Global Citizenship & Campus
Community
Lessons from Learning Theory & the
Lived-Experience of Mobile Students
David Killick
“Learning is the process of being in the world. At the heart
of learning is not merely what is learned, but what the
learner is becoming (learning) as a result of doing and
thinking – and feeling” (Jarvis, 2006: 5).
learning as:
change in the lifeworld
global citizen as:
being-in-the-world
impacts of outbound
international mobility
 intercultural/cross-cultural sensitivity,
awareness, and so forth (e.g.
Bennett;Deardorff)
 among languages students (e.g. Byram)
 transformative (e.g. Bamber) or social
learning (e.g. McLeod and Wainwright)
theories
 critical and comparative thinking (e.g.
Yershova; Mestenhauser)
Broad Theoretical Paradigms
Learning
theories
Ethnocentrism
Unexamined
existence
Piaget – cognitive
schemes
Mezirow – perspective
transformation
Reformulation of
cognitive metaschemes
Emotional
intelligence
Behaviourist &
experiential
learning
theorists
Carl Rogers – significant learning
“self-actualized person”
Habits of
expectation
“…way of thinking and
feeling about our everyday
world, the way in which we
perceive it as given. It refers
to that which we think from
rather than that which we
think about” (Charlesworth, 2000:30)
ready-to-hand,
unexamined
flow
habitus &
doxa
Learning – and the dilemma
“comparatively little change occurs
… in ‘situations of equilibrium’”
(Gmelch, 1997: 487)
“harmony is a non-learning
situation” (Jarvis, 2006: 26)
 “positive, joyful incidents” “events
that are fulfilling rather than
distressing” (Brookfield, 1987: 31)
Inter-subjective – social
learning
Vygotsky - zones of proximal development
Lave and Wenger - communities of practice
Ward et al
– psychological “feelings of well-being or
satisfaction”
– Sociocultural “the ability to ‘fit in’ or execute
effective interactions in the new milieu”
Learning occurs as
intrusions across lifeworld
horizons change
representations in the
lifeworld.
Self-world
Lifeworld
Horizons
Lifeworld
Socio-culturalworld
Extendedworld
Figure 1. Representation of learning as change to the lifeworld across horizons with the
self-world, the socio-cultural-world and the extended-world.
Global citizenship as a way
of being-in-the-world
capabilities they
should
knowledge they
skills they
exhibit
should hold
a waypossess
of
should
being-in-the-world
ethics they should espouse
self-in-the-world
act-in-the-world
acts they should perform
who I am
what I can
self concept
“ the characteristics
of 'I' or 'me' and the
perceptions of the
relationships of the 'I'
or 'me' to others and
to various aspects of
life, together with the
values attached to
these perceptions”
(Rogers, 1959: 200)
self-in-the-world
a sense of self dwelling
among alterity, where
difference is recognised
as legitimate
a characteristic of
human being in a
globalising world
Affective
Cognitive
Lifeworld
Behavioural
Aspects of learning in the
lived-experience of students
on mobility
“… the biggest thing with the experience that I had
was that my experience would have been a tenth, a
twentieth as good if … or I might not have enjoyed
it at all – if I hadn’t made such brilliant friends.
Like, friends were the foundation from which I built
everything up around” (Tiff)
France
Volunteering
Working
Romania


Spain




Studying
Duration (weeks)
4
4
2
2
Realistic to travel home
in mobility
Foreign language users


