'Ways of doing' and 'ways of being': cultivating cosmopolitanism in situ at a transnational education institution
Jingran Yu
Abstract
This article explores students’ acquisition of cosmopolitanism through transnational education (TNE). It adopts a critical approach to educational cosmopolitanism, distinguishing ‘ways of being’ at the dispositional level and ‘ways of doing’ at the practice level, to unfold the contingency and multiplicity of cosmopolitanism as well as the underlying power dynamics between ‘the West’ and ‘the rest’ in a TNE context. Based on a case study of a British TNE institution in China, it examines students’ predispositions in their decision-making stage, acquisition of cosmopolitanism during TNE experience and self-perceived changes and future aspirations afterwards. The findings show that TNE experience has largely facilitated their cosmopolitan ‘ways of doing’ in terms of language competence, foreign encounters and cultural taste, where both consistencies and inconsistencies with their previous ‘ways of being’ emerged. On the one hand, their performance of cosmopolitanism was situational and limited when it came to non-academic foreign encounters and seemed to be banal and strategic rather than reflexive and ethical. This was foreshadowed in their predispositions in which Western-centrism, consumerism and instrumentalism were more evident than cosmopolitanism. On the other hand, TNE experience enhanced their openness and adaptability, and also provoked cosmopolitan orientations in future aspirations, with potential ethical implications of bridging the boundaries between different social groups and ethnicities. This study thus recommends that TNE institutions further incorporate a more inclusive and ethical approach, moving beyond an essentialist, normative framework of cosmopolitanism and departing from narrowly defined ‘Western’ competencies that are instrumentally oriented towards global position-taking.
Higher Education, Published: 24 October 2023，Volume 88
