Understanding the development of students’ worldviews: Teaching cosmopolitanism in an undergraduate course

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Tuesday V)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Reflections on cosmopolitanism and education: Developing cosmopolitan sensibilities for a sustainable future

Proposal

This presentation seeks to build on this emerging literature on creating spaces that enable students to develop cosmopolitan understandings. Specifically, we focus on students in the context of an online undergraduate course, W142 Education in a Global World (or “W142”), offered through a public university in California to ask: In what ways, if any, does participation in W142 enable students to develop cosmopolitan worldviews?

W142, Education in a Global World, is an online undergraduate course that seeks to build students’ understanding of globalization and its impact on education. Drawing on perspectives from across different disciplines, students are encouraged to analyze globalization and the role of education in the 21st century. In the first few weeks of class, we consider two key theories, cosmopolitanism, or the notion that all individuals are citizens of the world, and that we have an ethical responsibility to promote human welfare (Appiah, 2008; Hansen, 2010). Second, we examine the capabilities approach, which provides a basis for a theory of justice and quality of life assessment (Nussbaum, 2011). The course aims to help students develop a conceptual framework that we use to analyze the current state of education around the world. Ultimately, we hope that through this course, students will develop a cosmopolitan worldview and be empowered to address issues of social justice and inequality.

In this paper, I draw on a conceptualization of cosmopolitanism as it relates to the context of W142. The works of key theorists, Appiah (2008) and Hansen (2010) in conjunction with Hull, Stornaiuolo, and Sahni’s (2010) empirical exploration are a core part of the course that students read during the course module on cosmopolitanism. Hence, I draw on these three texts to inform the theoretical framework of this paper. Using qualitative research methods, I draw on data from student interviews, surveys, observations, and work in the course.

The data reveal that students in the course were beginning to demonstrate an incipient understanding of cosmopolitanism, made possible through collaboration with their peers, opportunities to make “real-world” connections, and other structural affordances of this online course. Thus we see that we see that students were beginning to recognize and articulate the importance of cosmopolitanism consistent with some of the arguments made by theorists whose work they read in the course (Appiah, 2008; Hansen, 2010; Hull, Stornaiuolo and Sahni, 2010). In this paper, I also discuss implications for pedagogy as well as future directions for this project.

Author

• Devanshi Unadkat, University of California, Berkeley