Credit-bearing &
directly assessed


Credit-bearing & not
directly assessed

30











30

15

15

15

15

15

15














Found individual
accommodation

Shared ‘international’
accommodation
Shared peer
accommodation
30

30

Self-funded (whole or
part)
Australia













Open to learning and open to
challenge
“would like to understand” the perspectives of
others and “definitely” wanted “to know more about
the Australian culture and, and all that sort of stuff”
“the outsider” - “open-minded about things”.
not going to judge “the way they live”
determination to be not “too judgemental”
Will to engage
“I feel like I have to experience it, so I‘m going to …
I‘m getting out there and doing more because I‘m in
another country”.
“was always asking questions to virtually anybody”
“wanted to get to know”
“have a life”
“I do want to go and see more, I want to learn more about
other cultures and see different places – just increase my
knowledge of the world”.
Pushing themselves
“putting myself out there” took her “outside of my
comfort zone”
“out of her way” to “go off”
“massive challenge” and “thrown myself into it””
“definitely more daunting” “like a fish out of water”
“would probably not have given a thought to”
“I wouldn‘t have had to push myself out
of my comfort zone”
“got to go out, see new places, meet new
people, form better friendships”
Learning Dilemmas &
Triggers
“Meeting people from different backgrounds”
friends from different national roots in Australia
…“seeing their families”
“so much” through meeting “countless amounts of
people, and from all the different places”.
“constantly being around people from here [Spain]”
enabled her to learn “how they interact with each other,
and how much more relaxed they are in … with physical
contact”.
“mixing with” and meeting “different
people from different […] cultures and
communities”.
Learning Dilemmas &
Triggers
“I became much more culturally aware of other cultures,
especially because I was an international student, like – with all
the Mauritians, and [the] Americans, and the Italians… Like all the
different type of people that I met…”.
“picked up from the media” through meeting people
and coming “to know them properly”.
“shrug off most of my stereotypes” because she “met
Spanish people and got to know them as individuals”
“through having a lot of different friends, from sort of, like,
even different continents” that she learned “to get on with
people” and “not to take certain things offensively”.
Learning Dilemmas &
Triggers
“I did things that I didn‘t think I‘d enjoy, and I became able to
enjoy things that obviously other people enjoyed as well. And I
could see things from different points of view”.
“to come forward and say things” when “living in a
shared flat with people who are more outspoken”.
“in the thick of it”
“…the smells and the clothes, and the skin”
“seeing actually how people live” and “listening to the stories”,
“We‘ve eaten here. We‘ve drunk here – you know”.
“shock factor” “the way people live within the EU”
“Europe”
“really difficult”
“poverty”
Virtuous circles of becoming
“I‘ve done this before, […] what‘s the problem?”
“…it‘s fed my ambition […] I want to go and see as much as I
can”
“one of the main”
“more confident in working with new people
generally and in speaking in general”.
“not as daunted by new and unfamiliar situations”.
“outgoing”, “assertive” and “open”
“as good as anybody else now”.
“just so much more outgoing, so much more
confident”
“a completely different person”.
“a lot more timid”
“quite fearless”
Virtuous circles of becoming
“…it’s increased my independence. I’d probably say almost a
hundred percent. I feel a hell of lot more confident and
independent within myself. I feel more confident to be put in
situations”.
“a lot less shy”
“become more a people person”
“not as daunted by new and unfamiliar situations”.
“It wasn’t necessarily a bad experience when I first arrived, it
was just new, and I just learned from it and I, you know … I tried
every day, and I just got stronger and stronger from it, and in
turn became more independent”.
“as good as anybody else now”.
“it’s difficult when I miss home to then spend
time with people who I don’t understand”.
Bringing it all back home –
implications for campus
communities
 driven by participants being open, willing to
engage, and pushing themselves beyond their
comfort zones;
 socially situated, triggered in contact with ‘others’
and the dilemmas these posed; and
 flowing through and into their biographies as
holistic virtuous circles of becoming, crossing
learning dimensions in a process of selfactualisation
In the lived experience
examples of learning triggers and
virtuous circles through experiences of
intercultural contact within communities
of social practice established during
international mobilities
the unexamined flow is interrupted and
learning is personalised
Rich, yes, but the learning processes involved are, at
root, exactly those which underpin all
learning
Rich, yes, but So – on campus - offer similarly rich
communities in which to enable global
citizen becoming for all our students?
What we present as the expectations,
rule and rituals of our campus
community at that point situates their
learning, quickly establishing norms and
practices to move their university being
into an unexamined flow
Easy of in-group community
the business of the university is to
enable us to grow beyond ourselves, not
to constrain us within established self- or
world- views
To enable all our students
our campuses must present themselves
at every encounter as genuine spaces of
inter-cultural community, and our
curriculum – in its content, delivery, and
assessment – must require and enable
the capabilities to enact that sense of
self.
Any questions (dilemmas)?