Fostering Cross-Cultural Empathy With Non-Western Curricular Structures

Abstract

It is easier to introduce international content and components into a curriculum than to internationalise the curriculum itself. Learners find it easier to deal with international material embedded in a traditional curriculum but harder to accommodate to a curriculum constructed on different foundations to the norm. Here, in general, the problem learners are not those who are already dealing with cultural diversity but local learners whose expectations are limited by local tradition and who may resist the intrusion of outside ways of doing things. In this case study, learners cope with an exercise that has them assessing the emotional impacts of their habitat using Sāmkhya's three modes of nature ( gunas). However, they are less comfortable with a curriculum founded in notions of dharma, which emphasises personal introspection: self-awareness, self-realisation, and self-improvement. Although lately Western education has been thinking harder about personal responsibility and development, learners find turning the lens of enquiry inward on themselves unusual and are uncomfortable being thus placed in the role of “international learners.” Despite such problems, such experiments benefit learners and teachers by encouraging them to question the worldviews and presuppositions that presently underpin Western educational structures.