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Global Citizenship & Campus Community Lessons from Learning Theory & the Lived-Experience of Mobile Students. David Killick
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Global Citizenship & Campus CommunityLessons from Learning Theory & the Lived-Experience of Mobile Students David Killick “Learning is the process of being in the world. At the heart of learning is not merely what is learned, but what the learner is becoming (learning) as a result of doing and thinking – and feeling” (Jarvis, 2006: 5).
learning as: change in the lifeworld global citizen as: being-in-the-world
impacts of outbound international mobility • intercultural/cross-cultural sensitivity, awareness, and so forth (e.g. Bennett;Deardorff) • among languages students (e.g. Byram) • transformative (e.g. Bamber) or social learning (e.g. McLeod and Wainwright) theories • critical and comparative thinking (e.g. Yershova; Mestenhauser)
Piaget – cognitive schemes Mezirow – perspective transformation Reformulation of cognitive meta-schemes Emotional intelligence Behaviourist & experiential learning theorists Carl Rogers – significant learning “self-actualized person”
ready-to-hand, unexamined flow Habits of expectation habitus& doxa “…way of thinking and feeling about our everyday world, the way in which we perceive it as given. It refers to that which we think from rather than that which we think about” (Charlesworth, 2000:30)
Learning – and the dilemma • “comparatively little change occurs … in ‘situations of equilibrium’” (Gmelch, 1997: 487) • “harmony is a non-learning situation” (Jarvis, 2006: 26) • “positive, joyful incidents” “events that are fulfilling rather than distressing”(Brookfield, 1987: 31)
Inter-subjective – social learning • Vygotsky- zones of proximal development • Lave and Wenger - communities of practice • Ward et al • psychological “feelings of well-being or satisfaction” • Sociocultural “the ability to ‘fit in’ or execute effective interactions in the new milieu”
Self-world Socio-cultural-world Extended-world Learning occurs as intrusions across lifeworld horizons change representations in the lifeworld. Lifeworld Horizons Lifeworld Figure 1. Representation of learning as change to the lifeworld across horizons with the self-world, the socio-cultural-world and the extended-world.
Global citizenship as a way of being-in-the-world capabilities they shouldexhibit knowledge they shouldhold skills they shouldpossess ethics they shouldespouse acts they shouldperform a way of being-in-the-world self-in-the-world act-in-the-world what I can who I am
self concept self-in-the-world a sense of self dwelling among alterity, where difference is recognised as legitimate a characteristic of human being in a globalising world “the characteristics of 'I' or 'me' and the perceptions of the relationships of the 'I' or 'me' to others and to various aspects of life, together with the values attached to these perceptions” (Rogers, 1959: 200)
Aspects of learning in the lived-experience of students on mobility “… the biggest thing with the experience that I had was that my experience would have been a tenth, a twentieth as good if … or I might not have enjoyed it at all – if I hadn’t made such brilliant friends. Like, friends were the foundation from which I built everything up around” (Tiff)
Open to learning and open to challenge “would like to understand” the perspectives of others and “definitely” wanted “to know more about the Australian culture and, and all that sort of stuff” “the outsider” - “open-minded about things”. not going to judge “the way they live” determination to be not “too judgemental”
Will to engage “I feel like I have to experience it, so I‘m going to … I‘m getting out there and doing more because I‘m in another country”. “was always asking questions to virtually anybody” “wanted to get to know” “have a life” “I do want to go and see more, I want to learn more about other cultures and see different places – just increase my knowledge of the world”.
Pushing themselves “putting myself out there” took her “outside of my comfort zone” “out of her way” to “go off” “massive challenge” and “thrown myself into it”” “definitely more daunting” “like a fish out of water” “would probably not have given a thought to” “I wouldn‘t have had to push myself out of my comfort zone” “got to go out, see new places, meet new people, form better friendships”
Learning Dilemmas & Triggers “Meeting people from different backgrounds” friends from different national roots in Australia …“seeing their families” “so much” through meeting “countless amounts of people, and from all the different places”. “constantly being around people from here [Spain]” enabled her to learn “how they interact with each other, and how much more relaxed they are in … with physical contact”. “mixing with” and meeting “different people from different […] cultures and communities”.
Learning Dilemmas & Triggers “I became much more culturally aware of other cultures, especially because I was an international student, like – with all the Mauritians, and [the] Americans, and the Italians… Like all the different type of people that I met…”. “picked up from the media” through meeting people and coming “to know them properly”. “shrug off most of my stereotypes” because she “met Spanish people and got to know them as individuals” “through having a lot of different friends, from sort of, like, even different continents” that she learned “to get on with people” and “not to take certain things offensively”.
Learning Dilemmas & Triggers “I did things that I didn‘t think I‘d enjoy, and I became able to enjoy things that obviously other people enjoyed as well. And I could see things from different points of view”. “to come forward and say things” when “living in a shared flat with people who are more outspoken”. “in the thick of it” “…the smells and the clothes, and the skin” “seeing actually how people live” and “listening to the stories”, “We‘ve eaten here. We‘ve drunk here – you know”. “shock factor” “the way people live within the EU” “poverty” “Europe” “really difficult”
Virtuous circles of becoming “I‘ve done this before, […] what‘s the problem?” “…it‘s fed my ambition […] I want to go and see as much as I can” • “one of the main” • “more confident in working with new people generally and in speaking in general”. “not as daunted by new and unfamiliar situations”. “outgoing”, “assertive” and “open” “as good as anybody else now”. “just so much more outgoing, so much more confident” “a completely different person”. “a lot more timid” “quite fearless”
Virtuous circles of becoming “…it’s increased my independence. I’d probably say almost a hundred percent. I feel a hell of lot more confident and independent within myself. I feel more confident to be put in situations”. “a lot less shy” “become more a people person” “not as daunted by new and unfamiliar situations”. “It wasn’t necessarily a bad experience when I first arrived, it was just new, and I just learned from it and I, you know … I tried every day, and I just got stronger and stronger from it, and in turn became more independent”. “as good as anybody else now”. “it’s difficult when I miss home to then spend time with people who I don’t understand”.
Bringing it all back home – implications for campus communities • driven by participants being open, willing to engage, and pushing themselves beyond their comfort zones; • socially situated, triggered in contact with ‘others’ and the dilemmas these posed; and • flowing through and into their biographies as holistic virtuous circles of becoming, crossing learning dimensions in a process of self-actualisation
In the lived experience examples of learning triggers and virtuous circles through experiences of intercultural contact within communities of social practice established during international mobilities the unexamined flow is interrupted and learning is personalised
Rich, yes, but - the learning processes involved are, at root, exactly those which underpin all learning
Rich, yes, but - So – on campus - offer similarly rich communities in which to enable global citizen becoming for all our students? What we present as the expectations, rule and rituals of our campus community at that point situates their learning, quickly establishing norms and practices to move their university being into an unexamined flow
Easy of in-group community the business of the university is to enable us to grow beyond ourselves, not to constrain us within established self- or world- views
To enable all our students our campuses must present themselves at every encounter as genuine spaces of inter-cultural community, and our curriculum – in its content, delivery, and assessment – must require and enable the capabilities to enact that sense of self.
