The Double-Coded Self in Higher Education: Student Self-Formation and Social Sustainability

Abstract

Education for social sustainability rests on (1) individual learning agency, and (2) graduates prepared in relations between the individual and collective society, in the context of open ontology and emerging ecological, social and political challenges. The self-determining learner in higher education, with antecedents in Confucian self-cultivation and Bildung, is engaged in conscious self-formation, incorporating reflexive autonomous agency, the will to learn, and immersion in knowledge and relational experiences. Self-making is pervasive in other spheres of life suggesting that it can become integral to higher education. The article reviews self-formation, and individual/social relations, in two traditions: the Chinese civilisational zone and Euro-America. It focuses especially on the double-coded self in each tradition (the reflexive coupling of the inner self and social self), emerging forms of individuality in China, and Michel Foucault’s account of the impact of early Christianity in separating the individual and social in Euro-America. In the Sinic configuration, individual growth and social responsibility are well understood but the individual is crowded by layers of social demands. Euro-America gives students more room but renders the social domain opaque: individual detachment from social responsibility is rife. What is needed is a half-way house: students free from coercion who are prepared in their duties to the community.