Michaela Baker

‘All of us together in a blurred space’: principles for co-creating curriculum with international partners

ABSTRACT This paper shares an innovative methodology to ‘co-create’ a curriculum with eleven international community development organisations from seven countries to prepare undergraduate students for international work-integrated learning activities. The co-creation process was complex, messy, and always evolving. Here we reflect on and document the process, identifying three key methodological principles that might guide the co-creation process for others. These principles embrace the unpredictable, emotional, and personal reality of bringing together diverse ideas and perspectives, as well as opening up possibilities for more creative ways of communicating and listening to what is seen, heard, and felt.

Reflection for learning: a holistic approach to disrupting the text

Reflective practice can support a mindful and focussed approach to deep learning, enabling the bridging between theory and the students’ learning experience. This practice can range from creative pursuits to heeding felt knowing, integrated into the curricula to support praxis. Indeed, the embedding of reflective mechanism(s) is a requirement of learning through participation known as PACE (Professional and Community Engagement), a pillar of the undergraduate curriculum, and core to the university’s new vision. Through this curriculum requirement and a number of fora extending beyond PACE, Australia’s Macquarie University engages with diverse reflective practices including digital storytelling and art. This chapter presents the holistic approach adopted to integrate reflective practice mechanisms across PACE curricula and practice. Firstly, the role of reflection for learning through participation (LTP) is established. The approach taken to achieve a holistic approach to practice is then unpacked. This holistic approach recognises the need to scaffold and embed reflective practice at, and across, many levels.

“Classroom of Many Cultures”: Educational Design Opportunities in Intercultural Co-creation

Many international programmes include work-integrated learning (WIL) and community-based service learning (CBSL) in order to teach students to collaborate and increase their intercultural sensitivity. The support curriculum for these experiences, however, may implicitly emphasize a divide between overseas “experience” and “reflection” facilitated by staff from home. This chapter describes the Classroom of Many Cultures project, a curriculum design project that used principles of co-creation for a series of learning modules to support international WIL and CBSL. These modules use pedagogical principles and activities that originated with host country staff, incorporating intercultural respect and collaboration into pedagogical design. The project involved significant refining of the co-creation method itself over time; the chapter explores the lessons that the research team learnt during the co-creation process.

Exploring the reciprocal benefits of community-university engagement through PACE

Multiple understandings of reciprocity inform and underscore diverse ways of engaging in community-university partnerships. Although the benefits to students of such engagement are relatively well-documented in the literature (Eyler J, Giles DE, Jr. Stenson CM, Gray CJ, At a glance: what we know about the effects of service-learning on college students, faculty, institutions and communities, 1993–2000, 3rd edn. Vanderbilt University, Nashville, 2001; Tryon and Stoecker, J High Educ Outreach Engage 12(3):47–59, 2008), little empirical research currently supports claims that programs and partnerships result in reciprocal learning and engagement opportunities, especially from the perspective of community partners. This chapter conducts a preliminary empirical inquiry into the diverse ways reciprocity manifests as benefits for key stakeholders in the PACE context, taking the analytical framework proposed by Dostilio et al. (Mich J Commun Serv Learn 19(1):17–32, 2012), and Hammersley’s (2016) favourable critique of it as primary points of departure. We draw on the reflections and perceptions of a range of staff, students, and partners involved in PACE activities in local, regional and international settings and identify, organise and articulate some of the diversity and complexity of the relationships that exist within the PACE program and the beneficial outcomes it has spawned for different stakeholders.

Building a Community of Ethical Practice Through PACE

Ethical practice is a core principle of PACE. Partners must conform to the University’s ethical standards and values, and PACE activities must promote the well-being of people and the planet. Students are expected to engage in an ethical manner, and their activities might include research that requires ethics approval. Approaches to telling the PACE story must also be ethically sound. This chapter identifies the practical and epistemological imperatives behind collaborative efforts to foster ethical understanding and practice across the program. These attempts have raised questions such as ‘What constitutes an ethical activity?’ and ‘How might students be prepared for ethical complexities?’ It has led to pushing pedagogical and institutional boundaries, resulting in benefits for Macquarie students, the University as a whole, staff involved in PACE, and community-based partners. This chapter also acknowledges a number of complexities that pose challenges and further questions, as well as suggesting future directions for both practice and research.