Perspective taking strategies

Ethics, values, and purposes of global

citizenship - Think with, against, & apart

from systems, structures, and institutions

An appreciative inquiry

What if…

Instituions of higher education were to

take an activist role in cultivating

capacities of global citizenship

perspective taking?

Asking different questions…

“I think that we should ask the question about poverty

differently, precisely because changing the questions

challenges our perceptions of the problem. That is

important because our perceptions are often part of the

problem: we disable/pacify people we think are helpless

victims of poverty, but by focusing on these people, we

let wealthier people off the hook, because they do not

feature as part of the problem's definition or solution…”

• South Africa - a post colonial, post apartheid

context

• Must create the conditions to “ask different

questions” to see the world in new ways

Reflections from the global North

…one of the most important lessons I’ve learned this quarter: just because you want to help, doesn’t mean you can or should…’

In the words of Adichie, “stories matter…[S]tories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity…

(Quote from a 2014 student on Stanford University’s Cape Town study abroad program)

As educators and policy makers, what are the

learning & teaching spaces we are trying to

create? What role might international service

learning play in asking different types of questions?

What might ‘de-colonisation’ mean for

institutions of higher education? For

international service learning?

When can an anti-oppression inquiry stance

reshape our epistemological and ontological

assumptions?

How is global citizenship understood from

multiple perspectives?

And social justice…? (where does social justice

work occur in higher education?)