SHIFTING NEXUS, TRANSCENDING SELF: EXPLORING THE COSMOPOLITAN LITERACIES OF KOREAN PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS

Abstract

In the face of an increasingly interconnected world seemingly rife with insidious intolerance, there has been in recent years a call for educational practices that cultivate more critical, compassionate perspectives—in particular, critical cosmopolitan education, which aims to encourage open-minded, responsive, reflective dispositions in students (e.g., Hansen, 2013; Hawkins, 2014; Hull & Stornaiuolo, 2014). Recent research in cosmopolitanism, however, has primarily been from Western perspectives (Delanty, 2009, 2014; Sobré-Denton & Bardhan, 2013), leaving a discernible dearth of work examining how critical cosmopolitanism might manifest in other contexts.

Situated in a critical sociocultural framework (Lewis, Enciso, & Moje, 2007) and couched in new literacy studies (Gee, 2001; New London Group, 1996; Street, 1998), this practitioner-inquiry ethnographic case study takes an asset-oriented perspective to consider the ways in which critical cosmopolitan literacies were practiced by Korean university students, all pre-service elementary teachers, participating in an online intercultural exchange with peers in the United States. Among the data collected were the Korean students’ digital multimodal creations, digital interactions via email, and post-exchange reflections. These data were analyzed using a combination of nexus analysis (Medina & Wohlwend, 2014; Scollon & Scollon, 2004; Wohlwend, 2021) and thematic analysis (Cresswell & Poth, 2018; Saldaña, 2009) to better understand students’ situated cosmopolitan maneuvers in the authentic situation of engaging with their overseas counterparts. This project aims to flesh out cosmopolitan theory, particularly by adding nuances from an Asian educational context; support teachers in understanding and building on students’ situated critical cosmopolitan literacies; identify spaces of fracture that can open opportunities for critical reflection; and pinpoint options for educators seeking to facilitate open, responsive dispositions that can help contribute to a more welcoming, just world.