Team Building Challenges

PROBLEMATISING ‘CROSS-CULTURAL’ COLLABORATION: CRITICAL INCIDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION SETTINGS
KATRIN KRAUS RONALD G. SULTANA Abstract – Many EU projects are premised on the assumption that collaboration between academics and students from different national contexts adds value to knowledge production and to learning. It is very rare to come across accounts of how challenging such cross-cultural collaboration can be, especially when the notion ‘culture’ is expanded to include both national and gendered identities, as well as cultures embedded in particular academic disciplines. This paper sets out to explore the ‘critical incidents’ that arose in the context of an Erasmus curriculum development project, showing how these ‘incidents’ open a window onto the complex and challenging processes that come into play in cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary settings.

Introduction his paper is one of the ‘products’ developed in the context of an Erasmus curriculum development project called CROSSLIFE, which focuses on crosscultural collaboration in the field of lifelong learning and vocational education. The project offers an 18 month-long learning pathway to students registered in MA or PhD programmes at the Danish University of Education, and the universities of London, Malta, Monash, Tampere and Zürich, with tutors from all six institutions involved in lecturing and mentoring through both virtual and faceto-face meetings1. The project therefore could be seen as a ‘higher education consortium’, as Beerkens & Derwende (2007) call this kind of international cooperation between institutions of higher learning. Students are clustered in home-groups, but interact with and across all groups via Skype telephony, videoconferencing, and workshops2. The course focuses on both content and process issues. The substantive focus is on Vocational Education and Training (VET) including, for instance, the issue of policy borrowing and lending in VET-related areas in both the EU and

References: Akkerman, S., Admiraal, W., Simons, R. J., & Niessen, T. (2006) Considering diversity: multivoicedness in international academic collaboration, Culture and Psychology, Vol. 12(4), pp. 461-485. Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (revised edition). London: Verso. Baumann, Z. (2004) Identity: Themes for the 21st Century. Oxford: Polity Press. Becher, T. (1989) Academic Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Cultures of Disciplines. Bury, St Edmonds, Suffolk: Society for Research into Higher Education and Oxford University Press. Becher, T. (1994) The significance of disciplinary differences, Studies in Higher Education, Vol. 94(19), pp. 151-161. Beerkens, E., & Derwende, M. (2007) The paradox in international cooperation: institutional embedded universities in a global environment, Higher Education, Vol. 53(1), pp. 61-79. Biglan, A. (1973) The characteristics of subject matter in different scientific areas, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 57, pp. 195-203. Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge. Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1988) A reply to our critics. In M. Cole (ed.) Bowles and Gintis Revisited. Sussex: Falmer. Bruner, J. (1986) Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge. Butler, J. (1993) Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. London: Routledge. Clark, B. R. (1983) The Higher Education System: Academic Organization in CrossNational Perspective. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Dale, R., & Robertson, S. (2006) The case of the UK: Homo Sapiens Europaeus vs. Homo Huaestuosus Atlanticus? European Learning Citizen or Anglo-American Human Capitalist? In M. Kuhn & R. G. Sultana (eds.) Homo Sapiens Europaeus? Creating the European Learning Citizen. New York: Peter Lang. Fivars, G. (ed.) (1980) Critical Incident Technique. Palo Alto, CA: American Institutes for Research. Flanagan, J. C. (1954) The Critical Incident Technique, Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 51(4), pp. 327-359. Geertz, C. (1993) The Interpretation of Cultures (first published in 1973). London: Fontana Press. Giroux, H. (2005) Border Crossings: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education (2nd edition). New York: Routledge. Gurevitch, Z. D. (1988) The other side of dialogue: on making the other strange and the experience of otherness, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 93, pp. 1179-1199. Habermas, J. (2001) Why Europe needs a constitution, New Left Review, Issue No.11 (September-October), pp. 5-26. 82 Haraway, D (1988) Situated knowledge: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective, Feminist Studies, Issue No. 3 (Fall 1998), pp. 575-599. Heikkinen, A. (2003) Vocational Education and Training as the co-constitutor of Europe as a project. In E. Figuera (ed.) Vocational Education and Training in Europe: Culture, Value and Meanings. Lisbon: Instituto Para Inovacao no Formacao. Holmes, M. (2007) What is Gender? Sociological Approaches. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE. Hooks, D. (1981) Ain’t I a woman: Black Women and Feminism. Boston: South End Press. Knorr Cetina, K. D. (1999) Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kolb, S. A. (1981) Learning styles and disciplinary differences. In A. Chickering (ed.) The Modern American College. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass. Kraus, K. (2004) Constructing ‘Europe’ and the ‘European identity’. In T. Geisen, A. Hickey & A. Karcher (eds.) Migration, Mobility, and Borders. Frankfurt/M and London: IKO. Maihofer, A. (1995) Geschlecht als Existenzweise. Frankfurt/M.: Ulrike Helmer Verlag. Palomba, E. (2006) ICT Technologies and Intercultural Issues. Available online at: http:// www.formatex.org/micte2006/Downloadable-files/oral/ICT%20Technologies% 20and%20Intercultural%20Issues.pdf Schoenberger, E. (2001) Interdisciplinarity and social power, Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 25(3), pp. 365-382. Snow, C. P. (1969) The Two Cultures: A Second Look. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sultana, R. G. (2002) Quality education and training for tomorrow’s Europe: a contrapuntal reading of European Commission documents. In A. Novoa & M. Lawn (eds.) Fabricating Europe: The Formation of an Education Space. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Tartas, V., & Müller Mirza, N. (2007) Rethinking collaborative learning through participation in an interdisciplinary research project: tensions and negotiations as key points in knowledge production, Integrative Psychological and Behavioural Science, Vol. 41(4), pp. 154-168. Tuckman, B. W. (1965) Developmental sequence in small groups, Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 63, pp. 384-399. Tuckman, B. W. (2001) Classics for group facilitators: developmental sequence in small groups, Group Facilitation: A Research and Applications Journal, Issue No. 3 (Spring), pp. 66-81. Walker, J. C. (1988) Louts and Legends: Male Youth Culture in an Inner City School. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Wang, X., Dannenhoffer III, J. F., Davidson, B. D., & Spector, J. M. (2005) Design issues in a cross-institutional collaboration on a distance education course, Distance Education, Vol. 26(3), pp. 405-423. Wilterdink, N. (1993) The European ideal, Archives Européen Sociologiques, Vol. 34, pp. 119-136. 83