Strands of knowledge: Weaving international student subjectivity and hybridity into undergraduate curriculum.

Abstract

The focus of this article is to outline an inclusive methodology that caters tor the construction and representation of international students. It suggests the implementation of a ‘strands of knowledge’ approach that enables the creation of a dialogic space that foregrounds the subjectivity and hybridity of individuals who are categorised as Other and as outside of the core group. The approach has been suggested from data taken from a detailed study exploring the discursive representation of undergraduate students from the region of Southeast Asia who are studying in Australia. The author focuses particularly on the way students are discursively constructed to give them a representation that is binding and exclusionary and belies the subjectivities they bring from hybrid postcolonial backgrounds. The methodology is devised from postcolonial theory and applied linguistics to bring about an inclusivity of those who are relegated to the periphery. In this way, the article provides a methodological revisionism and critique of discourse that is informed by the strands of ‘race’, ‘culture’ and ‘identification’ to enable one to move into the arena of multiplicity and subjectivity and the constituting and reconstituting of Self.