.

Methodology

This is an exploratory conceptual article. Such articles primarily strive to ‘bridge existing theories in interesting ways, link work across disciplines, provide multi-level insights, and broaden the scope’ of thinking within a field (Gilson & Goldberg, 2015, p. 128). Conceptual articles thus focus on integration and proposing new relationships among ideas and constructs, a focus we play out with reference to bridging IoC pedagogical needs with Ahmed’s insights regarding critical reflection. Although this is an exploratory article, we also strive to address the possible capacity of such a bridge. More specifically, we analyse one attempt to develop, for an Australian regional university, an IoC-informed, non-competency-based model for critical reflection within a new Master-level program examining social change and international development.

Although this analysis does not operate as a case study in any strong sense, it is an investigation of conceptual insights and a phenomenon within its real-life context, and hence fits into Yin’s (1994) definition of a case study. Foregrounding contextual analysis of a limited number of events/conditions and their relationships, and ‘linking ideas and evidence to produce a representation’ of the issue at hand (Ragin, 1994, p. 48), case studies are well suited to fields where fresh perspectives are needed, and for theory testing and evaluative purposes (Eisenhardt, 1989; Løkke & Sørensen, 2014). Indeed, case studies can effectively ‘“close-in” on real-life situations and test views directly in relation to phenomena as they unfold in practice’ (Flyvbjerg, 2004, p. 428). In this article, our analysis of our process of program development – via our discursive analysis of university and program documents – provides a test-case for our proposed bridging of the IoC program with Ahmed’s ideas as to how critical dispositions in thinking, doing and reflecting might best be cultivated. Although this does not comprise a fully-fledged case study, it provides a productive vehicle for examining our suggestions.

Cultivating critical dispositions with Ahmed

Within the IoC context, Leask (2015, p. 30) has argued that curriculum must always promote subjectivities able to critically reflect across and connect ‘epistemological (knowing), praxis (action) and ontological (self-identity)’ dimensions. She has also argued that such a focus must be implemented across disciplines, and at institutional, regional, national and global levels. Clifford and Montgomery (2015, 2017) too have stressed the importance of the development of critical dispositions towards thinking and doing. What is not always evident, however, is which pedagogical tools might best facilitate the development of students with relevant and sufficient critical dispositions towards their thinking, doing and reflecting. This is where we suggest Ahmed’s (2004, 2007a, 2007b) work on critical reflection may be useful. Writing in the intersections of feminist theory, queer theory, and critical race theory, Ahmed argues that ‘knowing oneself’,

should not be about a process of re-describing the white subject as anti-racist, or constitute itself as a form of anti-racism, or even as providing the conditions for anti-racism … [it] should instead be about attending to forms of white racism and white privilege that are undone, and may even be repeated and intensified, through declarations of whiteness, or through the recognition of privilege as privilege. (Ahmed, 2004)

A critically reflective agent’s disposition towards difference, in Ahmed’s view, is thus one where the focus is not ‘what does it mean to be privileged?’, or ‘how can I declare my privilege?’, or ‘if I declare my privilege then does it become a sign of learning and absolve me of any racist attitudes that may persist?’. Rather it should be about asking ‘what am I achieving when I declare my privilege?’, ‘does my learning of my privilege really mean that I am not participating in processes of oppression and domination’, and ‘what are my colleagues’ and my own norms of social interaction?’. These latter questions facilitate what Ahmed (2004) calls the double turn of critical reflection, by which she means that (white) subjects should both recognise their irrecusable implication ‘in what they critique’, and that ‘turning towards their role and responsibilities in these histories of racism, as histories of this present’ entails a ‘turn away from themselves, and towards others’. Turning ‘towards others’ does not, however, simply mean to ‘learn, tolerate and develop respect for other cultures’ (Ahmed, 2004), and it certainly does not comprise any declaration concerning structural privilege or oppression. Rather it entails thinking about the purpose of such declarations, whilst also recognising that we must all be active agents in calling out and advocating for structural change. Hence it entails a focus on how power circulates in professional and everyday interactions, on who frames and interrogates knowledge (re)productions, and on how both anti-racism and racist behaviours, for example, are collectivised and individualised in curricula and institutionalised policies.

