Average rating: | Rated 5 of 5. |
Level of importance: | Rated 5 of 5. |
Level of validity: | Rated 5 of 5. |
Level of completeness: | Rated 4 of 5. |
Level of comprehensibility: | Rated 5 of 5. |
Competing interests: | Prof. Thönnessen and me teach at the same university, but in different areas. I am a professor for strategic management in nonprofit organizations. |
The article from Thönnessen and Christensen discusses the interesting question how education in higher education institutions can foster essential topics as sustainability, innovation or comprehensive cooperation. They go as far as to state that the social mission of universities is to bring transparency and comprehensive cooperation. In this context they research a sample of 30 student participants of an international course.
The theoretical framework is well written and gives an extensive overview on theories of education of social work students. They connect here the qualities of a future social worker with learning methods such as reflective, reflexive and glocal learning and sustainability. I like the combination between Deweys practical ideas on democratic pedagogy and contemporary sustainability education. The theory part covers a lot of thinking ground and invites to think more on the role of higher education in terms of educating critical thinkers that value democratic discourses in an intercultural setting. It would have been interesting to follow these theoretical approaches even deeper. Understandably in an article the space for these theoretical musings is limited.
As part of the empirical research and before delving into the methodology I would have liked to have a short description of the course and the didactic outline of the learning experience for the international student group. For me it would have been interesting, if specific learning outcomes were defined, how much they reflect on social work contents and how much they focus on topics as critical thinking, sustainability, intercultural expertise, etc. It would have shown me where the discussed theory comes to life in the researched course.
The method of the research is described very well and to use the grounded theory makes absolute sense concerning the sample, the technique and the data collected. I understand that the questions are very open on purpose. But it is a bit surprising, that the questions cover purely the aspect of learning, internationality and future career. The bridge to the theoretical framework of sustainable education, comprehensive cooperation and critical thinking is unfortunately not very strong. The coding strategy is impeccable and gives a very good glimpse into the data collected. Again I would have loved to read more on the data collected and get a more in depth insight into the answers of the students. Due to the limitations of an article a lot is left out here so that reading the discussion the reader might have the impression that important results might have been left out and are discussed now without being analysed beforehand.
The discussion is very interesting and comes to very interesting and good findings for a sustainable higher education. This leaves room for more consideration and further researches. Methodwise I suggest for a future approach maybe journaling could be an interesting approach to also get a better picture of the learning process over time.
All in all I can highly recommend to read this article and think more about the how we teach and not so much about the what we teach as professors. I agree completely with the authors that our universities have to have a social mission in our teaching approaches – not only of social work students but also of business administrators, law and engineering students, to just name a few. Comprehensive cooperation and democratic understanding are getting more and more important for our students and their future development.