Towards postcolonial pedagogies: How graduate teaching assistants foster collectivism and transcultural classrooms

Abstract

Research on international Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) commonly emphasises deficits. Themes include lack of proficiency in English; deficiency of teaching experience; and ‘incomplete’ professional identity. Such framing neglects the resources that international GTAs bring to their classrooms. This study looks specifically at lived experiences of four GTAs, examining their identity work through the ‘transcultural’ and collectivist exchanges they foster in their classrooms. The study approaches ‘Internationalisation’ through the perspectives of four female GTAs from former colonies, to examine how they deploy strategies to decentre power and ‘de-individualise’ the classroom. Here these postcolonial perspectives affirm that international education is not a one-way process from ‘core’ to ‘periphery’, but a complex transcultural inter-change. Identifying these collectivist and ‘transcultural’ teaching practices suggests future avenues for research, towards identifying whether/how postcolonial GTAs develop postcolonial pedagogies.

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