Ahmed (2007a, 2007b) also draws attention to a common weakness in institutional approaches to difference, suggesting that institutional diversity work can end up focusing more on doing documents on diversity – that is, conflating the creation of a document or process with the action of tackling legacy patterns of racism and their influence on everyday and professional interactions. Her point is that attempts to interrogate patterns of underlying racism may, in fact, be equivocated through institutions prioritising their development of tool-kits towards anti-racist practices and cross/intercultural competency rather than tackling legacy racist practices. As she puts this: ‘it is as if the organisation could now say: if we are committed to anti-racism (and we have said we are), then how can we be racists?’ (2007a, p. 600). This is a challenge we consider in more detail below.

Ahmed’s work has two implications for our discussion here. First is her point that a critical reflection pedagogy needs to stress that knowing, doing and reflecting are not simply about learning about diversity and becoming self-aware and declaring of one’s privilege, but about understanding that one is always implicated in discourses of power and privilege, and that these always inform the (re)production of knowledge throughout professional and everyday interactions. Secondly, these insights highlight how an IoC program should be bound not by institutional imperatives of developing tool-kits for cross/intercultural competency but by a deeper pedagogy of critical reflection. This pedagogy should explicitly encourage students to develop skills in identifying how ‘the very frameworks by which we orient ourselves to the world’, both personally and professionally, need to be ‘contested’ (Barnett, 2000, p. 257). Such a pedagogy would develop critical skills that facilitate two recognitions: (a) we are all implicated in processes of power and oppression and (b) responsible for unpicking structures of power, oppression and domination. We further examine these points in the following discussion.

Foregrounding critical dispositions in the context of program development

In a regional university in Australia, a new Master’s program in social change and international development was developed by authors with diverse disciplinary backgrounds, namely social work, philosophy, and education. In developing the business case, several issues were addressed: need and demand, program rationale and structure, statement of pedagogy, and the mapping of program learning outcomes against the Australian Qualification Framework (AQF). The authors referred to multiple guidelines and policies on developing curriculum: the university teaching and learning policy, statement of graduate attributes, the AQF framework, the university’s strategic plan and internationalisation policy, and teaching practice resources on IoC. In particular, the university’s IoC guidelines were used to draw up the statement of pedagogy and map program learning outcomes. The university’s resources on IoC included a tool-kit that provided practical steps for integrating local, international and multicultural dimensions in content and design, learning and teaching activities, assessment practices, and instructional materials, tools and resources.

There are three main program aims. First to develop an in-depth understanding of theories and practices in international development and of social change as a dynamic within globalised communities. Second, skills development towards becoming policy makers/practitioners and researchers who can design and critically evaluate projects underpinned by values of reflection, relationality and criticality. Third, skills development in designing, developing and advocating for transformative social change in ways that are respectful of difference yet inclusive and fair. The program thus challenges students to contextualise local issues in regional, national and global dimensions as well as acknowledge how social, economic, ecological, political and ethical dimensions of development and social change are located within structures of power, privilege, and colonisation. It focuses on delivering a critical understanding that both recognises the complexity of international development and social change, and examines the nature of transformative social change. To achieve this, the program draws on insights from critical theory to develop a pedagogical framework that brings together ideas of context of practice and reflective practice. These ideas strive to draw student attention to the necessity of first understanding the theoretical and applied implications of practising in interlinked rural, regional, national and international contexts, and second critically and ethically reflecting on how values derived from social concepts such as class, gender, power, ethnicity, age and race influence their understanding of debates in international development.

