Tatiana Bruni

RIASSUNTO Lerner presenta il suo libro Scintille come un libro di viaggio, come la storia di anime vagabonde e la storia di molte patrie. Lerner parte dal concetto di Gilgul, il vagabondaggio delle anime, che secondo l'autore richiama la parola galgal, cioè ruota, ...

This paper presents some preliminary outcomes of a student engagement experience undertaken at an undergraduate college in the Netherlands. Six students and an alumna participated in a teacher-student partnership with the researcher to co-design a new course in critical intercultural communication. The teacher-student partnership was envisioned as a laboratory of democracy, aimed at offering students a site where the institutional educational objectives concerning global citizenship were examined by those to which they apply. Experimenting with democratic processes of co-creating learning environment and knowledge that matter to students is seen as a form of active community engagement. Preliminary analysis of the qualitative data collected show that engaging with theories of global citizenship in a setting of democratic pedagogy impacts on students’ perception of themselves as global citizens and as learners. In both cases, whilst challenging, student seemed to adopt a more active ...

One of the main institutional goals at a European international liberal arts college is to create graduates who are world citizens. In that context, there has been a shift towards explicit intercultural education through language and culture courses, with a foreign language requirement serving as 'a window on a different culture'. Developing intercultural communication skills demands more than living in a multicultural international environment; explicit intercultural education is needed. This paper describes a project that defined intercultural competence and translated it into intended learning outcomes for 'Language and Culture' courses at our liberal arts college. One of the intended learning outcomes is stated as: 'A student has the tools needed for the ongoing reflection on intercultural contact and the further development of intercultural skills in general'. The biggest challenge was to integrate explicit intercultural education in courses at the introductory level, where students are absolute beginners in the target language. Relevant questions were whether to use the target language exclusively or to make use of the class language (in our case English), and language proficiency would be affected if we dedicated less time to language acquisition. The model discussed was developed for the course Introduction to Italian Studies, which aimed to combine language instruction with intercultural reflection. While presenting the course design and some of the class activities that have been used the rationale behind the choices will be discussed, together with some constrains and an evaluation of the module.

This chapter presents how I integrated Virtual Exchange (VE) programmes delivered by Soliya in two courses at an international undergraduate liberal arts and sciences college. In both cases the VE programme was fully integrated in the courses as a graded element. The students of beginner Italian participated in the four-week long Connect Express. While liking the experience, they found that the VE was still too disconnected from their aim of learning a language. The students of Intercultural Communication (IC) participated in the eightweek long Connect Global. For them, the success of the experience was linked to the group composition and the English proficiency level of participants.

RIASSUNTO Lerner presenta il suo libro Scintille come un libro di viaggio, come la storia di anime vagabonde e la storia di molte patrie. Lerner parte dal concetto di Gilgul, il vagabondaggio delle anime, che secondo l'autore richiama la parola galgal, cioè ruota, ...

One of the main institutional goals at a European international liberal arts college is to create graduates who are world citizens. In that context, there has been a shift towards explicit intercultural education through language and culture courses, with a foreign language requirement serving as 'a window on a different culture'. Developing intercultural communication skills demands more than living in a multicultural international environment; explicit intercultural education is needed. This paper describes a project that defined intercultural competence and translated it into intended learning outcomes for 'Language and Culture' courses at our liberal arts college. One of the intended learning outcomes is stated as: 'A student has the tools needed for the ongoing reflection on intercultural contact and the further development of intercultural skills in general'. The biggest challenge was to integrate explicit intercultural education in courses at the introductory level, where students are absolute beginners in the target language. Relevant questions were whether to use the target language exclusively or to make use of the class language (in our case English), and language proficiency would be affected if we dedicated less time to language acquisition. The model discussed was developed for the course Introduction to Italian Studies, which aimed to combine language instruction with intercultural reflection. While presenting the course design and some of the class activities that have been used the rationale behind the choices will be discussed, together with some constrains and an evaluation of the module.

