Transmorphosis: Negotiating Discontinuities in Academic Work

Abstract

The idea of 'transmorphosis' will be used in this article to discuss the impact of new teaching and learning environments on the highly mobile global academic pedagogue. 'Trans-' implies 'movement across', whether it be space, time, place, culture, or institution. '-morphosis' evokes the possibility/requirement to shapeshift one's pedagogical presence and performance in new and previously unimaginable ways. This article begins by positing that the traditional pedagogue, the one charged with the responsibility of leading the child to learn, no matter what the community, was able to prepare the future generation to maintain and develop the society in which they were to live. The pedagogue was recognised as having an understanding of what needed to be taught, how to teach it, and what a 'good' future would be. One of the noted impacts of globalisation is that we are educating for an uncertain future where local certainty has been replaced by clashes of a global magnitude about what are legitimate lifeways. Increasingly, the learners are adults coming into higher education. Drawing on a range of scholars who have examined the global diffusion of new knowledge, through imitation, innovation, using complex exchange logic, the 'transmorphing' pedagogue will be foregrounded in a discussion of everyday discontinuities that the academic travelling pedagogue is challenged to solve.