Our collaboration with Dalian Polytechnic University enables Chinese students to benefit from WSA Design teaching and learning in the PRC. The programme, with a first and second year already in progress, will eventually number 800 students!
These ideas generated by our teachers and students in Dalian begin to illuminate some of the research interests central to cross-cultural learning - for example, the significance of specialist English language teaching in art & design and strategies to encourage independent learning amongst our Chinese students (and staff). Over the coming weeks and months these texts will constitute an invaluable map of experiences undergone by our staff and students. The research implications of the Dalian collaboration, as part of the social history of life and higher education in China since the inauguration of the 'Open Door' policy adopted in the PRC in the 1990s, will be followed up in ambitious projects linking WSA staff and students with scholars and students in Dalian and other universities in China. Watch this space!
