Glonacal agency in comparative and international education: Cultivating students' ontological relationships to multiscalar spaces through online teaching and learning

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Critical Perspectives on Teaching Comparative and International Education

Proposal

The COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath has ushered in a new era for higher education in an age demarcated by emergencies impacting life and well-being. While “emergency” is captured as a global moment, emergencies in the modern and globalized world are continuous and simultaneous moments which start in some locale and expand to the global level (e.g., terrorism, pandemics, natural and man-made disasters). The sudden and wide adaption of online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic has opened up renewed discussions on the roles of higher education in shaping one’s sense of being and conception of space (i.e., where one belongs or does not belong), particularly for graduate level students. The opportunity and autonomy to learn from home for those digitally connected during COVID-19, combined with declining economic conditions and financial insecurity for growing numbers of people worldwide, has led many graduate students to choose online degree programs going forward. Increasingly, students are unwilling to uproot their lives and/or that of their families, to change their locales, to interrupt their learning, or to forego work and income for in-person education. Rather, more and more students are opting for graduate academic programs that provide mobility, flexibility, and opportunity to expand their learning and understanding, while potentially opening new career paths. As such, the current moment provides “a golden opportunity to rethink what matters most in education” (Azorín, 2020, p. 381).
In this concept paper, we argue that graduate students seeking online degrees are more likely to experience shifts in their sense of being and belonging by being immersed in learning that is not specifically space-bound (such as city or nation) while their daily lives are locally rooted, which makes their learning to inherently embody a comparative and international element. Multiscalar refers to socio-spatial spheres of practice formed within hierarchical networks of power and relationship (Çağlar & Glick Schiller, 2018; Glick Schiller, 2018). Such complexity among a host of sociopolitical, cultural, economic, and environmental factors requires online courses in comparative and international education to facilitate students’ appropriation of glonacal agency. The term 'glonacal' encompasses the interplay of three scales of agency and activity and is formed from the conjoining of three words: global(glo) + national(na) + local(cal) (Marginson & Rhoades, 2002). Manifestation of such agency can only be realized through development of an ontological sense of being that encompasses an understanding of local, national, and global spaces. This is because the types of problems under globalization are inevitably implicated at various scales or spheres and can cancel out various efforts for human rights if one acts solely based on one’s interests without an understanding of the interwoven effects and interests of others. Thus, given the present moment to consider what matters most in higher education, the purpose of comparative and international education must clearly aim to develop individuals who can imagine being and belongingness across local, national, and global spheres, thereby necessitating not only research that fosters multiscalar spatial consciousness and glonacal agency (Marginson, 2022) but teaching and learning that does so as well.
Contemplating the possibility of fostering glonacal agency among graduate students, distance learning is no longer just an innovation in higher learning but also a pedagogy to shift and expand students’ ontological sense across different scales of spaces. This is an important moment not only for pedagogical renewal but for ontological ascension—a higher education that advances conceptual understanding between concepts and categories in the field of comparative and international education and that regards graduate students' own ontological views of reality and their being-in-the-world. However, this ontological ascension should accompany critical understandings of, and navigations in, hierarchical networks of power and relationship interwoven through social, economic, and political contexts and histories of places. Toward that end, we argue that online academic courses in comparative and international education develop students' critical local, national, and global perspectives by: (1) conceptualizing 'space'; (2) considering students’ ontological sense of collective being; (3) illuminating online learning to develop glonacal agency in making space; and (4) exploring how such online courses elevate critical glonacal agency. In sum, our pedagogical concern is an ontological concern—to help college and university students see themselves as glonacal beings. Because ontology specifies concepts and relations among them, some key conceptual categories that provide a grammar or common vocabulary in comparative and international education courses for purposes of developing glonacal agency include: fluidity and hybridity; interconnectedness and belonging; identities and identifications; diverse theoretical and philosophical traditions; value convergences and divergences; empowerment (agency) and engagement (activism) (Kubow et al., 2023). This paper therefore contributes to the field by articulating both a conceptual direction for teaching and research in comparative and international education while harnessing the benefits of the online environment.

Authors

• Patricia Kubow, Indiana University - Bloomington

• Seonmi Jin, Indiana University - Bloomington