Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: The Context of Being, Interculturality and New Knowledge Systems

Language emanates from the individual who articulates from a coding system, whether oral or written, a construct of relational and communicative devices that determines who they are and what they would like to be. The concept of Being or ‘to be’, foregrounds a diverse range of definitions and extrapolations into the attributes of individuals, individuality, communities, and societies. The aim of the chapter is to unravel issues in the theorising of the concept of Being and its relationship to Indigenous Knowledge Systems for research students, through a teaching framework. A further aim is to explore the correlation of Being and Indigenous Knowledge Systems with the changing face of research relationships in a contemporary global setting. I shall, firstly, draw on relevant conceptualisations of what is Being under a Western framework. I, then, problematise this concept through Indigenous Knowledge Systems with a review of the literature on the issues surrounding its use. In the third part of this chapter, I focus on the changing face of research relationships by exploring the alignment of Being with the principles of Indigenous Knowledge Systems and their connectivity within a global framework. In this way, I foreground a significance of differentials and a re-imaging of thought and perception in the way research into Indigenous and Aboriginal societies is positioned.

In this chapter, I suggest that institutional guidelines and principles for conducting ethical research within Indigenous and cross-cultural contexts (see for example, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Guidelines for Ethical Research in Indigenous Studies, 2012) may not, in themselves be enough to promote the ethical practices nor lead to innovative outcomes if the fundamental premises of Western research in Indigenous contexts remain the same. Alternatively, valuing and applying Indigenous conceptions of Being, relationality and knowing when engaging with Indigenous participants and also, within actual procedures of research may lead to greater ethical know-how and a deeper understanding of how Indigenous modes of knowledge production can extend the frontiers of knowledge to solve real world problems. Such possibilities are predicated on recognising the limitations of our own epistemologies and ontologies and addressing the question of how we might refigure the role and positioning of ‘outsider’ researchers in ways that imbed, more self-reflexive and culturally appropriate modes of engagement and the application of Indigenous notions of Being, knowing and doing into research procedures to enhance the impact and benefits of research both within and beyond Indigenous communities.

This chapter explores the importance of the multifaceted levels of Aboriginal Being through my personal story. I, as the author will not only be the Researcher but also will be the researched. It is my journey that exposes me as the student, researcher, and teacher. By drawing on my life’s journey I narrate who I am and where I come from through both autoethnographical methodology and self-reflexivity. It is through this that I open up a space for wholistic education. It is envisaged that this work will uncover some of the complexities associated with Connection and Disconnection that has contributed to my personal growth and educational journey, connected to my Being. It is this experience I now transition onto my students. I am working with like-minded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People, towards the vision and mission for my College. We as a collective continue to elaborate on the extremity and prevalence in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People, and their need for a safe space. It is within this space that we as a College understand the importance of flexibility, ensuring healing, decolonisation, and transitioning in allowing for the development of a culturally appropriate wholistic education in the vocational and education sector.

Internationalisation of education is often regarded as preparing students to work in a globalised world. Our graduates are not only workers and consumers of the increasingly global labour market, but they are also people, friends, parents, colleagues, neighbours, partners, voters and (global) citizens. Attitudes towards oneself and other people, and the underlying values that these attitudes are based on, poses challenges to quality education. Education in the context of globalisation needs to be inclusive and equitable in order to be of quality (United Nations, 2015), but what does this look like in practice? What does it require of students, and for those responsible for designing education? Do students and teachers have the possibility to reflect on and conceptualise the realities they live in? Apart from knowledge and technical skills, what growth mindset do students and teachers need in order to navigate international and intercultural perspectives responsibly and ethically?

This chapter proposes to address these questions through the prism of four teachers in the field of global health education. The students they teach and interact with, as well as their needs as active citizens in a globalised world, will provide the backdrop for further reflection. The personal journeys of the authors between countries, disciplines, professions, learning and teaching will thus be conceptualised as experiences continuously being reconstructed and deconstructed in the classroom through processes of being, belonging and becoming. It is argued that these processes can be used as resources to create inclusive and equitable quality education.