Per quanto si sa fino ad ora questo manoscritto e il documento piu antico conosciuto in cui l'italiano e il neerlandese compaiono insieme. Il testo è scritto dalla stessa mano e prosegue ininterrottamente su 93 carte per un totale di 3025 righe. Una divisione in capitoli manca, come pure una qualsiasi rubricazione. Nei repertori il contenuto viene descritto come: «un libro (mercantile) di dialoghi italiano-neerlandese», e viene datato all'inizio del XVI secolo.
Si tratta di un documento interessante dal punto di vista storico e culturale per le informazioni sull'ambiente mercantile italiano-neerlandese della fine del medioevo. Dal punto di vista specifico della storia della lingua e dei dialetti l'analisi delle due componenti linguistiche del testo fornisce dati importanti su entrambe le lingue in quel periodo. Infine, dal punto di vista lessicografico e interessante studiare quale relazione questo testo bilingue, indicato nei repertori come «libro di dialoghi», abbia con i diversi colloquia e vocabularia di quel periodo, sia nell'ambito linguistico italiano che in quello neerlandese.

Blog post on the teacher-student partnership: An experience of curriculum co-design at UCU: a student-teacher partnership for designing a new course
This report of the teacher-student partnership has been posted in two separate blog posts on the website of the Teaching Academy of Utrecht University (the Netherlands). Here below you can find the links to the original posts.
https://tauu.uu.nl/kennisplatform/an-experience-of-curriculum-co-design-at-ucu-a-student-teacher-partnership-for-designing-a-new-course-part-i/
https://tauu.uu.nl/kennisplatform/an-experience-of-curriculum-co-design-at-ucu-a-student-teacher-partnership-for-designing-a-new-course-part-ii/
I am reporting on the partnership that I created at an undergraduate LAS college.
In my vision, if an institution aims at educating students to take up responsibilities in society, it should offer students opportunities of engaging with their education, not only at the level of learning, teaching and assessment, but also in forming a scholarship of teaching and learning, and in curriculum design and pedagogic consultancy. These two latter forms of student engagement, where students act as partners of faculty and staff, can have transformative power for all engaged persons. Moreover, the contribution of students in designing the course helps tuning educational strategies to engage and motivate the new generation of students, which could be beneficial for other courses as well. I am pursuing a Doctorate of Education at Durham University (UK) with a focus on Intercultural and International Education, and I am using a Participatory Action Research approach my research: I seek to align my teaching with tenets of Education for Global Citizenship by adopting a highly democratic approach. I want to do this by promoting student engagement in constructing their learning environment as a form of community engagement, with a focus on taking responsibilities. The goal is to look at how engaging in theories and practices of Education for Global Citizenship and Intercultural Setting up the co-design partnership and giving students the chance to work with me as equal partners can be seen as a pedagogic intervention to achieve this goal. I knew that at UCU our colleague Fred Wiegant had organized a semester-long honors seminar some years before, in which a small group of students designed an interdisciplinary course on Evolution. Fred was very positive about the experience, and the course has been included in our curriculum since. With this in mind, I discussed with the Honours coordinator, the Director of Education and the Exam Board of UCU the option of organizing am honors seminar myself. At UCU any honors activity must be taken on top of the 180 ECs that students need to graduate, which proved to be an obstacle in recruiting students. I have been thinking deeply about an effective way to reward student engagement. In the literature about student engagement and teacher-student partnership (think of scholars such as Catherine Bovill, Peter Felten, Alison Cook-Sather, Susan Groundwater-Smith), there are many examples of students who are selected and payed to work with staff both at the level of courses and of programs. However, this wasn't an option at UCU, but while the intrinsic motivation is very important, I felt that there should be a tangible reward as well, because the internship is extra work that students carry on. I could agree with the Director of Education that the students who would engage in the co-design partnership would enroll in a short internship for 2,5 ECs, which would be graded as pass/fail only. A pass grade would be issued for participating actively to all sessions and group work, and for handing in a short reflective portfolio. Taking the partnership as pass/fail proved to be a crucial element, as the students didn't feel the pressure of having to be assessed on something very new to them.

