Liberal Education: Analog Dreams in a Digital Age

Edited by Karim Dharamsi, Mount Royal University, Canada and David Clemis

The essays in this collection contemplate the various intersections and barriers between artificial intelligence along with the values and practices of liberal education. For the proponents of liberal education as a core component of undergraduate education, the study of literature, history, philosophy, and the social sciences, like their objects and their forms of practice, are perceived to be about what is essentially human. In spheres previously thought to be exclusively human domains, modern, digitally-constructed artificial intelligence has profound implications for liberal studies, how they may be practiced, and why they are important. This collection explores the implications of AI and the world it is shaping as a potential threat and augmentation of liberal education. These essays also demonstrate how liberal studies illuminate the meaning and significance of AI and how they have shaped its development and character. The contributors to this volume write from the perspectives of philosophy, classical studies, political theory, fine art, curriculum development, and computing and information science. Several essays consider how the conventional concerns and agendas of liberal education have acquired a new urgency in the digital age. They reflect upon how the deployment of artificial intelligence confronts and problematizes what it means to be human, and how liberal education is needed to preserve and ensure what makes us humans thrive. Other essays consider how AI must be understood as an extension of our humanity and how the ethos must inform the further development and deployment of new technologies of liberal education. These challenging essays pose hard questions and the unflinching exploration of matters at the cutting edge of science, culture, and how they merge together with education.

Co-teaching and co-research in contexts of inequality

Using networked learning to connect Africa and the world

Edited by Phindile Zifikile Shangase, University of the Free State, South Africa et al.

There has been a recent surge of interest in the concept of co-teaching and co-research across institutions of HE locally and globally, as a response to limited international mobility due to COVID-19. We see co-teaching and co-research as teaching and research that connects educators and learners across different institutions and different contexts, be it across South Africa, Africa or the world. Co-teaching and co-research is linked in this book to the term ‘networked learning’, following the Networked Learning Editorial Collective’s emphasis on relationships and collaboration rather than technology and foregrounding our strong commitment to social justice. Our collective experiences have shown that co-teaching and co-research are not easy endeavours, especially when they involve differently positioned and differently resourced contexts, students and academics. While these collaborations are enriching and exciting, they need careful support, preparation and time for sustained relationship building – topics that we find are not necessarily discussed in the literature around co-teaching and co-research. This book is an attempt towards closing this gap in knowledge by providing a range of chapters documenting personal experiences of academics and practitioners engaging in co-teaching and co-research across the African continent and beyond, facilitated by various networked learning tools and technologies. Framed by a spirit of sharing and connection, the book provides insights into the benefits and challenges of such collaborations, affordances of technologies to bridge unequal divides, emerging practices of continental collaboration and beyond. Additionally, the book provides an unusually honest and nuanced view on co-teaching and co-research across contexts of inequalities, foregrounding relationship- and community-building rather than technology and emphasising the importance of sustained connection and reflection in these collaborations. Applying a wide range of critical theoretical frameworks, these evidence-based but also reflective and reflexive contributions are a unique and important reminder that behind and through our screens, we connect as humans who yearn to learn from each other, but also need to learn how to learn from each other, when we do not share the same world views.

Ignite: A Decolonial Approach to Higher Education Through Space, Place and Culture

Edited by Laura M. Pipe, University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Jennifer T. Stephens, Elon University

Social justice frameworks and pedagogical practice have become popular concepts within educational settings. However, these approaches stop short of the direct action required for true social change and often overlook the impacts and importance of space, place, and culture in the learning process. Through an exploration of justice-forward approaches that call for a blend of equity and culturally-responsive pedagogies with experiential approaches to learning, this edited book will examine the process of unlinking colonizing structures from teaching and learning through honoring the context of space, place, and culture in the learning process. Framed by the Toward a Liberated Learning Spirit (TALLS) Model for Developing Critical Consciousness, this book will be of interest to students, scholars, and researchers in higher education as well as critical and cultural studies, apart from program administrators and educators. 'Ignite: a Decolonial Approach to Higher Education Through Space, Place and Culture' will carry the reader through a learning process beginning with academic detachment and moving through a process of unlearning toward embodied liberation.

Developing Effective International Education Experiences: Preparing Pre-Service Teachers for the Classroom

Edited by Sara Tours, University of Pennsylvania and Jeremy M. Lynch, Slippery Rock University

Globally, and within the United States, we continue to progress toward a more diverse and inclusive culture. This fact is perhaps reflected nowhere better than in the public school system in the United States, where, by 2029 (NCES, 2020), non-white students will outnumber white students in classrooms. The challenges that the current system of education confronts in ensuring equitable access and equal achievement are also well-documented (Darling-Hammond, 2015). A key component in the re-shaping and development of a more equitable and inclusive system are the pre-service teachers enrolled in our college and university teacher preparation programs across the country. As we prepare for the diverse classrooms of the future, we need to prepare the teachers of the future to not only be able to teach all students but to also have the cultural competencies to ensure the same access and opportunities are provided to all students. It has been well documented (Cunningham, 2015; Lupi & Turner, 2013) that international education experiences, or international field experiences, have a positive effect on both the professional development and cultural competencies of pre-service teachers. Across a wide range of performance outcomes, pre-service teachers with international field experiences are better equipped to enter the field (DeVillar & Jiang, 2012) and may even persist longer in the profession (Egeland, 2016). However, not all international experiences provide the same positive outcomes. In this book, we will explore the importance of developing culturally competent educators in the United States education system, the research that supports the benefits of international education experiences, and how to develop effective international education experiences that will prepare pre-service teachers for the classrooms of the next decade and beyond.

New to the LSP classroom? A selection of monographs on successful practices

Edited by Martina Vranova, Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic

As Languages for Specific Purposes have always been defined as student-oriented, the rationale behind this volume is to use the rather neglected niche of the other necessary agent of language instruction and thus focus on the LSP practitioner. This turn towards the instructor has been motivated by the fact that a great number of LSP practitioners enter their jobs without previous expertise. They lack LSP education, or they may not even have a background in applied linguistics. This motivation has proven valid as many of the volume’s contributors have faced this particular situation in their professional lives. For insights into the LSP field and guidelines on the best practices, they must rely on their colleagues who offer to share their experience through workshops, conferences, or papers, which is what this volume provides. The primary goal of this volume is to present considerations of what challenges LSP practitioners face and should be prepared for in their jobs and to provide practice-tested methodological guidelines on such demanding teaching techniques as blended and flipped learning or tandem learning. All papers have been written by LSP practitioners and researchers in higher education. Thus, this volume provides both guidance and self-reflection. In other words, it is written by experienced LSP practitioners for aspiring LSP practitioners about how they see themselves and what effort they make to meet the challenges of their jobs. As proof that LSP practice is a global challenge, papers have been collected from many European countries, the USA, Uruguay. Even though most papers are naturally concerned with English, being the lingua franca of today, the collection also features guidelines for teaching Spanish, French and Dutch for specific purposes. Moreover, the target disciplines these languages are taught for encompass business, engineering, sociology or medicine, thus supporting the assumption of the universal character of problems LSP practitioners deal with.