Cosmopolitan Learning for a Global Era

Higher education in an interconnected world

Sarah Richardson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317974406
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Ensuring that higher education students are fully prepared for lives as global citizens is a pressing concern in the contemporary world. This book draws on insights from cosmopolitan thought to identify how people from different backgrounds can find common ground. By applying cosmopolitan insights to higher education practice, Sarah Richardson charts how students can be given the opportunity to experience a truly international education, which emphasises deep cultural exchange rather than mere transactional contact.

Written in an engaging and accessible style, the author uses empirical evidence to show that simply studying alongside those different to themselves or studying overseas are inadequate in preparing students to lead the diverse societies of tomorrow. Instead, the book calls for a coherent approach to higher education that properly prepares students to lead global lives. Chapters highlight a number of key aspects of higher education practice, from curriculum to pedagogy, to educator skills to assessment, and demonstrate how these can be reconsidered to give students the opportunity to gain cosmopolitan attributes during their higher education.

Cosmopolitan Learning for a Global Era will be of great interest to researchers, scholars and postgraduate students, with a particular focus on cosmopolitan thought, international education and higher education more broadly, as well as university educators and leaders across a wide range of disciplinary areas.

1 Global citizens

DOI: 10.4324/9781315871004-1

Setting the scene

Global. International. Intercultural. Cosmopolitan. The world we inhabit is all of these. In many ways it has always been. Humans have never lived in isolation from one another, as hundreds of years of global exchange attest. Nevertheless, the reach of these dynamics is more profound for those of us living in the twenty-first century than ever before. Our ability to respond appropriately to, and to thrive in, this context requires a paradigm shift in how we think about the world around us. In much of human history the concepts of ‘like’ and ‘unlike’ or ‘same’ and ‘different’ have been characterised as diametrically opposed. But the reality of contemporary life ensures that boundaries are increasingly blurred. This means that in/out, near/far, here/there, us/them, self/other are beginning to seem more and more alike.

For young people learning to navigate modern lives, this new reality requires a certain set of skills. To thrive in a world of blurred boundaries, young people need to gain attributes that will enable them to become border dwellers, adopting a multi-perspectival standpoint. They need to gain confidence in crossing over real and imagined lines of demarcation and in cooperating with those with differing degrees of unfamiliarity. This is essential because engaging with diversity is not something they may need to do but has instead become something that they will need to do. As educators, our responsibility is to ensure that students are given the opportunity to gain the knowledge and skills that will equip them to be leaders of the future. This raises a number of questions for those tasked with the responsibility of guiding learning. It calls on us as educators to interrogate our practices and assumptions. It requires us to unpack the way in which we have done things until now and consider how we might adapt them for this new reality.

In this book, these considerations are placed in the context of higher education. Internationally, 196 million students were enrolled in a higher education in 2011. This number is growing fast, rising from 99.5 million in 2000 (UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2015a). We can be sure that it is even higher now. Although the student bodies of higher education institutions are increasingly diverse, the majority of students are in transition from childhood to adulthood. Moving away from parental influences for the first time, they are in the process of constructing self, determining how their future lives will come to pass. In a critical stage of their development, higher education students are open to external influences and willing to try on new identities to find the best fit. Their nascent selves are searching for beacons to guide their way forward and for fellow travellers to accompany them on their paths. In parallel, students are exposed to an academic environment in which they can accumulate skills and knowledge. Gaining proficiency along the way, they are hoping to be granted admittance to their chosen professional community.

For educators, the level of responsibility represented by more than 200 million higher education students is enormous. These are the engineers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, scientists, thinkers and doers of the future. But most of all they are the leaders of the future. And not of some far off distant, unimaginable future but of the near future, a future in which many of us will still be alive, and in which our children will live out their lives. If higher education institutions do one thing, that thing should be to educate great future leaders. And this means that as educators we need to have a clear vision of what sort of future we would like to see. A future of tension, distrust, violence, terrorism, war and the threat of annihilation? Or a future in which everyone learns to ‘rub along’ pretty well with everyone else, enough so that we can devote our collective energy to more constructive pursuits? We cannot push diversity back into the bottle, it is here, whether we like it or not. As Appiah (2006: xxi) so eloquently suggests, ‘conversations across boundaries can be delightful, or just vexing: what they mainly are, though, is inevitable’. The inevitability of blurred boundaries and cross-cultural dialogue calls on higher education institutions to reinvent themselves. We need to, we must, ensure that what we do, the curricula we develop, the pedagogy we use, the behaviour we model, embodies the values that we want to see in our world.

