Cosmopolitanism as Cultural Creativity: New Modes of Educational Practice in Globalizing Times

Abstract

Cosmopolitanism is an ancient idea that is enjoying a critical renaissance today. Scholars across the humanities and social sciences have been examining the meanings and historical trajectories of the concept. They have addressed how the idea differs from multiculturalism and other notions of pluralism. A growing number of researchers are deploying the concept as a lens for interpreting how people in contemporary societies engage in cross-cultural interaction. Scholars are showing how the idea spotlights ways in which people can move beyond tolerance of difference, important as that is, to reimagining, appreciating, and learning with it.This special issue of Curriculum Inquiry presents results from several ongoing educational research projects that feature cosmopolitanism in their theoretical frameworks. The issue springs from a symposium we presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, held in Vancouver in April 2012. The energetic response from our audience, as well as our own interest in the topic, spurred us to convert the presentations into more full-blown offerings to the research community. The articles that follow are much-expanded or reconstructed versions of what their authors spoke about at the conference. I had the dual roles of organizer and discussant at the session, and serve here as guest editor.My purpose in this introductory essay is to characterize the background conception of cosmopolitanism that informs the studies. As we will see, this conception fuses notions of educational and cultural creativity. However, readers will discover that the contributors' research, taken as a whole, is too nuanced and wide-ranging to be captured by any particular framing. bs_bs_banner

University-School Scenarios and Voices from Classrooms. Rethinking Collaboration within the Framework of an Interuniversity Project

“…Secondly, we propose rethinking the process of collaboration in order to promote the presence of schools in university contexts and the role of teacher researcher during their initial training (Ng, Nicholas, & Williams, 2010). The reconceptualisation of collaboration becomes an indispensable element in our new trajectory, in which we want the process of accompaniment to be characterised by horizontal relationships, in such a way that it makes us ethically question decision making at every stage (Fouche & Chubb, 2015;Hansen, 2014). Likewise, this proposal of accompaniment leads us to consider the desirability of building this bridge between universities and schools based on recognition of the uniqueness of the participants and the establishment of links to improve the pedagogical relationship with our students (Frymier & Houser, 2000).…”

Didáctica y currículo universitario: palabras, conceptos y dilemas conceptuales en la construcción del conocimiento didáctico

“…Pero esta cuestión va más allá de los usos de las palabras, dado que los conceptos que les otorgan significado son empleados para definir planes, proyectos y acciones y han traspasado, ya largamente, los límites de las discusiones académicas teóricas. Tampoco son ajenos a estas cuestiones los debates acerca del valor intercultural o multicultural de los programas de internacionalización o sobre los proyectos de formación de competencias globales profesionales o generales (Caruana, 2014;Hansen, 2014). En este terreno, podríamos decir que no hay un efecto acordeón, sino una gran orquesta de acordeones disonantes.…”

Balancing Direction and Response: Four Dimensions of Transformative Facilitation in Educational Development

“…More broadly, “higher education institutions as a whole might become ‘as‐if’ places—”, as Walker () posits, “places where long term goals of social change are lived inside the institution as if they were already norms for society (Bivens, )” (p. 221). The pursuit and embrace of such as‐if spaces is framed by Green and Little () as “staking a claim on marginal territory,” which “permits us to act with integrity and with substance.” For Cook‐Sather and Felten (), the liminal spaces of academic leadership can cultivate our capacity to resist education as “training human capital” (Hansen, , p. 4) and instead support us in striving to foster education that cultivates “expanded moral sympathies, deepened democratic dispositions, and a serious sense of responsibility for the world” (Hansen, , p 4).…”