Cultivating university students’ global perspectives using affective pedagogies

Contemporary processes of globalisation have led us individually and collectively to grapple with affordances and challenges of living, learning, and working on an increasingly interdependent planet. Consequently, developing the dispositions, knowledge, skills, and behaviors to navigate local and global ambiguities that arise from interdependence has become an important task of education. While the affective dimension in developing positive global perspectives seems clear, teaching approaches often prioritise the cognitive component of knowledge. We present preliminary theoretical and empirical work from an EdUHK Teaching Development Grant project, involving almost 20 university teachers across disciplines and the globe, to develop affectively-oriented pedagogical activities for the teaching of internationally-focused course content. Theories of affect tend to resist the reason-emotion binary. Therefore, to assess effects of these affective pedagogies quantitatively, we’ve developed brief pre- and post-class surveys for students measuring how affective engagement in the activity (e.g. experience of curiosity, enjoyment, pity) is related to gains in global affective attitudes (e.g. valuing other cultures, interest in interacting with cultural others), as well as gains in global knowledge (e.g. knowledge of other cultures). This project promises to advance both the theory and application of affective pedagogy in the interest of cultivating students’ affective commitment to being global citizens. Copyright © 2021 The Education University of Hong Kong.