Culture, Identity & Learning: Rethinking Higher Education in a Changing World

Louise Sommer
Jan 20, 2025
4 min read

Higher education has never been more connected.

Students move across borders. Ideas travel instantly. Classrooms bring together learners from different countries, cultures, languages, educational systems, and life experiences. At the same time, universities are navigating rapid technological change, growing complexity, and increasing uncertainty about the future.

Yet amidst these transformations, one question remains surprisingly relevant: How do people learn?

It is a simple question, but the answer is far from simple because learning is never just about information. It is about people! And people do not enter classrooms as blank slates. They arrive carrying experiences, assumptions, values, identities, histories, aspirations, and questions that shape how they engage with learning itself.

As higher education continues to evolve, understanding this human complexity may be just as important as understanding the technologies transforming our institutions.

Learning Is Never Culture-Free

Universities often speak about learning as though it were a universal process experienced in the same way by everyone. Yet learning is deeply influenced by culture. Why? Culture shapes how we communicate, how we understand authority, how we participate in discussions, how comfortable we feel asking questions, and how we make sense of knowledge.

A student raised within an educational system that values reflection and deference may approach classroom participation very differently from a student educated within a culture that rewards debate and challenge. Neither approach is inherently better. They simply reflect different ways of understanding learning.

When students from diverse backgrounds meet within the same learning environment, these differences become visible. What one student experiences as confidence, another may experience as interruption. And what one student interprets as respect, another may interpret as disengagement.

It's the same with lecturers. What one lecturer sees as participation may look entirely different through another cultural lens. These differences are not obstacles to learning. They are opportunities for deeper understanding.

Curiosity Across Difference

In increasingly diverse learning environments, curiosity may be one of the most important educational capabilities we can cultivate. Not curiosity as a personality trait, but curiosity as a practice.

The willingness to ask questions such as: Why do others see this differently? What assumptions am I bringing into this conversation? And what can I learn from a perspective different from my own? These questions are very powerful and curiosity helps us move beyond simple agreement or disagreement.

Questions encourages exploration rather than judgement, and this is where spaces are created, for meaningful dialogue across difference.

I see this as particularly important within higher education. Universities are among the few places where people with different backgrounds, experiences, and worldviews regularly come together in pursuit of learning. When curiosity is present, diversity becomes more than representation. It becomes an educational resource.

Students begin to learn not only from lecturers, but from one another. They encounter alternative ways of thinking, communicating, and understanding the world. In doing so, they develop intellectual flexibility, cultural awareness, and the ability to engage constructively with complexity.

These are capabilities that matter far beyond the classroom.

cover of bestseller The Hidden Camino by author Louise Sommer Harvey

The Changing Role of University Educators

The role of university educators is also evolving.

For much of higher education's history, lecturers were primarily viewed as experts responsible for transmitting knowledge. Today, information is more accessible than at any point in human history. Students can access articles, videos, lectures, research papers, and increasingly sophisticated AI tools within seconds. This does not make educators less important. It may make them more important.

Again, let's ask why. Why is this so?

It is so, because the challenge is no longer simply access to information. The challenge is helping learners make sense of information. It is helping them evaluate sources, ask better questions, navigate uncertainty, and engage thoughtfully with perspectives different from their own.

In this context, educators become facilitators of learning, reflection, dialogue, and critical thinking. As information becomes increasingly accessible, the human dimensions of education become even more valuable.

Technology, AI and the Human Future of Learning

Conversations about higher education often focus on technological change. Artificial intelligence is only the latest example.

Universities are exploring how AI may influence assessment, teaching practices, student learning, and future graduate capabilities. These are important conversations. Yet technology alone does not determine educational outcomes. Technology is a tool. The more important question is how people choose to use it.

History reminds us that periods of technological change are rarely defined by technology itself.

They are defined by how individuals, institutions, and societies adapt. The same may be true for AI. And I question, if the greatest challenge facing higher education may not simply be understanding new technologies. It may be helping people navigate change with curiosity, judgement, adaptability, and ethical awareness.

These are profoundly human capabilities. And they remain central to meaningful learning.

Towards More Human-Centred Higher Education

Universities are preparing students for a world characterised by complexity, uncertainty, cultural diversity, and rapid change. This requires more than disciplinary knowledge alone. It requires environments that encourage curiosity and support dialogue across difference.

This is how we can cultivate critical thinking that also strengthen intercultural understanding.

Learning is a deeply human process that takes time.

In a changing world, the future of higher education will not be shaped by technology alone. It will be shaped by our ability to help people learn, adapt, collaborate, and thrive alongside change.

Perhaps that begins with a simple but powerful act: