How the West is done: simulating Western pedagogy in a curriculum for Asian international students. (original) (raw)

Imagination is now understood to be playing a more prominent role in the production of cultural identities in ‘new times’, as groups seek to build and shore up collective identities in the shifting flows and conditions of globalization. This paper documents the institutional work of cultural imagination in the preparatory curricula designed to manage the cultural difference of international students studying on-campus in Australian universities. These Foundation and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) curricula construct an idealised version of the ‘Western student’, ‘Western lecturer’ and of the social code governing the relationship between lecturers, students, and disciplinary knowledge in the Western academy. This paper analyses the versions of imagined, ‘authentic’ Western pedagogy constructed in teacher interviews, and produced in videotaped classroom activities in these courses. In particular, the analysis focuses on forms of student oral participation in this imagined pedagogy of the West, and teachers’ attempts to simulate the ‘real’ Western university for their students. These ‘authentic’ versions are theorised as nostalgic in that they fail to acknowledge the transformation of Australian universities in globalizing times and globalized markets, and work to re-centre pedagogic identities in slippery conditions.

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