Higher education institutions are not, and have never been, value-free institutions. They are forever shifting their policies and practices to reflect what is going on in the world around them and the prevailing power dynamics. The decisions made by institutions equally influence broader society. But they are slow, lugubrious beasts. Nothing moves rapidly, layer upon layer of bureaucracy stifles innovation and the resistance to change encountered in their hallowed halls is legendary. So how does change happen? It occurs when visionary educators have the courage to reflect on what they are doing and to change their practices, one class at a time. One student at a time. One choice at a time. This book is for those visionaries and its objective is to throw them a lifeline. If we are to respond to the changes we see in the world around us, if we are to ensure that students are prepared to be great leaders, then it helps to have something to support us. This book makes the case for the value of cosmopolitan thought in informing contemporary higher education practice. Cosmopolitan scholars have weathered hundreds of years of turbulent history and the approaches they promote have been strengthened by the challenges the world has faced. The power of cosmopolitan thinking lies in its simplicity: we are all different yet we are all the same. And if we can help our students to approach those they interact with, both now and in the future, with this basic understanding, then imagine what can be achieved. Imagine what kind of world our students, informed by this insight, could create in the future.

Everything changes, everything stays the same

The world we live in is undergoing fundamental change in every way imaginable. The degree of interconnectedness at all levels, from everyday human interactions to business to trade to government has become an inevitability that few can – or even attempt to – escape. As the web of connectivity becomes ever denser, the number of ties that bind us to familiar and unfamiliar others grow increasingly hard to shake. We are creatures defined by our networks – both real and virtual – and receive a non-stop barrage of messages about who we are and how we should view the world around us. We consume what has been created in a space-time continuum that goes far beyond our experience and understanding. The movements of money, goods, ideas, information and power are the most commonly referred to features of globalisation. They are shapeless, impermanent and ever evolving and their very intangibility confounds our ability to comprehend or name any or all. As they whirl around us we feel unable to do more than be swept along by a tide, iPhone in hand, increasingly vulnerable to forces that remove our agency and give it to faceless corporations. Globalisation feels both totally normal and totally alien and we lose ourselves in its clutches.

Easily forgotten, but of enormous importance, is that globalisation is fundamentally expressed not in vague and incoherent terms but in the coming together of one human with one or more others. As we interact across metaphorical and physical divides, we give the faceless forces of globalisation a human form. To focus on humans and the way in which we engage with each other is to see the forces of globalisation play out at the level of the individual and the social. In considering the coming together of humans we also remind ourselves that within globalisation lies considerable continuity with the rest of human history. If we look back in time we see a human evolution that has involved the mixing of races, cultures and religions over millennia. There is little evidence of geographically bound cultural purity anywhere in the world (Said 1995). Instead, we are all descended from a common gene pool and whether our own particular family trajectory has led us to be pale or dark skinned, tall or short, green or brown eyed, straight or curly haired, those factors that unite us have always been far more powerful than those which divide us. As such difference and diversity are not something external to humans. Instead, as Fine (2007: x) asserts ‘The human species can be understood only if it is treated as a single subject, within which all forms of difference are recognised and respected but conceptualised as internal to the substantive unity of all human beings’.

Higher education institutions have not been impervious to the forces of globalisation. Students have increasing options about the way in which they choose to engage with their chosen institution. Online learning is ever-more prevalent and an increasing number of students have little physical contact with the institution at which they are enrolled. Nevertheless, lectures, tutorials, laboratory sessions and seminars continue to define the experience of the majority of higher education students around the world. Whether higher education occurs literally or virtually it is characterised by person to person interactions. Listening, explaining, talking, debating and negotiating all require the engagement of one human being with one or more others. In this lies the power of educators to help students prepare themselves for the actualities of the world they will inherit. With power comes enormous responsibility. And it is not clear that all higher education institutions use their power in the best interests of their students.

In grappling with the challenges and opportunities wrought by globalisation, the responses of higher education institutions have been uneven. Many institutions have turned their attention to international affairs and have begun to incorporate an international perspective into many areas of institution life. In marketing their offerings to potential students, slogans such as ‘Think Global, Study Local’ have become all the more common. These would seem to indicate an understanding of the need to equip students with skills that will enable them to thrive in an international context. It is true that there are many examples of excellent practice, and these will be highlighted throughout the book. For many institutions, however, the rhetoric remains unfulfilled. Yet many institutions would claim that they are ‘international’. What does this imply? In many cases it suggests the presence of international students. Indeed, the increasingly global mobility of students is frequently held up as a sign of success in international education. In 2012 more than 4.5 million students were enrolled in tertiary education outside their home country (OECD 2014a). At first glance, physical movement during higher education appears to be an ideal way for students to gain exposure to different cultures. Through physical movement they are able to broaden their horizons, both metaphorically and literally. Indeed, there are many examples of international mobility having a profound impact on those who partake of it. At the same time, however, it can lead to significant contradictions.

The paradox of student mobility is that much global mobility takes students from their familiar environment into environments that are, well, pretty familiar. It is no coincidence that highly culturally diverse nations – the USA, UK, Canada and Australia – are also those that host the largest numbers of international students. This is significantly influenced by the ability to study in the English language. But at the same time the presence of large diasporic communities enables students to travel physically while also being able to rely on the reassurance of familiar cultural attributes, including food, language and media. Moreover, the large clusters of, for example, Chinese students who study in Australia – more than 90,000 in 2011 (OECD 2014b) – ensure that there is no need for students who cross borders to confront difference in more than a limited number of transactions. Beyond diasporas, many students move from one country to another that, while ‘foreign’, is imbued with many of the same assumptions and cultural characteristics. The two top destination countries for globally mobile students from the US are Canada and the UK, for example. And these patterns are repeated around the world.

