Renaissance, Sharing, and Belonging: A Messy Language of Hope

2011 ◽  
Vol 113 (6) ◽  
pp. 1293-1310
Author(s):  
María E. Torres-Guzmán
Keyword(s):  
Personal Growth ◽  
Comparative Education ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Teachers College ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Language Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
University Life ◽  
Globalized World ◽  
Background Context

Background/Context This essay is a part of a special issue that emerges from a year-long faculty seminar at Teachers College, Columbia University. The seminar's purpose has been to examine in fresh terms the nexus of globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants come from diverse fields of research and practice, among them art education, comparative education, curriculum and teaching, language studies, philosophy of education, social studies, and technology. They bring to the table different scholarly frameworks drawn from the social sciences and humanities. They accepted invitations to participate because of their respective research interests, all of which touch on education in a globalized world. They were also intrigued by an all-too-rare opportunity to study in seminar conditions with colleagues from different fields, with whom they might otherwise never interact given the harried conditions of university life today. Participants found the seminar generative in terms of ideas about globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants also appreciated what, for them, became a novel and rich occasion for professional and personal growth. Purpose/Objective Torres-Guzman encourages the reader to consider globalization as a “renaissance” and to embark on the task of rescuing the debris left by modernity to construct a language of hope. Using the rescued concept of hybridity, she foreshadows what might be an intergenerational offering as she reflects on education as sharing and citizenship as belonging. Conclusions/Recommendations Torres-Guzman proposes that a fresh look at hybridity can render a rich concept for constructing resistance to conformity and uniformity, and for renewing a commitment to a multicultural, multilingual, egalitarian, ecologically-sound, and democratic world.

Global Seeing

2011 ◽  
Vol 113 (6) ◽  
pp. 1237-1254
Author(s):  
William Gaudelli
Keyword(s):  
Personal Growth ◽  
Comparative Education ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Teachers College ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Language Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
University Life ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Globalized World

Background/Context This essay is a part of a special issue that emerges from a year-long faculty seminar at Teachers College, Columbia University. The seminar's purpose has been to examine in fresh terms the nexus of globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants come from diverse fields of research and practice, among them art education, comparative education, curriculum and teaching, language studies, philosophy of education, social studies, and technology. They bring to the table different scholarly frameworks drawn from the social sciences and humanities. They accepted invitations to participate because of their respective research interests, all of which touch on education in a globalized world. They were also intrigued by an all-too-rare opportunity to study in seminar conditions with colleagues from different fields, with whom they might otherwise never interact given the harried conditions of university life today. Participants found the seminar generative in terms of ideas about globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants also appreciated what, for them, became a novel and rich occasion for professional and personal growth. Purpose/ Objective The aim of the essay centers on a question: What can we see beyond seeing? This essay considers the typical ways in which we see the world in the a-typical settings of travel. I consider how this type of seeing, when the very purpose of the excursion is to see, often positions the seer to do so as a spectator, consumer or flattener of others. Conclusions/ Recommendations I consider how empathic, interpretative and intimate domains can frame seeing others differently within the plasticity of seeing, moving from a position of global seeing as knowing more towards one of knowing with. I offer a distinctly humanistic and pedagogical approach to reimagining seeing that is cognizant of the rich life-world of the viewed.

Being across Homes

2011 ◽  
Vol 113 (6) ◽  
pp. 1255-1274
Author(s):  
Olga Hubard
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Personal Growth ◽  
Comparative Education ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Teachers College ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Language Studies ◽  
University Life ◽  
Globalized World

Background/Context This essay is a part of a special issue that emerges from a year-long faculty seminar at Teachers College, Columbia University. The seminar's purpose has been to examine in fresh terms the nexus of globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants come from diverse fields of research and practice, among them art education, comparative education, curriculum and teaching, language studies, philosophy of education, social studies, and technology. They bring to the table different scholarly frameworks drawn from the social sciences and humanities. They accepted invitations to participate because of their respective research interests, all of which touch on education in a globalized world. They were also intrigued by an all-too-rare opportunity to study in seminar conditions with colleagues from different fields, with whom they might otherwise never interact given the harried conditions of university life today. Participants found the seminar generative in terms of ideas about globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants also appreciated what, for them, became a novel and rich occasion for professional and personal growth. Purpose My inquiry is driven by the following questions: How is our sense of self influenced by the place where we live? And what happens when our lives take place in two different homes, two cultures? Research Design I explore the guiding questions through the unique perspectives of three individuals whose lives straddle Mexico City and New York City. I share these perspectives as much for the ideas they embody as for the panderings they provoke. Thus, my reflections, often in the form of questions, are interwoven into the three accounts. Conclusions/Recommendations The three accounts and their juxtapositions make evident how the experience of being across cultures can be fraught with opposing experiences, with tensions and contradictions that are, in too many cases, unresolvable. The challenge, then, is not to try to eliminate the tension altogether, but to find ways to become more at home in a world of ambiguity and confusion.

