EDDI XXIII - Academic Digest
What is Global Competence and What Might it Look Like in Chinese Schools?
What is Global Competence and What Might it Look Like in Chinese Schools?
Authors: Veronica Boix Mansilla, Devon Wilson (Harvard Graduate School of Education, USA)
If you wish to see neatly expressed the stark difference between Western and Eastern education look no further than the mottos of universities:
Harvard University: veritas (truth)
UC Berkeley: fiat lux (let there be light)
Tsinghua University: Strengthen self ceaselessly and cultivate virtue to nurture the world
Beijing University: Diligence, rigor, truthfulness, and creativity
Spot the difference?
Well, in case it’s not obvious, the difference exists in the gap between the Western paradigm of ‘understanding (and changing) the world’ and Asian paradigm of ‘understanding (and changing) the self’.
If you are a Western educationalist reading this and/or someone who has been raised in the Western cultural tradition of learning and being, then your relationship to others is premised on your individuality existing exclusive to the world around you. From this subjective position your self is privileged above all else. You are therefore expected to use education as a means of furthering, promoting, and strengthening that individuality, uniqueness, and separateness.
In short, for Westerners, the world is external to you and exists in relationship to you. The purpose of USA/Western education is to provide the skills to question, critique, and seek to change the world around you.
If you are an Asian educationalist reading this and/or someone who has been raised in the Asian cultural tradition of learning and being, then your relationship to others is premised on your individuality being absorbed by, or at least always needing to remain in balance to the world around you. This is not a privileged position where your individuality exists in primacy to others, but one which requires you to subordinate your individuality to the greater good of social harmony and communal living. In short, the world is internalised by you and you exist in relationship to it. The purpose of Chinese/Asian education is to enable you to improve your self, cultivate virtues, and foster qualities enabling social harmony.
You might test this duality by asking yourself and/or your students ‘What should we be teaching students in the 21st century?’.
The response from most Western educationalists/students will be ‘critical thinking’, ‘creative thinking’, ‘independent mindedness’.
When Alibaba CEO Jack Ma was asked this question at the World Economic Forum in 2018, his immediate response was ‘values’.
Or as Gandhi put it:
“You must be the change you want to see in the world”.
Which concurs with what authors of this article observed through their research:
“In our own examination, the integration of cognition, morality and values stood tall among Chinese teachers’ characterisation of their global competence aspirations for their students. When asked about the characteristics they associated with globally competent Chinese students, the qualities of diligence, perseverance, positivity, and honesty were amongst the top 15 attributes listed by Chinese teachers. These were not among the top attributes listed by their Western educational counterparts (typically from the US, or UK), whose depiction of the students with high levels of global competence foregrounded qualities such as curiosity, open-minded, seeking opinions, and passion.” (p. 9-10).
However, the authors also noted a shift in the Chinese educational discourse towards Western educational principles, reflecting China’s desire to position itself as a global power with international influence:
“Perhaps not surprisingly, when referring to future directions in education, Chinese teachers also emphasized creativity, collaboration, communication/self-expression and problem-solving capacities/critical thinking skills as areas they would like to work to prepare their students for the future.” (p. 10)
And these two observations, capturing the tension between current and future educational aspirations in Chinese education, are at the heart of this nuanced and illuminating article, revealing as it does the ongoing tension in Chinese education between acquiring a global competence while respectfully and effectively embracing a traditional Chinese cultural heritage.
“Over the last few years leading educators have called for a global and intercultural competence as a desirable outcome of a 21st century education…[it]…can boost employability as young people become able to investigate and develop a position about an issue of local or global significance, collaborate in culturally diverse teams, and appreciate different perspectives and languages…in today increasingly diverse societies’ (p. 4)
However, this model, desirable as it might be, is a Western one, not Asian and certainly not Chinese. It speaks less of communalist Confucius and more of philosophical individualists such as Aristotle, Wittgenstein and Sartre.
Research aims and methods
Informed by available literature on Chinese conceptions and a longitudinal empirical action-research study of Chinese and foreign teachers working in four Tier 1 Chinese cities, the authors set out to not only examine what it means to be globally competent in a Chinese context in the early 21st century, but to produce a new, ‘hybrid’ version of global competence informed by both Western and Chinese (Asian) philosophies.
“China offers a uniquely fertile context to understand how children grow up in contested cultural, moral and civic terrains, and how emerging hybrid pedagogical approaches might capture traditional and modern aspirations for children and respond with nuance and complexity to the demands of our changing times.” (p. 6)
Rethinking Global Competence Through a Chinese Lens
Informed by their research, the authors (re)define global competence in the context of a hybrid Chinese/Western philosophy as follows:
‘The life-long process of cultivating oneself, one’s human capacity and disposition to understand issues of global and cultural significance and act towards collective wellbeing and sustainable development’ (p.11)
Rooted in the old Chinese proverb: ‘It takes ten years for a tree to grow to its full height, but a hundred years for a human to grow to full maturity’, the authors produce four key strands to their hybrid educational aim of ‘Cultivating oneself to Understand the World.’
1. Desire and Dedication to Understanding the World
To dedicate oneself to inquiring about the world within and beyond one’s immediate environment by: identifying issues and questions worthy of investigation; using a variety of languages, sources and media to assess and weigh evidence critically; addressing nuance and complexity through careful analysis; constructing deeper understanding; developing personal views and conclusions based on compelling evidence, recognising that understanding is never complete.
2. Understanding Perspectives
Seeking to understand perspectives and relate to others harmoniously by: understanding and expressing personal, family and cultural influences on perspectives; engaging other’s perspectives empathetically and respectfully; engaging in complex interactions mindfully, balancing interests of individuals and social harmony; developing trust relationships across difference.
3. Communicate Across Difference
Listen, communicate, and interact across difference mindfully by; seeking to understand diverse audiences; listening respectfully, openly, empathetically across differences; adapt and code-switch verbal, visual and body language; communicate with diverse audiences; reflect about communicative norms to address misunderstandings and miscommunication.
4. Taking Action
Take action through ethical conduct to help nurture more harmonious societies by:
‘students interpreting the invitation to ‘take action’ within their cultural frames, recognising its value, but exploring the possibility of new dispositions that may enrich their capacity for collective influence…Asking questions such as ‘What can I do to contribute…in my inner circle, in my community, in the world?’ (p. 18-19).
Actually, back to Gandhi’s ‘be the change you want to see in the world.’
Conclusion
Every now and again one comes across a piece of educational research which is truly inspiring, in that it shifts one’s subjective perspective and understanding into a new and more enlightened realm. For EDDi, this is such an article. It not only offers nuanced and accessible insights into the respective Chinese (Asia) – Western (UK/USA) educational aims and objectives, it reconstructs these into a hybrid model which any school, international or otherwise, would do well to follow.
The authors offer guidance on how to actually incorporate this hybrid global competence model and philosophy into everyday school/teaching practice and back up their arguments with sound professional guidance and educational philosophy.
“In conclusion and to reiterate, we share our proposed reinterpretation with humility to invite conversation that will help educators in and beyond Chinese schools in which we worked to refine their already growing capacity to distil the most desirable and context relevant aspirations and practices to prepare our youth at the intersection of Eastern and Western orientated worldviews. In an increasingly culturally diverse, economically interdependent geopolitical, multi-polar landscape, few education endeavours could be more significant. (p. 21)
reference
Mansilla VB, Wilson D. What is Global Competence, and What Might it Look Like in Chinese Schools? Journal of Research in International Education. 2020;19(1):3-22.
Photo by Jerry Wang on Unsplash
link
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1475240920914089