Transnational teaching practice and the curriculum

Abstract

In 2016 it was considered a radical change to propose a curriculum review which put the transnational at the centre of what we teach. Today, ‘transnational’ is a common descriptor in module titles across Modern Languages in the UK. The transnational has facilitated new approaches to the discipline that put migration, mobility, translation, and the legacies of empire at the heart of what we do. It has encouraged teachers and learners to think about the way that cultures and communities have been shaped by their interactions with others, and about the power dynamics inherent in these exchanges. At its best, the transnational is a powerful tool for interrogating not only what we learn and teach but also how we situate ourselves and how we create and disseminate knowledge. However, in practice it can be more complex to achieve these ideals, and embedding the transnational in teaching runs the risk of dilution and vagueness. My reflections in this article come from three interlinked perspectives: institutional, disciplinary, and as a citizen of a devolved nation. At institutional level, I led a curriculum review in the School of Modern Languages at Cardiff University in the UK in 2016. As Director of Learning and Teaching, I spearheaded a wholesale re-thinking of every module in every language programme. One of the key goals was to embed transnational thinking and practices into compulsory ‘culture’ options in year 1 and 2, in line with the ethos of the ‘Transnationalising Modern Languages’ (TML) project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The second perspective comes from my experience of organising and attending symposia and workshops on transnationalising (and decolonising) the curriculum through work with the University Council of Modern Languages (UCML), the Institute for Modern Languages Research (IMLR), and the AHRC Creative Multilingualism project. The final perspective comes from my situated experience as a white Welsh academic working in a Welsh institution in a UK context. Many of the debates in the sector in the UK quite naturally focus on the English context, given the relative sizes of England and Wales. However the landscape in Wales, while informed by this broader UK framework, is also shaped by the different transnational and (de)colonial histories of Wales, and by the politics of the current devolved government. Compared to the UK government in Westminster, the Welsh government has a more