Ahmed’s call to develop pedagogies that support examination of how power, privilege and oppression inform everyday interactions is one we take seriously, and it also arguably demands working into the level of contextualised praxis as opposed to remaining with abstractions drawn from the literature. As such it is with a form of case study that we continue to explore how the kinds of critical dispositions toward thinking, doing and reflecting Ahmed calls for and which IoC needs but does not necessarily promote in practice might be cultivated within institutional settings. Ahmed’s insights have been significant for our own processes of developing this program. First, they brought us to consider her proposition that a tool-kit creation focus as a response to deep-seated issues such as racism may lead to a ‘doing of documents’. Our consequent discursive analysis of the IoC documents at our regional university foregrounded two further issues: (a) that cross/intercultural competency tool-kits stand for signifiers of skills; and (b) the possibility of revisioning IoC commitments into critical dispositions towards thinking, doing and reflecting. These are outlined in turn and together they engage the case study to show a possible revisioning of IoC commitments and practices.

Documents as institutional positioning of commitment towards IoC

Most Australian universities – due to a combination of market, commercialisation and higher education policies – have developed guidelines on IoC. The organisation for which we were preparing the program proposal is no different and defines IoC as:

the process of integrating an international, intercultural or global dimension into the purpose, functions or delivery of post-secondary education.¹

IoC is characterised by a structure and content of a course within a program that not only provides a global awareness, but also offers relevant local examples and permits a student to learn in the context of the culture in which the student is most familiar.

These statements suggest how the organisation constructs itself as ‘an imagined subject’ (Ahmed, 2007a, p. 600) with a commitment to IoC via acknowledgment of the globalisation of knowledge, markets, values and culture. The documents suggest both that the organisation is open to accepting people from diverse cultures, and that achieving IoC requirements at program and course levels can be done by enabling students to gain a global awareness, as well as by ‘using relevant local examples that permit a student to learn in the context of the culture in which the student is most familiar’. This suggests that the organisation is committed to IoC as if it were unproblematic and also a compliance tool (Ahmed, 2007a). That is, these framings do not explicitly position the institution as a site where histories of domination, oppression and structural inequalities of globalisation and internationalisation continue to play out. Indeed, the institutional commitment is presented as if it absolves the organisation of any responsibility towards mitigating the deleterious consequences of the processes of globalisation (Welch, 2002; Yang, 2002).

These documents further describe the skills considered necessary for students and staff who need to ‘become global learners and citizens’. Graduates should be able to ‘perform capably and sensitively in international and multicultural societies’, while ‘staff develop as international researchers’ and ‘facilitate collaborative links between international communities’. This field of action (see Prior cited in Ahmed, 2007a, p. 591) foregrounds the efforts the university is making in terms of training staff and students to become global citizens. The policy statement also suggests that there are many benefits of internationalisation, specifying, for example, ‘access and equity to international students studying and researching with the university’, ‘internationalisation of the curriculum and student experience’ and ‘international collaboration in education, training and research’. The implication is that if the organisation implements policies that actively promote the embedding of IoC in the curriculum then it cannot be accused of being insensitive or not catering to students from diverse contexts. The problem, however, is that this may be nothing more than the process which Ahmed (2007a, 2007b) calls ‘doing the document not doing the doing’ through which institutions equivocate the doing of policies with absolving themselves as active sites of oppression and power. Doing the doing requires institutions to both acknowledge past histories of domination and oppression and recognise themselves as sites where knowledge (re)productions are ineluctably informed by legacy patterns of power and privilege.

Cross/intercultural competency tool-kits as signifiers of skills and competencies

In terms of developing the statement of pedagogy in the Master’s proposal at the program level, we analysed the second part of the organisation’s strategic agenda on IoC related to using resources that are discipline-specific checklists and practical ideas for internationalising courses. The activity sheet on IoC and the disciplines note that ‘a meta-analysis of curriculum [must] consider the role culture plays in the construction of knowledge and how this has traditionally been reflected in and integrated into the syllabus, learning outcomes, organisation of learning and assessment activities and teaching activity’. The foregrounding of Whalley’s (1997) definition of intercultural competency as ‘an awareness of other cultures and perspectives, and awareness of their own culture and its perspective’ suggests once again, however, that the focus is on ‘studying other cultures’, and ‘gaining competency in other cultures and how people from diverse backgrounds’ experience them. This has been critiqued in a number of ways (Abrams, & Moio, 2009; Furlong & Wight, 2011; Razack & Jeffery, 2002; Yee, 2005), with key points being:

1. Cultural competency is focussed on creating certain behaviours/attitudes that have to be adhered to in professional practice.

