ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR BEVERLEY HOOPER is Director of the Centre of Asian Studies and coordinator of the BA (Asian Studies) degree which was introduced in 1993. She obtained a 1995 grant for a project on Student-centred learning in Asian Studies. A major focus of the second and third year 'core' Asian Studies units is the acquisition of skills for carrying out individual research projects on contemporary Asia. Beginning with the first-semester second year unit Issues in Modern Asian Studies, all students design, research and write a short academic-style article on an aspect of contemporary Asian society and culture. The CAUT project is producing a research guide for students, as well as a number of primary source modules for this unit. The guide, which is being drafted by research officer David Dowling, will provide information and advice on conducting inter-disciplinary research on the societies and cultures of the Asian region. It will also give guidance on locating primary and secondary source materials, including electronic bibliographic sources, on east, southeast and south Asia. It is hoped that the guide will be useful not just for students but for a wide range of people in government, business, the media, etc. who are involved in 'finding out' about contemporary Asia. The primary source modules will focus on materials from the Asian region, rather than on Western materials about the region, and will cover a number of major social variables which are central to the dynamics of social and cultural change in contemporary Asia: class, gender, generation, religion and ethnicity. The materials will include both theoretical discussions and select country and culture-specific case studies. The unit Issues in Modern Asian Studies was offered in the first semester of 1994 and again in 1995. Students completed research projects on topics ranging from the 'Asian values' and 'democratisation' debates, to religion and modernity in Malaysia, the issue of Tibet, the impact of economic development on women's lives in Bangladesh, and the question of Chinese identity in Southeast Asia. Students have responded enthusiastically to the opportunity to do 'hands-on' research, sharing their findings (and problems) with fellow-students in workshop discussions. The objective of this course and the complementary second-semester unit Issues in Asia-Australia Relations (together with the more advanced third-year Asian Studies units) is to provide students with the knowledge, techniques and inter-cultural understanding to equip them for a wide range of occupations dealing with the Asian region, as well as to prepare them for more advanced research at honours and postgraduate levels. The research guide and wideranging source materials will be trialed in first semester 1996. |