The construction of teaching and learning subjectivities in tertiary education institutions takes place within postcolonial dynamics, where desires, emotions and conscious and unconscious processes need to be read against the particular social and historical conditions of Kenyan material and political realities. Curiously, Indigenous language texts could be argued as constituting the ‘difficult knowledge’ (Britzman, 2003a, p. 31) of the Kenyan education aims. Britzman’s concept of difficult knowledge refers to knowledge that helps to deal with traumatic history. In the Kenyan context, traumatic history would include dealing with remembering and forgetting imperialism, reconciliation (tribal and/or political violence), loss and death, and the ambivalence of re-imagining the notion of Being in an interconnected global community. Therefore, in order to present a viable analysis of the extent to which teachers’ reading positions (perspectives and perceptions) in Kenya have never been fully appreciated or fully incorporated in teaching and learning, there is a need to explore in-depth studies in this area. This will act as a starting point to an understanding of complex intricacies of preparing teachers in tertiary education institutions in Kenya. The focus in this chapter includes rethinking meaningful culturally responsive pedagogy in tertiary institutions from a global perspective (Svetelj, 2018). The chapter explores the shifting and complex relationship between theory and practice with regard to preparing teachers in tertiary education for a changing world. It reviews and reflects on teaching and learning of English language and literature in postcolonial contexts. Using personal insights, both as an insider (former secondary school teacher in Kenya) and outsider – teacher trainer at a tertiary institution, what Kenyan teachers want from the teaching of English literary texts will be discussed. The contestations regarding best teaching practices, the effects of teaching on the development of self, and resistances in teaching and learning also emerge as issues of relevance to teaching and reading English literary texts in Kenyan education and are useful as departures for critical analysis.

My encounter with ‘interculturality’ was partly occasioned by the fact of being born in Belgium at a period in time where growing up with multilinguality was a matter of normality and partly by then living and working in eight countries across all continents. Working in local communities and later in academic contexts sharpened my awareness about the importance of language in the transference of knowledge and interlinguistic exchanges of knowledges. Especially knowledges pertaining to the underlying ontological and epistemological differences and shadings of meanings and that require contextual understanding of these meanings are at the core of the chapter. The regular mistranslations occurring from social science texts originally written in other-than-English languages caused original meanings to get lost in translation. Some of the consequences of such mistranslations are examined, focussing on education and possible futures in our ‘pluriverse’, especially in the present epoch where global conversations are ever more important to address our predicaments, facing ecological disaster, extinction and the potential un-liveability for humans and so many other species of the earth. Including the non-human in our relational considerations for a possible future enlarges the need for new and interculturally understandable knowledge systems and the positivist and other epistemological inclinations in the dominant West will not make this any easier considering our rather sad record during the past four centuries.

Since the beginning of the new millennium, Confucian doctrines on one’s self-cultivation have been re-introduced to curriculum in China. The revived cherish of the Confucian legacy in the twenty-first century is a reverse from the official rejection of Confucianism in the Mao era (1950–1976). It also appears as a counterweight to the individualism proliferating among the Chinese youths born at the beginning of the new millennium (Gen Z). The re-introduction of Confucianism is thus ideologically purposeful. Yet how does the mixed exposure to Confucius’ legacy and the modern idea of self-awareness impact this cohort of young people, in particular their way of learning? This chapter focusses on Chinese Gen Z studying in Australia. Using the Bourdieuan theory of human habitus, this chapter examines how these students negotiate between the ideas of self-cultivation and self-awareness, and what implications such experiences have in an intercultural academic community.

Sri Lanka’s diversity reflects its situation in the Indian Ocean and its trading potential. The existent diversity was further enhanced with the arrival of the Portuguese in the sixteenth century ad. The Portuguese were driven by the twin goals of trading and proselytising which led to territorial control and cultural flows. Historical narratives have centred around conflicts, wars, treaties, heroes, tensions and have omitted the day-to-day interactions and cultural flows. Recovering these narratives lead to creating new knowledge systems with more comprehensive pictures of the past which enable societies to understand the present better. Negative portrayals of the Portuguese have centred around the destruction to the religious philosophies in the island – Buddhism and Hinduism – and the loss of land to the Portuguese. These were further exacerbated by the ruthless and corrupt practices of colonisation. Documented historical narratives ignored the porosity and human interactions between the coloniser and colonised (De Silva Jayasuriya, 2008a). Concurrent occurrences of the official presence have not been separated from the unofficial that remain unrecognised. Alternative narratives of culture (material culture, artistic expressions, clothes, domestic lifestyles, etc.) relay the unrecognised. This chapter highlights sociocultural connections between communities in multiethnic pluricultural Sri Lanka which evolved during the colonial era. Histories built from the bottom up and alternative narratives which include culture contact mirror colonial encounters (de Silva, 2007). The impact of the Portuguese on Sri Lankan culture, economy and lifestyle has been explored. The degree to which colonial histories have influenced and informed new ways of knowing within Sri Lankan culture is considered. Drawing on the author’s critical self-reflections and her long-term interest in researching and writing about the Portuguese encounter and spillover effects in Sri Lanka, this chapter argues that a new historiography is called for in order to appreciate and acknowledge the Portuguese legacy in Sri Lanka and its contemporary relevance.