Introduction: Rethinking Globalization, Education, and Citizenship

2011 ◽  
Vol 113 (6) ◽  
pp. 1135-1153 ◽  
Author(s):  
David T. Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Personal Growth ◽  
Comparative Education ◽  
Practical Wisdom ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Teachers College ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Language Studies ◽  
University Life

Background/ Context This essay is a part of a special issue that emerges from a year-long faculty seminar at Teachers College, Columbia University. The seminar's purpose has been to examine in fresh terms the nexus of globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants come from diverse fields of research and practice, among them art education, comparative education, curriculum and teaching, language studies, philosophy of education, social studies, and technology. They bring to the table different scholarly frameworks drawn from the social sciences and humanities. They accepted invitations to participate because of their respective research interests, all of which touch on education in a globalized world. They were also intrigued by an all-too-rare opportunity to study in seminar conditions with colleagues from different fields, with whom they might otherwise never interact given the harried conditions of university life today. Participants found the seminar generative in terms of ideas about globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants also appreciated what, for them, became a novel and rich occasion for professional and personal growth. Purpose/ Objective The purpose of the present essay is to outline the aims and activities of the faculty seminar on globalization, education, and citizenship. I describe its origins, its composition, and the sequence of discussions, readings, and writings participants undertook. I discuss how the seminar adopted as its method of working the form of the spoken and written essay. “Essay” derives from the French essayer, denoting a trial of ideas in an attempt to understand. The introduction also anticipates the scope and style of the essays that comprise this special issue of the journal. Conclusions/ Recommendations The final portion of this introduction raises questions for continued research and practical wisdom. Among them are questions about the nature and purposes of education in our time (with education treated as more than schooling); the meaning of unofficial as well as official notions of citizenship; the dynamics and problematic of “belonging” in a changing world; the meaning of learning as well as misuses of the concept; the place of beauty in inquiry into globalization, education, and citizenship; how the essay form opens up a reconsideration of faculty support and assessment; the benefits and limitations of technology; and the meaning of respect as an orientation in research and practice in globalized conditions.

An Invitation to Unknowing

2011 ◽  
Vol 113 (6) ◽  
pp. 1154-1174
Author(s):  
Lalitha Vasudevan
Keyword(s):  
Personal Growth ◽  
Comparative Education ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Educational Practice ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Wide Range

Background/Context This essay is part of a special issue that emerged from a year-long faculty seminar at Teachers College, Columbia University. The seminar's purpose was to examine in fresh terms the nexus of globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants came from diverse fields of research and practice, among them art education, comparative education, curriculum and teaching, language studies, philosophy of education, social studies, and technology. They brought to the table different scholarly frameworks drawn from the social sciences and humanities. They accepted invitations to participate because of their respective research interests, all of which touch on education in a globalized world. They were also intrigued by an all-too-rare opportunity to study in seminar conditions with colleagues from different fields, those with whom they might otherwise never interact given the harried conditions of university life today. Participants found the seminar generative in terms of ideas about globalization, education, and citizenship. They also appreciated what, for them, became a novel and rich occasion for professional and personal growth. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study At a time when there is increased hybridity in local and global citizenship, language and literacy practices, and performances of cultural identity and affiliation, narrowing of our ways of knowing can detrimentally impact how educators and scholars engage in intellectual inquiry and educational practice. This essay uses the mode of questioning to create a dialogue about the discursive, rhetorical, and even physical postures that educators and scholars might embrace when re-imagining everyday practices of teaching, learning, and research to be open to unexpected trajectories. Questions are woven together with descriptive vignettes of films, excerpts from research studies, personal narratives, and reflective analyses that invoke texts from a wide range of scholarly traditions in order to propose unknowing as a stance through which to engage more fully with and be responsive to a changing world. Conclusions/Recommendations Unknowing is proffered as a stance and a lens through which to re-imagine practices associated with educational practice and research to be more open to new ways of knowing. Rather than offering definitive recommendations, this essay concludes with an invitation for the broader educational community, and especially institutions of education, to reclaim an ethos of inquiry and possibility in the daily acts of seeing, being, becoming, belonging, and storying through which knowing and knowledge are enacted.

Globalization, Social Movements, and Education

2011 ◽  
Vol 113 (6) ◽  
pp. 1196-1213
Author(s):  
Regina Cortina
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Public Education ◽  
John Dewey ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Teachers College ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Meanings

