Introduction: Learning and Teaching Across Cultures in Higher Education

Abstract

Cultural issues in teaching and learning are becoming increasingly significant in universities and colleges. Higher education in many countries has recently seen an increased focus on issues of teaching and learning, balancing the traditional emphasis on the research role of universities and colleges. Teaching and Learning Centres have mushroomed, supporting a scholarship of teaching and learning (Boyer, 1990; Richlin, 2001) exploring issues such as teaching approaches, learning orientations and strategies, e-learning, assessment, curriculum planning, ethics, skills and employability, broadening participation, and student research. At the same time the growing pace of globalization is highlighting a cultural dimension in all these areas: when students or educators, materials, methods or understandings of subject matter move into new settings, contact zones are created in which cultural factors become more salient, providing new challenges and new resources for teaching and learning.