Multilinguismo, CLIL e innovazione didattica - Libera Università di ...

Integrating global citizenship
only they could reasonably be able to access, the marking criteria could also
include some peer feedback on how this process was conducted within the
group.
5.2.7 Content is not everything but it certainly is important
Much of the educational research into internationalisation critiques traditional
content-based teaching methods and lecturers’ defensive attitudes towards
suggestions that inclusive methodologies are not being practised. However,
we should not ignore the importance of the intellectual content that lies at the
heart of a discipline. Methodological tricks may work to focus students’ minds
on the subject at hand, but students are more likely to engage if they believe
that they are learning new information as well as skills, even when it is taught
in a traditional transmissive style.
6. Conclusions
Universities which pay more than lip service to the notion of internationalising
the student experience raise high hopes for educators who battle against
parasitical educational practices that reinforce cultural stereotypes. Multicultural
assessed group work, a longstanding and popular feature of many
courses at universities such as Oxford Brookes, has been feted and problematised
in various studies of well-intentioned attempts to create genuine intercultural
dialogue.
This study has demonstrated how a well-designed assessment task trumps
group configuration, learning styles, language proficiency and various other
abundantly documented factors in determining a more successful internationalised
learning experience. It also suggests that using assessment modes such
as examinations can overcome some of the typical inhibitors to successful
group interactions (e.g. planning meetings, freeloading etc).
A well-designed task will have several interdependent features, not least the
ability to exploit the cultural capital of students. Although this specific study
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