Weaving UDL with critical and holistic pedagogies to promote intercultural learning

Educators around the world have a growing responsibility to ensure inclusion and equity, as they develop learning environments for increasingly diverse student bodies. Regardless of discipline, it is imperative to rethink our practice and to find the courage to address these topics through design and instruction approaches that are intentional, accessible, and demonstrate cultural intercultural teaching competence: “the ability of instructors to interact with students in a way that supports the learning of students who are linguistically, culturally, socially or in other ways different from the instructor or from each other, across a very wide definition of perceived difference and group identity” (Dimitrov et. al., 2014, p. 89). However, many of us lack both skills and confidence to engage in deep conversations about culture, race, power, privilege, or worldview values. For this reason, we propose weaving complementary pedagogies of UDL and holistic and critical pedagogies into curriculum design and instruction to deepen intercultural learning and promote inclusion and equity, while maintaining disciplinary standards.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) helps us recognize and honour multiple diverse human learning needs and preferences. Holistic pedagogy acknowledges multiple human capacities in emotional, physical, spiritual, as well as intellectual aspects (Battiste, 2002; Lafever, 2016). Critical pedagogy involves recognizing equity issues and taking action to redress power and privilege imbalances (Gorski, 2016). In this paper, we explore these pedagogies along with the challenges that educators face, and provide explicit steps we can take to create courageous spaces where dialogue and transformation can occur.

Challenges

According to Bennet (2009), intercultural learning involves deepening awareness of cultural contexts or worldviews, including one’s own, as well as the ability to interact competently across cultures. There is consensus that intercultural learning cannot occur just by putting diverse students together in the same space (Kimmel and Volet, 2012; Ippolito, 2007). In order to achieve intercultural learning, institutions must commit to equity, diversity and inclusion; promote an intentional focus on curriculum design and pedagogy; and identify and address the issues pervasive in higher education.

Many systemic, organizational, and individual challenges are in the way of reaching intercultural learning goals. Challenges include North American and Eurocentric learning content, language barriers, power imbalance, microaggressions, racism, misunderstanding, fear of being labeled culturally insensitive, and unwillingness to engage with ‘others’– in part due to lack of knowledge and skills, but perhaps also due to fear of changes to the status quo that may evolve from engagement.

The divide between host and international students is an evident feedback loop. Host students are typically unwilling to expend energy to explain their comments or unfamiliar terminology to foreign students who do not command a grasp of the English language (Jones, 2010) and tend to avoid interactions with international students out of fear that language barriers can lead to misinterpretation of innocent comments as being racially or ethnically insensitive (Montgomery, 2010). Understandably, international students remain segmented in their own cultural/linguistic groups, speaking their own language and, thus, triggering resentment from host students (Harrison & Peacock, 2010). What is more, language proficiency issues lead to power imbalances. Those who do not speak English to the standards of the dominant group are positioned as deficient (Zhang & Beck, 2014). The Canadian Bureau for International Education (CBIE, 2013), reported 20% of 1509 students experienced racial or cultural discrimination (p. 35) and recommends pedagogies that enhance interaction and extensive intercultural training.

Certainly, as educators, we also have issues. When asked about the main challenges of teaching students from different cultures, colleagues mentioned language barriers, lack of participation in the classroom, misunderstandings, building trust, and issues with teamwork. A colleague shared his struggle encouraging international students to have the confidence to interact with host students in English, due to cliques and a feeling of non-acceptance (S. Scott, personal communication, May 29, 2020).

In the current context of narrow boundaries of what can be said and how, we may be overcome by fear of reprisal and feelings of intimidation. Therefore, we operate in a state of denial, unwilling to tackle classroom dynamics effectively—we lack the same knowledge and skills that students lack, and we share their fears. Other stressors include lack of time and training, and budget and partnership concerns.

Safe, Brave, and Ethical Spaces

How can we feel confident in our ability to have authentic conversations where we can share power, knowing that risk and discomfort might be involved?

Many facilitators and educators use group agreements, safety guidelines, or rules of engagement as ways to create a safe space. However, Arao and Clemens (2013) invite us to shift away from the concept of safety or safe space, and instead emphasize bravery or courage; “to help students understand— and rise to—the challenges of genuine dialogue on diversity and social justice issues” (p. 136). Understandably, individuals will experience spaces and conversations differently, based on their social identity, power dynamics within the group, lived experiences, cognitive development, and previous experiences (Dugan, 2017). It is important to distinguish between the idea of creating a safe space and the concept of cultural safety that Aboriginal people and organizations have adopted to define new approaches to healthcare and community healing, and as a tool with a significant impact on policy (Brascoupe & Waters, 2009).