With the emerging global culture of education as multicultural, multilingual, and plurilingual, higher education is becoming a more contested and complex space for both teachers and students at different localities and contexts. Such complexities create possibilities as well as challenges for educators who should address these diversities yet maintain the quality of teaching and learning. Both local scholars/educators and transnationally mobile academics/teachers face these challenges in different ways. This chapter focusses on the affordances of the latter: academics who have been engaged in diverse teaching/research contexts and developed certain perceptions of ‘Being’ in ‘intercultural’ spaces within and without boundaries and across time. In particular, the experiences of a female academic, from the Middle East, involved in teaching and researching English Literacy pedagogy transnationally, as a former academic at an Iranian university and then in a Western university, will be examined through autoethnography and in reflection upon her positioning, both as a student and a teacher in these local and global contexts. Bakhtin’s (1981) notion of insided-ness, outsided-ness, and in-between-ness, and Hermans and Hermans-Konopka’s (2010) Dialogical Self Theory (DST) will inform this chapter philosophically. Recent work in higher education on ‘complexity thinking’ and ‘relationality’ (Beckett & Hager, 2018) will ground this chapter too. These conceptual frameworks enable the author to scrutinise diverse perspectives on ‘Being’ and ideologies (ontologies), and diverse formation of knowledge (epistemologies) which result in diverse teaching and learning practices. The author links these diversities to the notion of ‘literacy’ in global times and shows, through her narratives, how her particular cultural, social, historical, and embodied literacies position her pedagogically as a non-Anglo academic in English education within a Western university. This affords her to construct her in-between position by not fully assimilating the target culture, nor fading her Middle Eastern identities. Instead, she brings affordances of her intercultural Being in creation of the ‘third space’ for her own teaching and learning practices. In turn, this has led to how her students across subjects are encouraged not to dissolve into the dominant frame of thinking; but to search for their own ‘Being’ through reviving individual, local stories and to express themselves globally, yet act as ‘glocally’ literate people who are able to make particular changes in their own life and in the lives of others.

This chapter concludes with challenging the implicit ideological position in global higher education which promotes a unified and homogenised epistemology (often Western/Anglo) within the multicultural, multilingual, and even plurilingual context of education. The author, echoing Yun and Standish (2018) specifically questions how internationalisation of education has led to a reductive dichotomisation of local students versus international students (through a deficit lens) rather than of establishing a rich platform for bringing to the fore heterogenous voices, diverse narratives, and plural/multiple knowledge platforms to argue, create, reflect, narrate, and collaborate more fruitfully. Instead she claims for expanding, extending, and extrapolating ways in which knowledge can be (de/re) constructed by people (both learners and teachers) as active agents of change, inter/trans-culturally.

Pain is socially and culturally experienced. This chapter builds on previous research into the value of visual images for communicating pain in the UK, which evidenced ways in which images can improve doctor–patient interaction. It discusses ways in which photographs co-created with people living with chronic pain can be catalysts for discussion of pain and suffering in a range of cultural contexts, including higher education and healthcare training. We draw on a pilot project in Delhi, India where images were used as stimuli to dialogue and exploration of shared understanding of pain and current work in UK higher education using visual and other participatory methods. Students have a chance to work with and discuss images which depict qualities and characters of pain. Through seeing and hearing about patients’ experiences of pain, students learn about the commonalities and diversities in people’s experiences of their bodies and minds and how these impact on lives. As future health professionals, their own responses to this are important. Chronic pain can be a disabling condition leaving people vulnerable, with their sense of self and how they are seen by others threatened. People living with pain have to (re)negotiate their identity, with themselves and others, to see who they can be, as well as what they can do in this new state. Exploration of this through visual arts and verbal participatory activities can provide otherwise untapped insights and understandings of the human condition and its diversity. Exploring ways in which this approach could be extended to and adapted to other contexts are part of our future plans.

