IN-PERSON: Applying Education

Abstract

In our contemporary world characterised by complexity and uncertainty universities have a responsibility to facilitate students’ development whereby they are prepared and empowered to critically engage with and effectively navigate the complex challenges society faces. I argue that universities can realise this aim by embracing Barnett’s (1997) critical being as a pedagogical and curricular framework. Findings from research with international master’s students in the UK identified that students developed to embody critical being in integrating criticality within their personal and professional lives . Key to this development was the sociocultural dimension with students identifying social interaction as the core means for facilitating this development across the levels and domains (knowledge, self, world) of Barnett’s critical being. Intercultural communication between students was one if not the most significant factor facilitating their criticality development. The diversity of peers and exchange of differing perspectives in active dialogue prompted students to think and reflect critically, potentially influencing subsequent changes in thought, beliefs, and action. These ‘contexts of difference’ (Graham, 2022) provided the most favourable conditions for students’ criticality development followed by tutors modelling their own criticality in seeking to make critical thinking explicit, helping induct students into the critical process. In displacing the narrow focus of critical thinking linked to an employability agenda for the “wider concept of critical being” (Barnett, 1997, p.7) we can as educators support students’ holistic development as critical persons able to transfer and apply their criticality in contexts beyond their academic study preparing them to apply their learning in an unknown, complex world .