Cree scholar Willie Ermine proposes Poole’s (1972) concept of ethical space to describe the space co-created when individuals from contrasting worldviews engage each other. “ ...The encounter of cultures at a space where no definitive rules exist to guide interaction can appropriately represent an opportunity for understanding and the place of negotiation for cross-cultural activity” (Ermine, 2000, p.122). It is a way of observing, collectively, how hidden values and intentions can control our behaviour, and how unnoticed cultural differences can clash without our realizing what is occurring.

In order to experience authentic intercultural learning in classroom and community conversations, we must be aware of these concepts, be courageous, and become attuned to creating these spaces.

Practice Threads

We propose educators can effectively weave Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and intercultural teaching competencies (Dimitrov & Haque, 2016) together with critical and holistic pedagogies to promote the authentic intercultural learning necessary to develop inclusive, equitable learning spaces. Using these practice threads, educators can learn about their own and other cultures, question their curriculum, engage learners as active members, and acknowledge emotional, physical, spiritual, and cognitive capacities.

Universal Design for Learning

UDL is a framework that calls for inclusive, accessible, and engaging teaching and learning. According to Bracken and Novak (2019), UDL principles and guidelines “provide a blueprint to design and deliver instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments that meet the needs of all learners” (p. 5). Educators who integrate UDL in their curriculum design and learning provide a variety of options to engage students, deliver content in a variety of ways, and assess learning using multiple means of engagement, representation, and action/learning expression (CAST, 2019).

Holistic Pedagogy

Culturally responsive education must address emotional, physical and spiritual, and cognitive dimensions of learning (Cappon, 2008). In the context of holistic pedagogy, the Indigenous view of spirituality “is about creating an environment or space where people bring their whole selves, their stories, their voice, and their culture to their learning” (Battiste 2007 as cited in Kovacs 2009, p. 8). Acknowledging the spiritual dimension of learning is a huge challenge for mainstream Western academia where the focus has been almost exclusively on cognitive learning.

Many learning designers and instructors are familiar with the Bloom’s Taxonomy (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001) of the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains of learning. And, many educators shy away from implementing the affective (or emotional) domain in their course designs due to concerns about subjective assessment. The psychomotor domain has enjoyed wider application, particularly in trades, athletic, and performing arts programs. Nonetheless, in recent years, innovative academic applications of the affective domain learning are emerging in the human services professions, for example in the fields of arts-based pedagogy, community health care, and social work (Etmanski, 2014; Cortes, 2013; Northern Health BC, 2017; Allen & Friedman, 2010).

In Western academia, more attuned to the secular tradition, attention to the spiritual learning domain is even less common, due in part to conflated concepts of spirituality and religion. Lafever (2016) offers a perspective on how we can move beyond the confusion of these terms. She defines spirituality “as a universal human condition and internal moral guidance system” (p. 411), in contrast to a particular theological sets of religious beliefs and practices. Together with an Indigenous student, Lafever co-constructed a learning domain framework based on the Medicine Wheel, which includes the spiritual domain, as a way to support Indigenous students’ learning and bridge non-Indigenous educators’ learning about Indigenous ways of knowing and being.

The spiritual domain includes relational learning outcomes: “honouring, attention to relationships, developing a sense of belonging, feeling empowered to pursue a unique path, developing self-knowledge of purpose, and ultimately transcendence of narrow self-interest” (Lafever, 2016, p. 416). The invitation is to encourage a worldview where human values are intricately woven with all aspects of life.

Critical Pedagogy

Critical pedagogy is an invitation to all involved in the learning process - both learners and instructors – to share expertise and knowledge, to mutually construct learning from their lived experiences. Everyone steps out of their comfort zone to identify power and privilege, to recognize the political, economic, and social forces that reinforce inequality, and to acknowledge what worldview is prioritized; whose voices are heard,whose stories are told, who benefits from the status quo. It requires what Freire (1982) calls conscientization, a way for learners to take active roles in the process of discovery and inquiry with the purpose of becoming recreators–rather than spectators–of reality.