The students’ lived experiences of belongingness in higher education are analysed using an explanatory framework that has been developed from the findings of the Council of Europe’s report on ‘Facets of Interculturality’ (Leclercq, 2003). In this report, interculturality is defined as a process and an outcome of intercultural interactions, aimed at equity and mutual respect. Applied to the higher education context, the framework addresses four core questions that uncover the inclusivity of a curriculum, here understood as the formal, informal and hidden curriculum, and its effect on the students’ experience of belongingness. These questions relate to the acknowledgement of a student’s cultural identity in the curriculum, equity of opportunity to engage in a diverse classroom, while considering a student’s own agency and need for proximity and distance. The student narratives of their lived experiences highlight the opportunities for intercultural dialogue and learning within a diverse classroom, and for interculturality as a student outcome or graduate attribute. For this to happen, however, the ethos of the institution needs to support students and educators to embrace and act with equity and respect on the diversity that they together represent.

The conceptualisation of interculturality has largely been informed by the Centre-western meanings of the notions of culture, Self and the Other (Holmes, 2015). The dominant Eurocentric view of culture which is associated with the idea of civilisation, progress and growth in opposition to the notions of that which is uncivilised, backword or retrogressive, has constructed culture as a static entity with fixed boundaries that display discernible differences (Jenks, 2005). This view of culture has established that the encounters of cultures can necessarily be confrontational and traumatic. Within this context, intercultural education is expected to play a vital role in facilitating effective cross-cultural interaction, in particular, by improving the understanding of the cultural Other and avoiding Othering. In this process, the Self and the Other are recognised as categories with ascribed qualities which are fixated in a singular nationality, ethnic group or a religious faith. This thesis silences the dynamicity of the transient Self while strengthening the continuation of the existing cultural hegemonies and social–cultural binaries rather than democratising and enabling effective encounters among people. I argue that the uncontested primacy of the western dualistic world views and the absence of the non-western philosophical thinking have resulted in narrowing down the breadth and the depth of intercultural education and its capacity to help develop cross-culturally fluent graduates. In this chapter, I use the concepts of Anathma (non-Self) and Anicca (impermanence) in Theravada Buddhist philosophy (Kornfield & Fronsdal, 2011) to understand how alternative perceptions of Self can help develop cosmic compassion that contributes to successful co-existence between humans and all living Beings in the universe. My argument in this chapter is informed by the ideas of sociological absence (Santos, 2007) decoloniality (Maldonado-Torres, 2007) and Sandoval’s (2000) ideas on decolonial love.

This chapter begins with the premise that much that has been considered ‘new’ within Centre-Western institutions of research and learning has already been there outside the West but not recognised as such. A reconstructed ethnographic account, using creative non-fiction, of the experience of a doctoral student abroad in a Western university shows how she struggles to recover the unrecognised ‘new’ from her own deCentred past. The element of struggle is made harder by powerful Centre narratives of denial that she meets and also brings with her. This analysis follows a postcolonial, critical cosmopolitan approach informed by the social action theory of Max Weber. This is embodied in my grammar of culture, at the centre of which small culture formation on the go brings intercultural experience from the everyday past. However, this deCentred, hybrid, third-space process is constantly derailed and truncated by Centre discourses and narratives that seek to segment and rationalise learning and research processes within positivist and neoliberal structures and false essentialist conceptualisation of hybridity and third space. The chapter also addresses my own positionality as a Western researcher and educator and how I am able to write about the deCentred Self struggling against a divisive Centre Other. I claim insider knowledge of the workings of Centre structures and a neoliberal West as steward discourse that covertly Others beneath a seductive yet false veneer of well-wishing. My own interculturality is enriched by a personal struggle to find hidden realities. The reconstructed ethnographic account will therefore also demonstrate how false perceptions from the Centre make it difficult for all of us to arrive at deCentred understandings.

