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Critical times: producing the global graduate in a pandemic
The challenge
The production of the global graduate is central to the purposes of the contemporary university, with competencies such as mobility, global mindedness, intercultural awareness and global citizenship frequently identified as desired graduate learning outcomes or attributes.
The COVID 19 pandemic exacerbated existing challenges that raise questions about what future may be possible for this global graduate. These include a hyper-competitive graduate labour market and a corresponding decline in the availability of graduate jobs that erode the value of a higher education credential as a guarantee of opportunity and advantage.
It also raised questions that have been less well explored to date — questions about how academics understand and experience their role in promoting the global graduate during these critical times. We do not know what academics believe to be the core knowledge, dispositions and capabilities that count for the future and how those beliefs may be changing. These questions have particular implications for academics in the field of teacher education, who are expected to develop global competencies in preservice teachers.
Project overview
This Australia–New Zealand research project sought to understand what imaginaries of the global graduate are promoted by Australian and New Zealand universities and how teacher education academics within those universities understand and experience their role in producing that graduate. It sought to shed light on how such academics shape (and are shaped by) the underlying discourses around the global graduate. It asked how the global graduate can be realised during times of precarity, uncertainty and disposability and, in such times, what knowledge counts for the future.
The project explored these questions through interviews with teacher education academics in Australia and New Zealand as well as a review of Australian and New Zealand universities’ publicly available materials describing their production of the global graduate.
Outcomes
Exploring how teacher education academics understand the formation of the global graduate in critical times is integral to understanding the sort of learner that schools and faculties of education seek to produce. It also has the potential to shed needed light on the practices of such academics and how these continue to be affected by the impacts of COVID-19.
In the first instance, the project inform the publication of three scholarly journal articles. It will also be used to establish and generate opportunities for funding and partnership for a Phase Two international project.
Project team
- Dr Rosalyn Black (Deakin University)
- Dr Kerri Garrard (Deakin University)
- Dr Matthew Thomas (Deakin University)
- Dr Bronwyn E. Wood (Victoria University of Wellington)
- Professor Lucas Walsh (Monash University)
- Professor Margaret Bearman (Deakin University)
In collaboration with:
- Dr Juliana Ryan
- Nadia Infantes
Timeline
2020 – 2022
Funding
REDI
$10,197
More information
Watch a video about the project: Critical times
Blog post: What forms of resistance did higher education academics undertake during the COVID-19 pandemic?