At Oxford Brookes University, teaching across the disciplines needs to contribute to the development of Global or Active Citizenship.
In their module descriptions, students can see how what they are supposed to be learning contributes to the development of the five so-called 'graduate attributes'. These include Academic Literacy, Research Literacy, Critical Self-Awareness and Personal Literacy, Digital and Information Literacy, and Active Citizenship (until recently Global Citizenship). What I find interesting about these graduate attributes is that they seem to be one of the few cross-disciplinary elements of teaching and learning at the university.
In theory, I think that these outlines sound great! However, the reality appears to be that for those writing the module descriptions, these graduate attributes can become something of another box to tick. From having talked to students, many don't seem to be aware of them at all. Wondering how this has come to be the case, I decided that I would like to find those people in my university who have contributed to the development of these graduate attributes, in particular Active/Global Citizenship. I would like to hear about their thoughts and experiences. As a next step, I would like to have conversations with lecturers, who are the ones having to implement the graduate attributes on the ground. Finally, I would like to hear the views of students - being aware that they might have never thought about Global/Active Citizenship before.
How do people understand Global/Active Citizenship? Do they see any value in relation to teaching and learning? Or do they feel it is not relevant to them? And how does it work in practice? These are the questions that will inform my conversations. With people's consent, I will post my reflections on their thoughts and experiences on this blog.