Universities expose higher education professionals to complex organisational environments, expecting them to comply with structures, policies and practices. A university is not so different in this respect from other Communities of Practice (Wenger, 1998), in which the pressures to conform are often greater than the inducement to be original, and in which being different may be implicitly discouraged. The relationship between the individual and the established power structures becomes even more complicated when a university is going through the transitions and challenges that are inherent to internationalisation. This chapter examines the challenges and opportunities experienced by academics who are cultural and linguistic outliers within the setting of a European university, showing how the assumptions, values and expectations of the university environment can affect individuals’ ability to perform agentically. We consider how these academic outliers make meaning of being professional within the context of internationalisation and consider how such efforts can contribute to new understandings of interculturality. We further examine how alternative ways of being can result in new modes of engagement with colleagues. Drawing on interviews with six academics within a single institution, this chapter offers a version of the truth that is ‘woven from an amalgam of raw data’ (Clough, 2002), resulting in an exploratory narrative in the voices of fictionalised protagonists.

Teaching and learning success rely on effective communication in a style which will enhance enquiry and engage the learner in developing self-confidence and self-worth. This is a space which respects the prior knowledge and culture of the learner. Many have written and theorised with regard to the importance of a culturally inclusive curriculum, which in effect should incorporate decolonising methodologies in the multifaceted pedagogical landscape. Education has been structured on a Western scaffold which has gone unchallenged over decades. Interculturality with regard to Indigenous pedagogy must be recognised and identified to move forward. Teaching in the area of the creative arts is a diverse learning environment. Creative works are culturally informed and are closely connected to the individual’s sense of identity, cultural values, spiritual beliefs and traditional expectations. Visual arts are a point of intercultural communication, where traditional artistic expressions connect with those around us, informing and expressing our ‘Being’ to a wider audience. This chapter will provide an exploratory discussion of the historical and sociocultural facets of Australian Aboriginal Knowledge Systems and how this relates to an emerging scholarly Indigenous Knowledge system. The aspects of this chapter are: it will focus on the colonisation of Australia; a review of Indigenous and Western theoretical perspectives; and the importance of traditional practice, such as yarning and cultural values in relation to creative arts. This expands on possibilities and creative ideas, informing the various ways expression can be developed. These can be both traditional and contemporary in origin. This chapter will bring reference to these in the particularistic sense of creative expression and its correlation with teaching in higher education for Aboriginal students.

The word Ubuntu has become widely known around the world as an African humanitarian wisdom that promotes international solidarity and Indigenous knowledge. The appeal of Ubuntu,as an African traditional philosophy is the emphasis on concern for fellow human beings. The primary aim of this critical literature review is to demonstrate the role Ubuntu can play in enriching social work and shifting the Euro-American foundations of the profession in teaching diaspora African students and practicing social work with diaspora African communities. The humanitarian values of Ubuntu, however, need not be limited to Africans.

This chapter explores how Ubuntu can be adopted in teaching social work and also enriching social work theoretical underpinnings. Social work has roots in Western philosophical foundations and cultural experiences, with a primary focus on supporting disadvantaged people in communities where it is practiced.However, there is a recognised need to expand this Western orientation to include other views as social work expands to be a global academic and practice profession.

An approach to learning and teaching based on Ubuntu has been described as ‘Ubuntugogy’ (Bangura, 2005). Ubuntugogy represents a holistic educational paradigm where education plays a role beyond an individual’s acquisition of knowledge and skills but instead aims at total development for the individual scholar, their community and their physical and social environment. Social work education is aimed at equipping students with the skills to contribute to the welfare of other human beings in the same way Ubuntugogy recognises the importance of mastering skills to transform individual learners and their communities. Both are therefore focused on practical education to create a world that meets the needs of the individuals and their communities.

Ubuntu approaches view education as a means for struggle for survival and liberation from oppression. There are similar approaches in education literature that emphasise the cultural and historical aspects of education (Lave, 2019). Ubuntu philosophy has roots in African traditions and history that also have clear echoes in other traditional societies that emphasise interdependence and relationships between people and their physical world in an intricate web of life.

