Teaching post-colonialism amidst post-colonial guilt: Empire busting in UK HE Teaching

This paper discusses both the context of growing numbers of international students coming to study in the UK but also the way in which the university curricula have responded to this within a context of post-colonialist engagement with the other. The paper also seeks to outline the perception, by both staff and students, of the impact of Britain’s imperial past on teaching in UK universities and draws on research and practice over the last 20 years on intercultural communication, including a national pilot study survey conducted especially for this paper (and which shall be developed for further research on the topic to be presented at Beppu University in May 2010 at the Japanese Society of Western History conference). Firstly, however, the key focus of the paper is to establish the theoretical and actual contexts of the issues which face UK higher education and its international students and to set up why it is that post-colonial guilt and prejudices still inflect how international students are taught and processed by universities in Britain. I shall then present the findings of the study and analyse the implications of the survey. [Taken from the paper's Introduction]