Constructing a “Humanist” educational experience in the age of globalization and commodification of higher education

Session Submission Type: Group Panel

Description of Session

The central question of our panel is: how can we construct a “humanist” educational experience in the age of globalization and commodification of higher education in the transnational higher learning space. By “humanist educational experience”, we mean educating the student as a “whole person”, with the intellectual and moral capability to reflect on their experiences and accordingly construct their experiences that they value. We attempt to explore this question through reflecting on a shared experience of a pre-course for international undergraduate students studying at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As we are writing this narrative from the personal experiences of the panelists, we don’t deem it necessary to keep anonymity.

The pre-course, as an elective course, was constructed to facilitate the transition of international students to U.S. academic environment. It started from Mid-July, 4 weeks before the students arrived on U.S campus, through online synchronic sessions, and continued for 8 weeks as face-to-face discussion sessions on campus. It started with 97 international students from 12 countries and 27 majors in College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

We use community autoethnography as a method to reflect upon our shared experience from the positions of academic professional (Nicole), course instructors (Nicole, Sophy, Ga Young), TAs (Sophy, Ga Young), and students representing different backgrounds of the class (Juehang, Junheng, Naomi, Zhicheng). We also invite an administrative intern (Violet) to join our reflection process as a “critical friend” (Kemer et al., 1997) who did not share the experience but is curious about how it was done. Our panel is unique by using this method, because different panelists write and reflect collaboratively and dialogically about the shared experience, rather than writing papers individually about the experience of their own.
Community autoethnography, according to Pensoneau-Conway, et al., (2014), is a way of relational inquiry through which “participants dialogically collaborate through writing in order to resituate identified social/cultural and sensitive issues with the explicit goals of community-building and cultural and social intervention of community through collaboration” (p. 313). It is a form of “written dialogue” to co-construct a narrative, through collaborative writing, from various positions in relation to each other. Community autoethnography is not only a way to engage and critique, through collaborative writing, issues such as identity and intimate relationships, (Toyosaki et al., 2009; Pensoneau-Conway, et al. [in press]). It is also, we argue, a critical and participatory methodology to research about classroom experience and curriculum construction from multiple positionalities from instructors, TAs, students, etc. In this panel, we will engage with this methodology to collaboratively write about our reflections on the shared experience in the pre-course.

Our project is significant in three ways. First, it offers an alternative picture against the existing discourse about international students in the transnational higher learning space, especially those from Asian countries, who are usually depicted as “neoliberal” subjects, “instrumental” learners who are “consuming” American higher education with aims for U.S degrees, careers, or citizenship (Ong, 2006; Abelmann and Kang, 2013). Rather, from our experiences as TAs and course instructors, we found that the majority of the students in this course expressed strong desires to explore the values of liberal education, build up global perspectives, and become critical thinkers not only in their academic study but also in their personal lives.

Second, it illustrates an “interactive curriculum co-construction” process that was advocated by Dewey (1902). The curriculum was not totally student-centered or teacher-centered, but co-constructed by the instructors with reference to student writings and classroom discussions about their transnational experiences. In addition, it demonstrates pedagogically a “problem-posing education” that Freire (2000) argued for. The educational experience was constructed based on the students’ reflections about their own experiences and was critically examined through problem-posing and critical reflections.

Third, this course served as an intervention in the beginning of students’ educational process in the U.S by providing a safe space to examine their educational aspirations, desires, and their purposes of higher education. Through critical discussions about the purposes of liberal arts education, questions such as “what it means to be an educated person”, critical thinking, diversity and community, etc., the course helped shape the students’ thinking and building of their educational journey in the U.S.

In summary, through this process of constructing, delivering, researching about the shared experiences throughout the pre-course, we provide a textual account of possibly constructing a “humanist” educational experience in the age of globalization and commodification of higher education in the transnational higher learning space. As Rizvi (2005) argued, higher education has a role in “producing critically and morally informed graduates able to recognize the importance of issues relating to the ethics and politics of [globalization], …, and of the possibilities of cosmopolitan solidarity” (p. 91).We envision a course like this and its pedagogical possibilities illustrate such an intervention.

Our panel presentation will be structured according to the positionalities of each panelist in relation to the class. First, the academic professional, Nicole, will talk about the landscape of internationalization at the university and the campus-wide concerns about “international student integration” issues. Second, the two TAs, Sophy and Ga Young, will talk about their multiple positionalities in relation to the course and the students. Third, we will collaboratively talk about the process of curriculum development and pedagogy used in this class. Finally, the students, in collaboration with the instructors, will talk about multiple themes emerged from the reflection of their experiences through our Community Autoethnography, such as the construct of “international students”, the discussions of “integration”, etc. Our panel presentation will be a dialogue as we initiate and respond to each other from our different positionalities in relation to each other.

References:
Abelmann, N. & Kang, J. (2013) A fraught exchange? U.S. media on Chinese international undergraduates and the American university. Journal of Studies in International Education XX(X) 1-16.
Dewey, J. (1902). The Child and the Curriculum. University of Chicago Press.
Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Bloomsbury Academic.
Kember, D., Ha, T. H., Lam, B. H., Lee, A., NG, S., Yan, L., & Yum, J. C. K. (1997). The diverse role of the critical friend in supporting educational action research projects, Educational Action Research, (5) 3,
Ong, A. (2006) Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Duke University Press.
Pensoneau-Conway, S. L. et al. (2014) Self, relationship, positionality, and politics: A community autoethnographic inquiry into collaborative writing. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies. 14(4) 312–323.
Rizvi, F. (2005) International education and the production of cosmopolitan identities. Globalization and Higher Education. Research Institute for higher Education Hiroshima University (RIHE) International Publication Series No. 9.
Toyosaki, S., Pensoneau-Conway, S. L., Wendt, N. A., & Leathers, K. (2009). Community autoethnography: Compiling the personal and resituating whiteness. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 9 (1), 56-83.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Sophy Cai, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Individual Presentations

• A Landscape of Internationalization of Higher Education: The Case of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - Nicole Lamers, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• International Graduate Students, International TAs, International “Diversity Workers”: the Multiple Positionalities of the Course Instructors - Ga Young Chung, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Constructing a “Humanist” Educational Experience: Interactive Curriculum Co-Construction and Problem-Posing Pedagogy - Sophy Cai, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Complexities of a “Humanist” Educational Experience for “International Students” - Sophy Cai, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Ga Young Chung, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign