Scholarly Life

I think that there are actually a lot of adjustments that postgraduate students have to make, and in Education in particular, many of our students are actually working adults, they're professionals, and we try to develop some equality, some sense of being colleagues, rather than lecturer and student. You notice this in particular with the international students, where the expectation is that they will contribute, that they will initiate topics of conversation, that when they're in class, they will ask questions. This in my experience is not a way of operating that they are either used to, or initially, that they're comfortable with. An example is, I run a subject called Key Issues. The expectation is that the students will give provocative presentations, deliberately designed to present confronting approaches to the issues, that stimulate discussion. Now, it's difficult for both, even the local students who've been away from study, but also particularly for the international students, because first of all they have to present in a forthright manner, but then if they're in the audience of another student's presentation, they have to accept the responsibility to be critical, and this does not come naturally, particularly to the international students, for whom some form of courtesy perhaps inhibits them a little. So it's really quite challenging, whether as presenter or as audience.