Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

Methods & Techniques for International Development Studies). The teachers havedifferent approaches to how they take into account the international character of thestudent group in the design of their modules. In three modules the multi-perspectivenature of the international student group is explicitly used. These courses build onthe input of students from their own national and cultural perspectives, in relationto themes or problems addressed in the course. If these courses had only be opento Dutch students, the teaching and learning strategies – in terms of using students’representations and perspectives – would have been different.The module on European Integration uses the background of the students in twoways Van der Vaart, Béneker and Paul 2005). The course starts with some lectures androle-plays; these role-plays are used to get an idea of the different political cultures inthe home countries of the students. It is crucial to be aware of these political cultureswhen studying decision-making processes in the European Union. The second half ofthe course takes the form of project work where multinational student groups have torepresent a region in the EU. If someone in a group comes from the region of study(and for example can read Swedish, Spanish or Hungarian), this may have considerableadded value. The module on Cultural geography of the Netherlands benefits fromthe presence of both Dutch students knowing a lot about the Netherlands and foreignstudents with a completely different way of looking at our country, its image and identities.The participation of students from other disciplines (not every foreign student isa human geography student) gives an extra dimension to the multiperspectivity. In themodule on Geography and Citizenship students have to use their personal ideas abouttheir own citizenship and their experience with citizenship education in classroomdiscussions. Later on in the course they have to organise a seminar in multinationalgroups. The groups are relatively free in the choice of a seminar topic and are able touse the backgrounds of the students for making all kind of comparisons. For example,in 2004 one group chose to compare the citizenship debate in Hungary with the debatein the Netherlands. In the other modules, teachers stimulate students to work together incombined groups but leave the decision to the students. They suggest the Dutch shouldspeak English all the time, including during coffee breaks. Often these modules startwith the students introducing themselves.The teachers from these six course modules made the following remarksconcerning the advantages and disadvantages of working with multinational studentgroups. Most of the time they had the same opinion. One important benefit of thesecourses, in the eyes of the teachers, is the international atmosphere in the classroom.They refer to an increased interest of students in each other and the often openatmosphere in which information is being exchanged. The foreign students oftenare an example for Dutch students because they are usually very motivated. Thestudents coming from other academic cultures like the openness and accessibilityof the Dutch teachers, according to the teachers in the evaluation panel.Most teachers see language as a point of concern. One teacher even feels that it isnot possible to go into depth during discussion sessions because of the limited Englishlanguage skills of most of the students and the teacher. Another teacher refers toproblems with regard to writing papers in English and to the big differences between109