First speaker: Dr Felicity Breet, Associate Dean, Faculty of Education and Society, University of Sunderland.

Breaking in or breaking the mould?

Felicity will open the conference and talk about some of the more general challenges that students face in undergraduate and postgraduate study.

Having grown up in Middlesbrough, Felicity began her career as a secondary school teacher of English and Drama working mostly with young people excluded from other people's classes because they did not fit in. After a VSO posting in Nigeria her TESOL life began and this has allowed her to work in several different TESOL teacher education contexts including China, Cameroon, the Solomon Islands, South Africa and in one very interesting period when she was a PhD student, a part time lecturer at the University of Durham and a supply teacher at a local comprehensive.

Having been an outsider in many contexts, nationally and internationally, she is fascinated by life on the outside and how people create places for themselves in new contexts.

The focus of her talk will be questions of what it means to feel on the outside UK HE and how people she has worked with have created places for themselves in their chosen University.

Second speaker: Professor Vivian Baumfield, Professor of Pedagogy Policy and Innovation, University of Glasgow.

Synthesising sources and developing an argument: reflections on supervising international students

Vivian will focus on the process and ways in which students can develop an argument suitable for UK academic study. As this is one of the most significant challenges that students face in their first language, it is even more difficult for students trying to establish this in their second or third language. The talk will cover a number of aspects such as thinking and critical responses.

Vivienne Baumfield is Professor of Pedagogy, Policy and Innovation in the School of Education, University of Glasgow and works with practitioners and policy makers in education both in the UK and overseas. Professor Baumfield is also the University of Glasgow's International Dean for South Asia and Eurasia. She has led research projects aimed at furthering our understanding of the benefits of collaborative school-university research partnerships in the development of teaching as evidence informed practice. Professor Baumfield has worked with government agencies and professional organisations in the UK and internationally on the development of inquiry based approaches to promoting professional learning. She is the Editor of the British Educational Research Journal and the new international journal, Review of Education.

Third speaker:

Dr Peter Sercombe, Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics, School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences, Newcastle University.

 Aiming for non-essentialised intercultural adjustment among international postgraduates

Peter has a background in both linguistics and intercultural communication and will set part of the context for the conference. In addition to teaching, he has worked as an external examiner and published a range of work in the areas of sociolinguistics, with particular interest in code-switching, and language maintenance & change among minority groups; cultural adaptation; and intercultural communication. The focus of his talk will be about concepts of culture including aspects such as the categorisation of 'home', 'EU' or 'international' students and UK academic culture / expectations.