Social work can learn from Ubuntu if it is to move beyond its traditional Western roots. Ubuntu and social work share the commonality of concern for human welfare. Ubuntu goes a step further in emphasising the intricate linkages between humans and nature in a non-hierarchical web. Social work can also enrich Ubuntu with its body of knowledge, accumulated since the late 19th century, in practical application of the identified Ubuntu ideals. This chapter presents an attempt at such a dialogue.

This chapter examines the contributions that the Indian political leader and educator, Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) can make to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) led practice of Global Citizenship Education (GCE) and a sustainable world. It discusses issues related to the cognitive, socio-emotional, and behavioural dimensions of learning to know, learning to be, and learning to do involving a critical analysis of what it means to be and become an active citizen. This work expands on a long-term study on selected thinkers that suggests that there are political implications of taking action based on values, such as, peace and non-violence. Challenges often emerge when one takes action in real-world politics, and there are merits in studying the modes of creativity displayed by actors who are embroiled in these successes and challenges. Among the examples of such thinkers is Gandhi, the leader of one of the largest non-violent mass movements in the recent history of India with a significant influence abroad. As discussed in this chapter, a critical engagement with studies on the patterns of living of people and communities across Western/non-Western diasporas that are based on values, such as peace and non-violence, can help develop intercultural understandings and enhance education for citizenship. The chapter examines value-creating global citizenship education as a pedagogical approach to learning that has been developed as an outcome of studies on Gandhi and other Asian thinkers.

Can one ‘reclaim’ the future? How can a future, that, by its very definition, has not yet occurred, be reclaimed? The concept is associated with the Sankofa bird, a ‘mythical bird through which individuals, groups and, communities are reminded to look back in order to reposition themselves to more strategically move forward’ (Assie-Lumumba, 2016, p. 10). I have settled on ‘reclaiming the future’ as an appropriate metaphor for this chapter which will tell a story – or stories – of paths along which I have meandered, looked back, repositioned myself several times and, hopefully, continued to move forward in ‘being’ a higher education practitioner and in ‘being’ a human ‘being’. Such meanderings will recall encounters with different philosophies – in particular how they mediate learning and teaching – different knowledges and different people and contexts. It will privilege – but not unquestioningly – the value of critical reflexivity in research and in teaching, revisiting many of the questions that have arisen and continue to arise for me through engaging in these academic practices. It thus addresses the book’s core themes of being, interculturality and – possibly – new knowledge systems.

In the face of what can be termed ‘a moment in time’ occurrence, with relevance to the Australian context, the focus of this chapter is one of emergent understanding. It explores the scrambling of definitive terms in the coding of a historicity that has turned one investigational episode into a world phenomenon. The topic, ‘COVID-19, the Crossing of Borders and New Knowledge Systems and their relationship to higher education systems illuminates the positioning of circumstance in how we address the onslaught of a virus referred to as the coronavirus disease 2019, abbreviated as COVID-19. In this chapter, through an evocative ethnographical framework, aligned with a ‘Strands of Knowledge’ approach (Kumar, 2004) the chapter views our sense of Being and interculturality in the exploration of the world undergoing the biggest experiment. The exploration is situated within Bourdieu’s (2016) definition of habitus. This is correlated with conceptualisations of the affective and its influence on how the Pandemic has been addressed. Leading from this, it concentrates through the factors of ‘the crossing of borders’, the teaching and learning of our higher education students. In the process, a proposition is put forward of an enhanced epistemology and ontology leading to how we perceive pedagogy in light of new knowledge systems in higher education.

The internationalisation of teaching and learning in higher education necessarily invokes the concept of culture with its emphasis on improving cultural awareness and developing intercultural competency. However, how students and academics respond to manifestations of culture in teaching and learning and how their perceptions have changed over the years have seldom been explored. Drawing on data from four studies on internationalisation, three paradigms of cultural responses in teaching and learning are identified: (1) a multicultural paradigm; (2) an intercultural paradigm; and (3) a post-cultural paradigm. Within institutions, all three paradigms co-occur, in different degrees. However, there are intimations here of a shift in the balance of the three paradigms over time. Further, this chapter poses questions about the pedagogical implications for internationalisation and interculturality in higher education so suggesting the opening of a future research programme on the relationship between pedagogy and culture.