This paper presents some preliminary outcomes of a student engagement experience undertaken at an undergraduate college in the Netherlands. Six students and an alumna participated in a teacher-student partnership with the researcher to co-design a new course in critical intercultural communication. The teacher-student partnership was envisioned as a laboratory of democracy, aimed at offering students a site where the institutional educational objectives concerning global citizenship were examined by those to which they apply. Experimenting with democratic processes of co-creating learning environment and knowledge that matter to students is seen as a form of active community engagement. Preliminary analysis of the qualitative data collected show that engaging with theories of global citizenship in a setting of democratic pedagogy impacts on students’ perception of themselves as global citizens and as learners. In both cases, whilst challenging, student seemed to adopt a more active role.

(Slides of the paper presented at the Postgraduate Education Conference "Imagining Better Education 2019), 12-13 July 2019, School of Education, Durham University (UK)

Addressing global challenges depend on actively engaged individuals, who are willing to act at local and global level and use their knowledge and skills to improve society. Educational institutions play a key role in providing students with knowledge and in fostering attitudes and behavior for engaged democratic citizenship. By giving students opportunities to practice with democratic participation, educational institutions can function as laboratories of democracy. For my research I aimed at combining two forms of engagement: community engagement and student engagement in the own educational setting through partnership learning communities. I organized a teacher-student partnership aimed at co-creating a new course in intercultural communication to foster global citizenship. The partnership team included me, six students and a recent alumna, and was carried out in an undergraduate honors college in the Netherlands.
In this paper I present some reflection on the data analysis I am carrying out. The data are of qualitative nature (application forms, interview transcripts, evaluative focus groups and reflective journals) and I am using Thematic Analysis (TA) as outlined by Braun and Clarke (2012) to make sense of them. I aim at finding evidence of shift in self-awareness, perceptions and praxis in the participants, regarding how they see themselves as global citizens and as learners.
The analysis so far shows that the partnership created a synergy between the participatory aspect and the in-depth exploration of concepts such as global citizenship and intercultural competence. Most students talk about acknowledging a discrepancy between their attitudes and how they ‘translate’ those attitudes into (daily) actions. They indicate a commitment to engage more actively with society because of their participation to the partnership. While presenting some outcomes of my analysis, I will also reflect on the challenges of doing TA. Hopefully these reflections will be of help to people considering doing TA.

Paper presented on June 28, 2019 at the Faculty of Durham University Social Sciences and Health Inaugural Interdisciplinary PGR Conference: Global Challenges.

Addressing global challenges depends on actively engaged individuals, who are willing to act at local and global level and use their knowledge and skills to improve society. Educational institutions play a key role in providing students with knowledge and in fostering attitudes and behavior for engaged democratic citizenship. By giving students opportunities to practice with democratic participation, educational institutions can function as laboratories of democracy. Examples of such opportunities are community engagement programs and student engagement in the own educational setting through partnership learning communities. In this paper I present a project carried out in an undergraduate honors college in the Netherlands and aimed at combining these two forms of engagement: a teacher-student partnership aimed at co-creating a new course in intercultural communication to foster global citizenship. The partnership team included me, six students and a recent alumna.
The analysis of the qualitative data I collected (evaluation conversations and students’ reflective journals) shows that the partnership created a synergy between the participatory aspect and the in-depth exploration of concepts such as global citizenship and intercultural competence. While deconstructing those concepts and having to translate them into pedagogy, students reflected on their values and attitudes. Most of them talk about acknowledging a discrepancy between their attitudes and how they ‘translate’ those attitudes into (daily) actions. They indicate a commitment to engage more actively with society as a result of their participation to the partnership. Teacher-student partnerships for curriculum co-design can thus be valuable pedagogic choices to foster skills, attitudes and behavior for engaged citizenship.