2. Despite varied epistemological is focused interpretations and curricular application, skills development and self-awareness is the primary focus.

3. Skills are centred towards students becoming aware of their origins and personal values and are being encouraged to be set aside. This ‘bracketing’ or ‘labelling’ or ‘declaring’ one’s values is unrealistic because it denies the intersubjective nature of exchange in everyday practice.

There are similarities in some of the criticisms of the cultural competency model and the challenges the IoC checklist details. The latter states, for example, that the biggest challenges in internationalising the curriculum are moving beyond traditional disciplinary perspectives and teaching to ‘internationalised learning outcomes for all students which include the development of skills and literacies required in a changing, globalised world’, and promoting an ‘engagement with difference, including different ways of thinking, within and beyond the classroom’. At first glance, the checklist moves away from an obsession with culture and brings to the fore ‘engagement with difference’. However, we suggest that through this standpoint difference may be only superficially introduced into the curriculum, and that, at a program level, the organisation maintains the dominance of western knowledge systems. This presumed invisibility of certain knowledge systems may be, nonetheless, very visible to many international students in the experiences they may have been studying in international contexts around the world.

There is substantial analysis as to how international students are represented in the literature where the focus is largely on internationalising the student experience for international students (Arkoudis & Baik, 2014; Volet & Jones, 2012). Similarly, resources on IoC – which at our institution includes a program-level questionnaire – tend to essentialise the way internationalisation is introduced at the program level. The questionnaire on IoC developed by Leask (n.d.), drawn upon by our organisation, hopes to ‘engage students with internationally informed research and cultural and linguistic diversity’, ‘purposefully develop students’ international and intercultural perspectives’, and ‘be supported by services focused on the development of intercultural competence and international perspectives’. While the aim of introducing internationalisation at the program level is noteworthy, the reference to ‘cultural and linguistic diversity’ and the ‘development of intercultural competence’ again positions the program as needing to meet the demand posed by the (western) knowledge processes of globalisation. What this suggests is that the underpinning economic, national and global imperatives of the market are shaping the epistemological, methodological and ontological basis of the curriculum. It also suggests the curriculum is only interested in an epistemic frame that teaches intercultural competence whilst avoiding discussion of other epistemic fields (knowledge frames) that are not competency and/or skill based. This shift from knowledge base to competency base in the production of knowledge is characterised by Barnett (2000, pp. 261–262) as a performative slide. Performative slide, he suggests, presents in many garbs, namely epistemological, corporate-instrumental, pedagogical-technological, pedagogical-education, education-corporate life world and self-monitoring. The crux of this performative slide is how epistemology is oriented towards building core competencies, skills, problem solving, or a knowledge base that is ‘instrumental and technical reason as distinct from reflective and communicative reason’ (Barnett, 2000, p. 262).

The questionnaires on IoC also demonstrate another type of performative aspect, this time with reference to something that is ‘brought into existence through speech, representation, writing, law, practice, or discourse’ (Ahmed, 2004). That is, if the purpose of the questionnaires is to locate in which ways internationalisation and intercultural competence have been embedded within a program – and rate them on a scale of 0–4 – this activity has declarative as well as essentialising elements (Ahmed, 2004). For example, in the acts of locating, evaluating and reviewing evidence we are in effect declaring that we are very open and respectful in our understandings of other people’s cultures, value systems, and cultural contexts. Again this declaration seems to suggest that we can absolve ourselves of the responsibility of critiquing the histories of domination that are present in western knowledge systems.

