by José W.I.M. van den Akke
ABSTRACT
This article draws partly from the author’s PhD thesis titled ‘Understanding and Working with the Dynamics in Cross-Cultural Education. It further builds on her personal experiences as a Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CaLD) migrant studying and lecturing in Australian higher education institutions. From a futurist and complexity theory perspective it is argued that many do not appear to be learning but colonizing organizations, and their ‘ethical role’ may need to be reviewed, based on an ethics of co-creativity and autopoiesis and from the perspective of higher education as a capacity building process. As the dynamics of a system do not tend toward stasis or equilibrium but toward far-from-equilibrium conditions, it is crucial to explore possible, probable and preferable futures to form a more desirable ‘attractor basin’. The author reflects briefly on her experiences as a member of a learning organisation to demonstrate that in addition to individual learning, collective learning offers an appropriate avenue for scholarly evolution in the context of cultural pluralism and diversity.