Conceptualising Teaching Spaces: The Intersection of Being, Belonging, and Becoming*

Abstract

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.

Citation

Valcke, J., Preet, R., Knipper, M. and Båge, K. (2021), "Conceptualising Teaching Spaces: The Intersection of Being, Belonging, and Becoming*", Kumar, M. and Welikala, T. (Ed.) Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: The Context of Being, Interculturality and New Knowledge Systems, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 65-77. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80043-006-820211004