Neera Handa

This chapter posits that the aim of true internationalisation of higher education should be to develop a cosmopolitan attitude in local and international students by affording them a positive experience of globalisation. To achieve this objective, opportunities for engaging non-Western and World Englishes Speaking (WES) international students to share their intellectual capital and knowledge-producing abilities should be incorporated in the teaching and learning practices of higher education. A critique of literature detailing how WES students are perceived in Western higher education is presented. Insufficient focus has been placed on their agency as their capabilities as cosmopolitan citizens of the modern-day world have been ignored. Presenting findings from research undertaken at a metropolitan university in Australia which shows international students and academics demonstrating their cosmopolitanism as a commitment to the ethos of internationalisation of higher education, this...

What is the connection between Shakespeare and sustainability? To explain we would like to present a case study of an educational institute where, just like Shakespeare, sustainability as a content and a medium of teaching and learning, is educating students about the relationship between members within society, the environment and economics, the commonly accepted three elements of sustainability (triple bottom line). At the University of Western Sydney, Australia, it can be seen that sustainability is related to and can be relevant to many aspects of university education. For example, it is included in an academic literacy development course, a core engineering first semester subject and an entire Environmental Health course. These three examples demonstrate how sustainability can be integrated into subjects and courses in many different disciplines. The concepts and ideas generated by the controversies surrounding sustainability lend themselves to critical thinking, something that...

At a new age metropolitan university, which caters to one of the most diverse commencing student populations in Australia, sustainability is the content theme of a literacy-based preparatory program: UniStep. Sustainability is a significant issue because of the serious environmental and social impacts of global warming and climate change. This has been acknowledged by governments around the world and has been predicted by many renowned scientists. In this paper, we focus on the effect of using sustainability as the topic for teaching academic literacy, in particular its influence on student thinking, learning, and lifestyles. We draw on findings from a case study of 103 students who participated in the program. Online surveys and telephone interviews provided quantitative and qualitative data. The analysis of findings indicates that over half the students engaged with the topic of sustainability, such that it affected aspects of their thinking, learning, and/or behaviour. This paper...

A multifaceted approach to evaluating the peer mentoring program at the University of Western Sydney (UWS) enables the Learning Skills Unit staff involved in this program both to sustain an appropriate training program and enhance their skills base. The approach taken to coordinating this program follows the action research cycle: observation leads to refl ection, which informs planning, and then action. There are substantial pedagogical implications for Learning Skills staff working on this program as the teaching practices employed during mentor training inform and enhance their work with students in other teaching contexts. Regular meetings between the coordinators, trainers and School academics, along with debriefi ng sessions with mentors, provide insights which are applied to inform an evolving and dynamic program and create a web of interconnectedness which not only promotes cross fertilisation of ideas but also leads to exciting collaborative projects.