Not only is student mobility paradoxical in its practice, the very fact that physical mobility is regarded as a precursor to exposure to contrasting cultures assumes that difference is ‘out there’. It forgets that our communities are the embodiment of diversity and that our own surroundings are rich with cultural resources. Student mobility certainly has the potential to generate benefits for the individual, but using up precious fossil fuels to fly to another continent may actually generate fewer benefits than a bus ride to an adjacent suburb. It is certainly true that student mobility has become an important export revenue for a number of countries, as well as providing crucial income for many institutions. But as a consequence many governments, institutions and educators are blinkered in regarding the international aspects of higher education as market based, phrasing the up-front and long-term yields in the language of trade and exchange, rather than the enrichment it can provide to students.

Through emphasising international mobility, the industry of international education interprets global citizenship in instrumental terms, overlooking the potential for transformation that lies within, and in close proximity. And student mobility is also socially divisive. The assumption that physical movement generates benefits that non-movement does not reinforces divisions between those with the resources to partake in movement and the vast majority for higher education students for whom this is not a possibility. The reality of many contemporary students is that participation in higher education requires part-time employment and, as student populations in many countries get older, an increasing proportion of students have family commitments. Neither of these are ties that can be carelessly jettisoned for the sake of a foreign sojourn. By suggesting that international exposure can only be gained through studying in another country, more than 190 million students are disenfranchised. This is clearly not an acceptable response to the need of all students to be prepared for global lives.

Tomorrow's leaders

As the realities of life in a global era pervade every element of our lives, it is increasingly important for higher education institutions to ask themselves whether the education they offer students is adequate for the realities of the third millennium. In preparing the leaders of tomorrow, institutions must carefully scrutinise the characteristics of the tomorrow the students will inherit. It has become rare in any profession, however place bound, to encounter clients, suppliers, contractors, contingencies or transactions that are purely local in scope. This underscores the necessity of being able to engage with people and processes different to those with which we are most familiar. At the same time, an increasing proportion of higher education graduates are likely to work outside of their home country. More and more will experience careers that take them to locations and cultural environments that are in stark contrast to the one(s) in which they have been raised.

The increasing normality of heterogeneity requires leaders who are well versed in viewing diversity as an asset rather than a problem. Leaders need to have dispositions that not only accommodate and celebrate cultural diversity, but also the ability to devise solutions that harness the strength that lies in difference to generate benefits for all. In a future in which increased competition over scarce resources seems to be a likely scenario, the ability to work with those whose standpoints are fundamentally opposed and to search for mutually satisfactory outcomes is an imperative for those who wish to assure the security of the world around them. Higher education institutions thus have a fundamentally important role in ensuring that their graduates develop an appropriate set of skills, skills that are directly applicable to the challenges they will be called on to help solve in a world characterised by diversity, mobility and adaptability.

A number of terms are used with reference to the need for higher education graduates to be able to function in a global world. ‘Intercultural competence’ refers to the ability to use ‘effective and appropriate behavior and communication in intercultural situations’ (Deardorff 2011: 66). This encompasses reflection, critical thinking, openness, curiosity and the ability to utilise diverse perspectives through deep cultural knowledge. While fundamentally sound, intercultural competence has been interpreted in a number of ways. Most worryingly, it is frequently used with reference to interactions between unitary ‘cultural’ groups. Examples such as ‘cultural tips for doing business in China’ assume that Chinese culture is somehow homogeneous and that all Chinese people are alike in their dispositions. While such directions may act as a useful shortcut for time-poor business people hoping to make an impression with Chinese clients, they do not bring us to a deep sense of understanding that diversity is found among all humans. Another common term is ‘global citizenship’. This is a very different take on global skills, focusing on social responsibility, global competence and global civic engagement (Morais and Ogden 2011) and refers to the ‘capacity and disposition to understand and act on issues of global significance’ (Boix Mansilla and Jackson 2011: xiii). Again, this approach is imbued with many positive characteristics, but it focuses more on the outcomes than the understanding that prompts them. Both approaches have a great deal of value. But they can lack depth – focusing on the ‘what’ in isolation from the ‘why’ and ‘how’.

This book utilises an approach that delves into the cosmopolitan canon. It draws on hundreds of years of thought to identify the underlying cosmopolitan insights that can usefully be applied to the higher education context. It looks at the tensions in contemporary higher education through a cosmopolitan lens and diagnoses their impact on students. And it explores ways to to translate espoused goals and references to global preparedness into pedagogy and curricula. The term ‘cosmopolitan’ echoes ruminations and debates that have travelled from one generation to another over thousands of years. Cosmopolitan is a much used and abused term, perhaps most commonly associated with a magazine for young women and a cocktail. It has also lent it...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• 1 Global citizens
• 2 Transforming the academy
• 3 Cosmopolitan thought
• 4 In search of a global education
• 5 Learning to become part of the global tribe
• 6 Innovations in global learning
• 7 Cosmopolitan classrooms
• 8 Learning at a distance
• 9 Theory to practice and back again
• References
• Index