Developing sustainable pedagogic strategies for the international and cultural aspects of learning in art and design post-graduate education

This paper offers practical and theoretical insights into developing sustainable pedagogic strategies for the international and cultural aspects of learning in art and design post-graduate education. It builds on current research by the authors in tackling core cultural issues, ‘we want to address the complex issues of heterogeneity as opposed to the cultural homogenisation of students and help us all grow.’ ((Jones, McCullagh, Watson, 2006).

Issues explored:
• ‘translating’ cultural learning styles with students from a non-Western education background
• integrating/assimilating/enriching the learning mix of domestic and overseas students
• helping students re-draw their own ‘identity map’ from an intra cultural perspective, using the dynamics of mix-culture groups.
• liberating students through cross-cultural learning
• enabling students to become ‘future ready’ in their own understanding of sustainable issues
• dealing with the attendant language and comprehension problems in mixed cultural groups

We are also keen to raise the professional aspects of teaching. To review the history of the art schools in the UK and in one sense, to try and recapture the communal goal, which aimed to improve the manufacturing base, the cultural tastes of a nation, but crucially to re-address this in International terms. (Ewart in Jones, 1996).