To summarise, these resources/tool-kits/guidelines need to be recognised as performative in two ways. First is that their focus on competency or skills indicates a prioritising of instrumental and technical reason over a communicative and self-reflective reason. Secondly, the declaration of being open, respectful and understanding of difference may operate as a way of absolving oneself from the responsibility of being part of and complicit in a site of ongoing histories of domination.

Positioning IoC as a disposition towards thinking, doing and reflecting

The previous two sections have examined the organisational policy context of introducing IoC at the program and course level using insights from Ahmed’s work on diversity. In this section, drawing on these insights, we analyse the modalities that could assist with our attempt to introduce a pedagogy that promotes critical dispositions in thinking, doing and reflecting. We further tentatively propose how such critical dispositions – in contrast to doing internationalisation policy and tool-kits/checklists – may be developed. These suggestions are presented in turn under two main themes: (i) not doing culture but developing a disposition to self and towards others, and (ii) tool-kits/practical resources should be about doing the doing not doing the documents.

Not doing culture but developing a disposition to self and towards others

Barnett (2000) argues that higher education should prepare students for what he calls a ‘supercomplex world’. This would be a world ‘in which the very frameworks by which we orient ourselves to the world are themselves contested’ (2000, p. 257). Whilst IoC literature can tend to be informed by the imperatives of globalisation and their impacts on national higher education policies, at the heart of our proposal is the need to critically interrogate the intellectual traditions that inform knowing (epistemology), doing (praxis) and self-identity (ontology).

Our statement of pedagogy has two components, namely understanding the context of practice and reflective practice. Context of practice means ‘understanding the theoretical and applied implications of practising in the rural, regional, national and international contexts’, whilst reflective practice is about developing skills through which students reflect critically ‘on how values derived from social concepts, such as class, gender, power, ethnicity, gender and race influence their understanding of debates in international development’. This statement of pedagogy, unlike many associated with IoC, does not propose to develop skills towards cross/intercultural competency but rather foregrounds students developing a disposition towards knowing, doing and self-identity that acknowledges and responds to the supercomplexity of the world. In its deliberate avoidance of ideals of cross/intercultural competence, it proposes an approach that encourages students to examine every knowledge system they engage as a site of domination, power and oppression. More specifically, it is our view that it is never enough just to declare one values diversity or tout openness to interacting with students from varied backgrounds. One must rather recognise that the very act of declaration can represent an attempt to absolve oneself from being a site where power and oppression inform everyday social interaction. This double turn, as Ahmed (2004) puts it, has one more element associated with it. Implicating oneself in these discourses also requires a move away from ourselves towards others. Such an epistemic manoeuvre where the self and the other are conjointly implicated facilitates a recognition of the contested nature of knowing, doing and reflecting.

Tool-kits/practical resources should be about doing the doing not doing the documents

The modern university’s performativity is embedded in the way curricula are designed: across epistemology, ontology and praxis; the local, regional, national and global; the context-specific and context-generic; critical orientations, reflexivity and self (Barnett, 2000, p. 259). The doing of this curricula is conceptualised by the rise of the entrepreneurial, corporate, pedagogical-technological, corporate-instrumental and self-monitoring university (Barnett, 2011). At one level, the rise of attractive conceptions of the university as ‘borderless, capitalist, civic, collaborative, cosmopolitan, disciplinary, marketised’ (Barnett, 2013, p. 51) suggest a hybridity. This is only a guise, however, because the focus is still on developing the professional skills/competencies and professional/technical knowledge to ‘perform competently (professionally and socially) in an international environment’ (Bernstein cited in Barnett, 2000, p. 260).

