By Dr. Max Caruso (FIoL)

In my article, “Ancient Resonance,” I explored a deeply personal truth: the profound psychological and spiritual comfort I found as a Roman-born individual within the ancient, continuous civilisation as lived within my now forever home of Shanghai. This was not mere cultural appreciation, but a resonant harmonisation—a recognition of shared depth, historical consciousness, and complex social choreography. I framed this as the discovery of a coherent identity, where a splinter of my Roman soul was absorbed into the deep, flowing river of Chinese time.

This lived experience is more than a memoir; it is a microcosm of the fundamental human challenge and opportunity in a globalised century. It compels a critical pedagogical question: If such resonance is the key to belonging and efficacy across profound difference, how do we intentionally cultivate this capacity in the next generation? How do we move beyond preparing students to navigate between cultures, and instead empower them to synthesise new ways of being from that very confluence?

This is the journey from the personal to the pedagogical—from Ancient Resonance to a deliberate practice of Transcultural Education. It represents a necessary evolution from the paradigm of integration to one of generative synthesis.

Transcending Integration: The ‘Third Space’ in Life and Learning

Given my long history within the International education world, spanning over 20 years within the geographic regions of Oceania, Middle East and Asia, I have noted that, the aim  of “East meets West” or “cultural integration” in education, while well-intentioned, may often rest on a framework of comparative difference. It can inadvertently reinforce cultures as static, bounded entities to be balanced or bridged. My experience suggests something more fluid and transformative. True resonance—and true learning—generates a new frequency.

This aligns with the potent concept of the ‘third space.’ For educators, its most practical foundation comes from developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky. His concept of the Zone of Proximal Development describes the space between what a learner can do alone and what they can achieve with guidance. Extending this, the educational ‘third space’ is the collaborative, creative zone where different cultural frameworks interact. Guided by skilled educators, students enter this shared psychological space to blend, challenge, and combine ideas, generating novel understanding.

However, the ‘third space’ is not confined to the classroom. It is, first and foremost, a condition of our globalised lives. We create this ‘third space’ daily—in our workplaces, friendships, and families—whenever East meets West. Sometimes this meeting is a harmonious dialogue; at other times, it is a collision of perspectives. These moments of friction are not failures of integration but the very raw material of transculturation. The educational imperative is to make students conscious, skilled, and creative architects of this space, turning inevitable encounters into opportunities for synthesis.

This process requires engaging with the invisible forces that shape us. Here, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus—the deeply ingrained set of dispositions, perceptions, and practices acquired through lifelong socialisation—is invaluable. My “ancient resonance” was, in essence, a recognition of a familiar habitus of depth, ritual, and social complexity. Effective transcultural education must make these invisible structures visible for reflection. We must help students understand the cultural ‘soil’ from which their own and others’ instincts grow, so they can consciously participate in creating new ground.

Principles of Transculturation: From Resonance to Pedagogy

Translating this theoretical imperative into practice requires principles that move beyond additive models to foster deep, synthesising cognition.

1. Synthesized Cognition: Beyond Biculturalism

The goal is to cultivate integrative thinking—the capacity to hold two or more opposing models in tension and creatively synthesise them into a superior new model. This transcends simple bilingualism or bicultural awareness. It connects to Jerome Bruner’s work on narrative construction; for example, by engaging students in comparing the narrative logic of Greek tragedy with Chinese historical chronicles, we develop their meta-cognitive ability to see how knowledge itself is shaped differently across cultures. This prepares them not just to understand multiple stories but to author new ones.

2. Situated and Transformative Practice: Habitus as a Pedagogical Tool

Knowledge must be activated within context. Drawing on Situated Learning Theory (Lave & Wenger), which sees learning as social participation in a “community of practice,” we design experiences where the habitus of different traditions is surfaced. Students don’t just learn about Confucian li (ritual propriety) or Roman pietas (duty); they engage in projects where these differing frameworks for social obligation must be negotiated to address a contemporary ethical dilemma. This transforms abstract knowledge into practical, lived wisdom, allowing students to ‘try on’ and blend different ways of being in the world.

3. A Co-Creative Ecology: The Community as the Primary Curriculum

This principle asserts that the most powerful curriculum is the social and intellectual ecology of the institution itself, echoing John Dewey’s belief that education is life itself. To build a transcultural ecology, we employ dialogic pedagogy (inspired by Mikhail Bakhtin), where meaning is created in the exchange between different voices. Institutional structures—like co-teaching partnerships and student-led intercultural forums—are designed to maximise this “productive friction.” This creates what Ronald Barnett calls an “ecological university,” a learning environment where complexity and mutual formation are the norm. The school becomes a working model of the ‘third space,’ demonstrating synthesis in action.

The Transcultural Educator and Graduate: Architects of the New Space

This paradigm demands a profound evolution in our roles.

The Educator evolves from a subject expert into a curator of cognitive and cultural encounters and an architect of the ‘third space.’ Our role mirrors that of a practitioner of practical wisdom who guides students in making ethical judgments within complex, situated realities that span multiple cultural frames. We are less lecturers and more master designers of experiences where resonance and synthesis can occur.

The Graduate of such an education is equipped for a fluid world. They possess:

Cognitive Agility: The ability to think with and across different cultural frameworks with ease.

Compound Identity: A sense of self that is coherent not because it is singular, but because it is synthesising—rooted yet dynamic, capable of belonging to multiple contexts without contradiction. It is identity built from resonance, not despite difference.

Ethical Co-Agency: The drive and skill to collaborate with diverse others to shape a shared future. They become what sociologist Ulrich Beck termed cosmopolitan citizens, whose perspective embraces interdependent worlds.

Conclusion: The Pedagogical Imperative of Resonance

My moment of profound connection in Shanghai was the seed of a lifelong inquiry. The theory and practice of transcultural education is the fruit—an attempt to build a pathway for others that is more intentional, less lonely, and richly generative than mere adaptation.

By grounding our practice in these principles, we do more than teach about the world. We create the ‘third spaces’—in our classrooms and, by extension, in our students’ future lives—where new ways of being human are collaboratively constructed from the meeting, and sometimes the collision, of worlds. We help students not just to find their place between cultures, but to build a coherent and resilient self from them. In doing so, we turn the ancient resonance of human civilisation into a living, evolving symphony for the future—a future our graduates will not just inhabit, but actively and wisely compose.