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Cosmopolitanism is an ancient idea that is enjoying a critical renaissance today. Scholars across the humanities and social sciences have been examining the meanings and historical trajectories of the concept. They have addressed how the idea differs from multiculturalism and other notions of pluralism. A growing number of researchers are deploying the concept as a lens for interpreting how people in contemporary societies engage in cross-cultural interaction. Scholars are showing how the idea spotlights ways in which people can move beyond tolerance of difference, important as that is, to reimagining, appreciating, and learning with it.This special issue of Curriculum Inquiry presents results from several ongoing educational research projects that feature cosmopolitanism in their theoretical frameworks. The issue springs from a symposium we presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, held in Vancouver in April 2012. The energetic response from our audience, as well as our own interest in the topic, spurred us to convert the presentations into more full-blown offerings to the research community. The articles that follow are much-expanded or reconstructed versions of what their authors spoke about at the conference. I had the dual roles of organizer and discussant at the session, and serve here as guest editor.My purpose in this introductory essay is to characterize the background conception of cosmopolitanism that informs the studies. As we will see, this conception fuses notions of educational and cultural creativity. However, readers will discover that the contributors' research, taken as a whole, is too nuanced and wide-ranging to be captured by any particular framing. bs_bs_banner

In this article we describe a cosmopolitan orientation toward the place of values in human life. We argue that a cosmopolitan outlook can assist people in engaging the challenges of being thrown together with others whose roots, traditions, and inheritances differ. We show that cosmopolitanism implies neither an elite nor an aloof posture toward human affairs. On the contrary, the concept illuminates how people everywhere can retain individual and cultural integrity while also keeping themselves open to the larger world. A cosmopolitan outlook positions people to consider not just the specific values they subscribe to, but also their ways of holding and enacting them. This move provides people valuable distance from values although not a break with them. It helps people consider the value of valuing as well as the value of reflecting upon values. We examine three arts, or artful methods, that can fuel this orientation. They are hope, memory, and dialogue: three familiar concepts that we accent in a distinctive way in light of the idea of cosmopolitanism. We show how these arts can be cultivated continuously through education.Cosmopolitanism is a name for an orientation toward self, others, and world. In this orientation, a person or community juxtaposes reflective openness to new influences with reflective loyalty toward the tried and the known. Put another way, cosmopolitanism is a name for an outlook toward the challenges and opportunities of being a person or community dwelling in a world of ongoing social transformation. The concept helps frame a way of life that is responsive rather than merely reactive to events. It is a way of life in which persons are participants in pluralistic change rather than passive spectators, or victims, of such change. As Bob White (2002) puts the matter, "unlike 'globalization' or 'modernity,' cosmopolitanism is not something that happens to people, it is something that people do" (p. 681).It would take a larger canvas than the present article affords to distinguish cosmopolitanism from humanism, liberalism, and multiculturalism