Background/Context This essay is a part of a special issue that emerges from a year-long faculty seminar at Teachers College, Columbia University. The seminar's purpose has been to examine in fresh terms the nexus of globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants come from diverse fields of research and practice, among them art education, comparative education, curriculum and teaching, language studies, philosophy of education, social studies, and technology. They bring to the table different scholarly frameworks drawn from the social sciences and humanities. They accepted invitations to participate because of their respective research interests, all of which touch on education in a globalized world. They were also intrigued by an all-too-rare opportunity to study in seminar conditions with colleagues from different fields, with whom they might otherwise never interact given the harried conditions of university life today. Participants found the seminar generative in terms of ideas about globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants also appreciated what, for them, became a novel and rich occasion for professional and personal growth. Purpose/Objective With globalization—a term that signifies the ever-increasing interconnectedness of markets, communications and human migration—social and economic divides in countries around the world are hindering the access of many people to the major institutions of society, including and especially education. My goal in this essay is to reflect on the dilemma that John Dewey identified in Democracy and Education regarding the “full social ends of education” and the agency of the nation-state. Against the historical background of the nation-state's control of the meaning of public education, my intent is to search for new meanings defining public education through human agency and social movements, using Mexico as an example. My essay, written on the 200th anniversary of Mexico's Independence in 1810 and on the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, reflects on these two major events and how they contributed to shifts in the social meaning of education over time. Two groups—women and indigenous people—did not benefit proportion-ately from education, citizenship and social opportunity. My argument is that the empowerment of women and indigenous groups took place not because of state action but because of social movements contesting the restricted identity and incomplete citizenship provided for them through the capacity of the nation-state. It is crucial to understand the “full social ends of education” to see the way forward in strengthening education, citizenship and social opportunity. Conclusions/ Recommendations My participation in the faculty seminar and the readings we discussed led me towards the rediscovery of the writings of John Dewey, which stimulated my thinking about the “full social ends of education” against the historical background of the nation-state's control of the meaning of public education and my own inquiry to search for new meanings of public education through human agency and social movements. Moreover, the writings of Dewey during his visit to Mexico in 1926 opened a new research agenda for me. I have become increasingly interested in a period of Mexican education that is not well researched, particularly the role of John Dewey's students at Teachers College, Columbia University in the development of Mexico's public education system during the 1920s and 1930s and the creation of the Mexican rural schools and the middle schools during that era.

Cosmopolitanism and Education: A View from the Ground

2010 ◽  
Vol 112 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
David T. Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Educational Practice ◽  
Cultural Hybridity ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
The World ◽  
Background Context

Background/ Context In recent years, scholars the world over in both the social sciences and humanities have reanimated the ancient idea of cosmopolitanism. They discern in the idea ways in which people today can respond creatively to rapid social, political, cultural, and economic transformations. Scholars in this burgeoning field have examined issues involving cultural hybridity, global citizenship, environmental justice, economic redistribution, and more. In the article, I examine from a philosophical perspective how a cosmopolitan-minded education can assist people in cultivating thoughtful receptivity to the new and reflective loyalty to the known. Purpose/ Objective/ Research Question/ Focus of Study Philosophical work has begun on possible relations between cosmopolitanism and education. However, there are virtually no published studies that deploy a systematic cosmopolitan frame of analysis in conjunction with qualitative or quantitative research. This article seeks to encourage such research by elucidating a distinctive conception of cosmopolitanism rooted in one of its long-standing strands. This strand is characterized as cosmopolitanism on the ground, and it features what has been called “philosophy as the art of living” and “actually existing cosmopolitanism.” Research Design The article is a philosophical investigation that builds an argument using the techniques of conceptual analysis, comparison, contrast, analogy, metaphor, illustration, and exegesis of texts. Conclusions/ Recommendations The long-standing strand of cosmopolitanism on the ground generates several key elements of a philosophy of cosmopolitan-minded education. These elements are (1) a recognition of the importance of local socialization as making possible education itself, (2) the recognition that a cosmopolitan outlook triggers a critical rather than idolatrous or negligent attitude toward tradition and custom, (3) the recognition that curriculum across all subjects can be understood as a cosmopolitan inheritance, and (4) the recognition that many teachers constitute an already existing cosmopolitan community and can build on their shared purposes to enhance educational practice the world over.

scholarly journals Sustainable development in the frontiers of the American Megalopolis

2003 ◽  
Vol 70 (420/421) ◽  
pp. 147-161
Author(s):  
Mami Futagami
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Regional Development ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
State University ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Teachers College ◽  
University Teachers ◽  
Language Studies ◽  
Tennessee Valley ◽  
Local Initiatives

Dr Futagami, a graduate of the Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies, Kyushu University, Japan, with degrees (in Language Studies) from Columbia University Teachers' College, USA; (in Anthropology) from Pennsylvania State University; and Tsuda College, Tokyo, is on the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Asian Studies, Nagoya University of Commerce and Business Administration, Japan. Her major publications, reflecting her main fields of study on regional development, regional planning and American studies, include "Appalachia: A region politically invented and restored through civic actions," NUCB Journal of Economics and Management,47, 2: 261-281 (2003) (in Japanese); The evolution of local initiatives in rural America," NUCB Journal of Economics and Management, 46, 2: 267-299 (2002); Transformation of Regional Policies Toward Sustainable Development: The Evolving Synthesis of Government Intervention and Local Initiatives: Ph.D. dissertation submitted to Kyushu University, Japan (2001); "Regional development of the Tennessee Valley and transformation of local economic and natural environment," Regional Development Studies, 6: 67-94 (2000); Jean Gottmann's Urban Studies: Megalopolis to Since Megalopolis, CrossCulture, 1 1: 343-374 (1993) (in Japanese); co-authored with Y. Miyakawa,"Japan's World Map Museum: Global environment, mega-infrastructure,and remote sensing," Sistema Terra, 2, 2: 56-64 (1993); and many other articles both in English and in Japanese. 

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