Education for cosmopolitanism

This article presents a model of cosmopolitanism, taken from the conceptual part of the author’s research study into ‘The Relationship between Multilingualism and Cosmopolitanism’. Cosmopolitan cultural identity is introduced as straddling the global and the local, encompassing questions of cultural mastery, metaculturality, mobility and travelling, tourism, home and nation-state attachments. Cosmopolitanism, containing but also furthering the notion of internationalism, could constitute an alternative to or complement for ‘international education’ in theory or practice, especially via its element of ‘international/ism’. The explicit reference of cosmopolitanism to the development of the individual, in contrast to institutionalized frameworks, opens up further usefulness for international education.