Through the critique developed in previous sections, we suggest that pedagogic focus should be less about cross/intercultural competency and more about developing competency in doing the doing. These elements of the curricula can be identified in learning outcomes that encompass ‘the dimensions of knowledge, skills and the application of knowledge and skills’ (Australian Qualifications Framework, 2013). More specifically, we propose that the following principles should shape pedagogic development:

1. Epistemology, being and praxis are contestable, fluid and changeable;

2. The local, national, regional and global are less about the context and more about the epistemologies that span these knowledge areas;

3. Context-specific and context-generic should be part of the social world where power, oppression, social control play out in everyday interactions;

4. Reflexivity is about simultaneously developing an awareness of self and the fact that it is implicated in every process we resist, contest and challenge;

5. A move towards others is about being aware and staying actively implicated in the responsibility and duties one has in the histories of domination, and in the histories of the present.

Principles (1, 2 and 3) can be represented in the way we organise knowledge systems that a graduate is expected to know and understand, whereas principles (4 and 5) can be represented in the way we develop skills (cognitive, technical and creative). Principles (1, 2 and 3) recognise the hybridity of the world but they also acknowledge that epistemology, ontology and praxis are contestable, fluid, dynamic and also the bearers of power, oppression and social control.

Within this framework, we also foreground activities that span epistemological, cognitive, technical and creative competencies. In terms of principles (1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), the program’s overall pedagogy has a critical lens to ways of knowing and doing. Using the theory, policy and praxis continuum, the curriculum was divided into three parts, namely content and design, learning and teaching resources, and assessment practises, which were benchmarked against expected knowledge, skills and values outcomes. As such, content, design, and learning and teaching resources all examine:

• the philosophical and epistemological underpinnings of different approaches to culture

• the philosophical underpinnings of critical pedagogies that focus on power, privilege and oppression

• context as a dynamic, fluid site where power, privilege and oppression play out in everyday and professional interactions

• how personal and professional values are shaped by social contexts and discourses of power, privilege and oppression

• how personal and professional values impact on professional practice.

This focus informs both learning and teaching activities – especially those oriented to values reflection – and assessment tasks, with each emphasising the development of technical and creative skills based on the aforementioned principles. For example, the learning intentions that underpin values-oriented activities are to:

1. Examine how values shape your views of the world and your views of professional practice;

2. Explore how knowledge is constructed in professional documents and identify the assumptions that underpin these documents;

3. Observe and reflect on your everyday interactions and ask who remains silent, who defends a concept, who is expected to explain their position, and whose views are accepted?

Value activities combine principles (2 and 3) whereas the assessments combined principles (3, 4 and 5) and tested the capacity of students to undertake reflection by facilitating: collaborative group-based assessments where culturally diverse students develop cross/intercultural competencies and/or policies; students from diverse backgrounds to explore the social, cultural and political implications of their lived experience and the role it plays in the development of personal and professional values; and reflection on visible and invisible frameworks of power and oppression and how they play out in the contexts where students spent most of their lives and in the Australian context.

Conclusion

As we have shown, IoC resources can end up marking commitments more about doing the documents than about the skills/competencies that can be achieved, and may not effectively enable students and teaching staff to develop a critical awareness of themselves as participating in oppression through everyday social interactions as well as via their engagement of discourses circulated through texts, language, polices and other documents. However, insights from Ahmed’s work suggest it is possible to re-frame discussion about developing competencies, and thus reorient focus away from globalisation and the increasing number of international students, towards an imperative to design pedagogy that promotes a disposition towards contesting all knowledge frames. More specifically, if we use principles (4 and 5) then we can facilitate the development of competencies in dealing with difference and diversity but also stress becoming aware of one’s own role and complicity in the ways we engage, think, act and reflect in both professional and everyday social interactions. The focus shifts from declaring one’s privilege/power through either sanctioned practices of oppression or through analysing internal values, towards the fraught work of scrutinising one’s own and others’ norms of interaction. This, we contend, is essential for productive IoC institutional practices.

Acknowledgements

Our thanks to Julia Hobson, and to our anonymous reviewers, for their helpful suggestions towards strengthening this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Tejaswini Patil Vishwanath http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9625-589X

Notes

1 Policy extracts examined in this section are from the university’s policies in this field. Because the university is being left anonymous throughout this article we have not provided specific references. Quotations from this material are, however, signalled by the use of italics.