Transcript ENABLING ENGAGEMENT IN A PLURALISTIC LEARNING COMMUNITY Nouman Ashraf

ENABLING ENGAGEMENT
IN A PLURALISTIC LEARNING
COMMUNITY
Nouman Ashraf
Senior Fellow
Massey College
University of Toronto
Combating Hatred Conference
February 4th, 2010
Learning about our various communities is
a critical part of a successful strategy
Learning Defined
•A complex, multicentric, holistic activity,
centered in making
meaning, that occurs
throughout and across
the educational
experience
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Learning
Reconsidered
•...as a transformative
process that integrates
academic learning and
student development -which can no longer be
considered separate, but,
instead,interact and shape
each other as they evolve.
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•Learning has to be contextualized
...included in a larger
context that requires
consideration of who
students are, what
they know, what their
values and behavior
patterns are, and
how their family,
social, and work
experiences have
influenced and
affected them
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Life is an institute of learning;
the life experiences of
•Learning
individuals comprise the
framework
of, opportunities for,
in context
and barriers to learning.
Learning is never abstracted
from the person and their
experience.
hooks
Gilligan
Friere
Cross
Knowles
Habermas
Mezirow
Dewey
Giroux
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• What does transformative learning feel like?
Perspective transformation is the process of
becoming critically aware of how and why our
assumptions have come to constraining the
way we perceived, understand, and feel about
our world; changing these structures of
habitual expectation to make possible a more
inclusive, discriminating, and integrating
perspective; and, finally, making choices or
otherwise acting on these new
Mezirow
understandings.
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...the function of education,
1.Competence
the goal of education -- the
2.Emotions
human goal, the humanistic
goal, the goal so far as
3.Autonomy
human beings are
4.Identity
concerned -- is ultimately Self-actualization
the
“self-actualization” of a
5.Interpersonal
[development]
person, the becoming fully
relationships
depends
reciprocally
human, the development
of
the fullest height that the
on learning 6.Purpose
human species can stand up
7.Integrity
to or that particular person
can come to...
•Develop
ment
Maslow, 1971
Chickering
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CONFORMITY AND EXCLUSION
Mental Postures of the Quadrants
SECURITY, STABILITY
AND EXCLUSION
EXPERIENCE AND
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
AUTONOMY AND WELL-BEING
INNER-DIRECTED
OUTER-DIRECTED
SOCIAL SUCCESS,
MATERIALISM AND PRIDE
INDIVIDUALISM AND IDEALISM
CONFORMITY AND EXCLUSION
SUCCESS
EXCLUSION
The Regions
on the Sociocultural
Map in 2001
Atlantic Provinces
Montreal
Toronto
Ontario
Prairies
British Columbia
Vancouver
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
WELL-BEING
IDEALS AND INDIVIDUALISM
INNER-DIRECTED
OUTER-DIRECTED
Quebec
CONFORMITY AND EXCLUSION
Elementary
SUCCESS
Sociodemographic
Characteristics
2001
Education
EXCLUSION
INNER-DIRECTED
OUTER-DIRECTED
High school
Community college / CEGEP
University
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
WELL-BEING
IDEALS AND INDIVIDUALISM
The Student Experience Defined
• The student experience is a
confluence of conditions that
exist in and around campus
environments that impact the
degree to which students
engage with others, their
environments, and develop
knowledge and skills, and their
own sense of themselves.
Growth in immigration is expected to
be significant with real effects…
By 2017, 1 in 5 Canadians could be a
member of a visible minority…
The most direct impact will be felt in the GTA
Hobbies
Thinking
Style
Faith
Religion
Sexual
Preference
Nationality
Ethnicity
Community
Leadership
Local
Knowledge
Educational
Background
Passion
IDENTITY
Sexual
Orientation
Life
Experience
Skills
Age
Perspectives
Level of
Ability
Gender
Languages
Class
Life
Experience
Family
Status
Cultural Learning: What’s the Value?
• To engage in cultural learning is hard,
sustained work…. Difference is confusing
and threatening because we are forced to
confront ideas and lives that often bring into
question our own commonly held
assumptions and beliefs. If we are unable to
participate in dialogues that question our
views of the world, then we have not been
engaged in cultural learning.
William Tierney, Building Communities of Difference: Higher Education in the Twenty-First
Century
Can we align disparate interests?
Position
Feelings
Interests
Beliefs
Values
Needs
Experiences
So, How do we create an organizational
culture of engagement? After all, I’m just one
person?
As a matter of fact, engagement of diverse
communities in not a new notion…
• “Observe the nature of
each country; diet;
customs; the age of the
patient; speech;
manners; fashion; even
his silence...one must
study all these signs
and analyze what they
portend”.
- Hippocrates
I WOULD WELCOME YOUR
QUESTIONS