Fostering Critical Global Competencies and Radical Hope: Pedagogical Insights from Virtual Exchanges Across Korea, Iran, and the US

• In Event: Roundtable Session 11
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Igniting Hope and Innovation: Social-Emotional Leadership and Future-Ready Classrooms

Proposal

Various technological tools exist to facilitate virtual exchange and harness the connective potential offered by emergent information communication technologies. This exploratory study examines the possibilities and constraints of intercultural collaboration through global virtual exchange (GVE) and looks at teacher educators' perceptions of student learning in their respective classrooms and cultural contexts during and after the COVID-19 global pandemic. The COVID-19 global health pandemic brought unprecedented quarantines, lockdown, death tolls, and significant challenges of international travel and exchange. Yet amid this difficult moment in human history, resilient educators struggled to adapt, modify, adjust, innovate, and transform their learning environment in new and exciting ways. GVE, understood here as a research-supported practice that is technology-enabled, facilitated, people-to-people learning sustained over a period of time (Helm, et al. 2020), is a promising tool for global competency development in teacher education amid challenging times. Many research articles focus on students and their intercultural development through virtual exchange (Shadiev & Sintawati, 2020), few studies focus on the identity of instructors themselves and their pedagogical choices and perceived impact.
In addition, few studies focus on the changes in the instructors impacted by the global engagement designed and conducted by themselves (Author 2, 2022). Instructor’s hope is directly connected to their well-being and burnout (Korthagen, 2004; Palmer, 1998). Edelwish and Brodksy (1980) warned that burnout is the loss of hope and meaningfulness, characterized as a progressive loss of idealism, energy, purpose, and concern. Radical hope for teachers (although we focus on GVE instructors in higher education) at this challenging time of post-COVID warrants more attention to close a gap in research.
In this study, diverse educators in University level teacher education and educational leadership preparation with origins from Iran, Korea and the United States reflect on instances in their respective teaching and learning processes. They explore, through personal scholarly narrative (Nash, 2004), autoethnography (Poulos, 2021), and duoethnography (Norris, Sawyer, & Lund, 2012), specific instances in their GVE and reflect on their perceived learning impact on their students as well as on their pedagogical practice. Organizationally, an exploration of theory and key terms such as critical global competency and radical hope will be explored. Secondly, the auto- and duo-ethnography methodology will be presented. In the data section, intersectional identity portraits of instructors, their motivations, and pedagogical snapshots will be analyzed. Finally, implications will be explored in a duoethnography dialogue among authors who focus on possibilities and constraints for using virtual exchange to foster critical global competencies and radical hope through deep learning experiences.

Authors

• Maryam S. Sharifian, James Madison University

• Shin Ji Kang, James Madison University

• Edward Brantmeier, James Madision University