Critical pedagogy involves honouring multiple diverse perspectives through reflection on our assumptions, discourse, action on insights, and assessment of our actions (Mezirow, 1997). It also highlights how to engage in meaningful dialogue and sociocultural conversations that assume learning while teaching, while interacting, and while reflecting on how we may influence interactions in the classroom, and how we may be perceived by cultural others.

These threads are an invitation to extend the current constructivist model in our pedagogies to develop greater cultural sensitivity by including holistic and critical pedagogies, as well as UDL and intercultural learning principles. In addition, we need to consider how we assess learning. We have various authentic self, peer, group, and instructor assessment models for cognitive learning. However, we still need to develop fair, valid ways to assess other ways of knowing, being, and valuing affective and spiritual learning to know if, and how, plural cultural quality standards are called for to improve the ‘what, when, why and how’ of assessment.

Intercultural Teaching Competence Framework

The Intercultural Teaching Competences (ITC) framework (Dimitrov & Haque, 2016) is a teaching aid educators can use to reflect on inclusive teaching practices. This framework assumes educators already apply student-centred, active learning methods, and have the ability to encourage student reflection. The framework uses the observable, measurable outcomes approach to articulate value, knowledge, and skill sets in discipline-relevant terms.

The ITC framework includes three sets of intercultural competencies: foundational, facilitation, and curriculum design. Foundational competencies encompass an awareness of the instructor’s positionality and the confidence to engage with difference. For example, an instructor who engages with students from different cultures by sharing experiences related to food, tourism, or festivities. Facilitation competencies refer to the ability to promote dialogue in the classroom and imply a more advanced knowledge of cultural variability or ‘facework’ (Oetzel & Ting-Toomey, 2003 ). For instance, this might involve presenting a case study based in a different culture with the purpose of exploring the cultural complexities relevant to the course content. The third component corresponds to curriculum design; it includes the ability to align learning activities with assessment to ensure that intercultural learning outcomes are met. When instructors or designers create assessments that recognize and validate cultural differences, they incorporate intercultural teaching competence in the backbone of their design.

Figure 1

Components of Intercultural Teaching Competence (Dimitrov & Haque, 2016)

Application

Ideally, everyone invested in the development of inclusive practices will come together and collaborate at the institutional and departmental levels. While we are cognisant that higher level institutional changes and explorations are essential, we are aware of the challenges of mobilizing a whole institution (Fovet et al., 2014). In spite of these challenges, it is possible to do effective equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) work in post-secondary education. Instructors and instructional designers are in a unique place to effect change and promote cultural sensitivity by including more holistic perspectives and UDL principles in their own courses. We suggest simple things can make an impact; for example:

• Consider the typical way personal introductions are done in courses. Rather than replicating the usual pattern of introducing oneself in terms of status (job title), accomplishments, or academic degrees, invite people to introduce themselves in terms of a personal connection to mountains, rivers, family, community, or music in local landscapes.
• Provide cultural self-location learning activities and/or assignments to develop awareness of cultural and disciplinary identities, which is a foundational intercultural competency.
• Provide legible subtitles and/or transcripts to meet basic accessibility guidelines when you offer instructor welcome, unit overview, and assignment ‘how to’ or feedback videos,
• Include a diversity of names, faces, and contexts in your lectures, case studies or examples.
• Include outcomes that help the learner reflect on the relationship with their environment.

• Implement the culturally responsive design guidelines suggested by Morong and Desbiens (2016).

Table 1

Culturally responsive design guidelines (Morong & Desbiens, 2016, p. 487)

Conclusion

Understanding the tools and threads that can help us promote intercultural learning can lead us to review our practice and consider new ways in which we can learn about ourselves and others, regardless of our academic discipline. We are at a point in society where educators, facilitators, instructors and anyone working towards the betterment of their communities must be courageous about engaging with diversity and confident that their work promotes meaningful learning for everyone.

While there are important differences between Indigenous, international, and dominant local culture needs and goals, there is a strong consensus among these groups on the value of critical discourse and engagement to enable the transformative learning necessary to develop authentic intercultural understanding. Basically, we need to get to know each other better, a lot better – by building relationships and having more thoughtful, open, and respectful conversations about deep cultural issues.

In this paper, we discussed UDL, critical, and holistic pedagogy as some of the important perspectives that educators need to explore to create ethical and caring learning spaces that can support the brave conversations required to transform intercultural learning into responsible action for equity. It will take courage to open up and extend ourselves; addressing structural inequities in access, opportunity, and power is going to take more courage, still. We think we can do this, don’t you?

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