Posted: October 11th, 2007 by Alison Ruth

Categorised as:  Learning 

One of the feeds I read every night is the latest news straight out of the ABC Top Stories.  You can grab an RSS feed here.  Interestingly, from a cross cultural perspective, was this story about queuing for a bus.  It just goes to show how much we take for granted.

I often walk out of the uni just about the time a bus is due.  If the bus has just arrived it's a mad scramble to get through.  There are people nearly everywhere.  Don't ask about what it's like when it's raining with that dinky little shelter that's provided which lets all the seats get wet.  Then you're lucky if there's even breathing space, don't even think of being able to walk through.

So, why is it that we don't make more effort to help students who come here from very different cultures?  I notice this whenever I teach, there is a tendency for some students to never speak, partly because they believe it's disrespectful.  It kind of makes it difficult to employ constructionist (or even constructivist) principles in the classroom.  There is little chance of building on their own experience.  

One of the things I'm trying to bring in to some of the courses (well, really any that I teach) is that we all have those different histories which can sometimes add a lot of depth to the knowledge in the room.  Not that it's actually in the room, but the potential to develop everyone's knowledge is there.  I think there is much room for us to be very specific in our expectations and why we have them.  This also would help when students submit their assignments, they would get a sense of what it is we are looking for.  

Yes, you can stand on the shoulders of giants, but please tell us who they are.


From queues to expectations.  My brain works in hypertext.

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