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Sustainability is an important issue that we all face, including higher education students. We assert that the transition into the contemporary higher education context needs educators to plan transition pedagogy that engages students with the world during their studies, instead of solely using curriculum as preparation for the future world of work. To investigate this, we explored how students position themselves in relation to sustainability as part of an assessment task in a first-year university transition course and whether this type of assessment provides opportunities for students to experience subjectification. Drawing on Biesta's ([2022]. World-Centred Education: A View for the Present. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group) conception of world-centred education, we applied a novel methodology based on dialogical self theory, developed by Hermans and Bartels ([2021]. Citizenship Education and the Personalization of Democracy. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. ), to analyse the data comprising student reflections on an assessment item oriented toward current sustainability issues. Our findings suggest that when students interact with their peers and encounter challenging content, conflicting internal positions can lead to subjectification and an intention for further action on real-world issues from the commencement of their studies. We propose that the principles of opposition, cooperation and participation provide a practical framework for educators and course designers to purposefully designate space for students to explore positions and practise the generative dialogue needed for thinking and acting in the world as subjects now and in the future. In analysing students' reported experience, our paper contributes to the discussion around implementing world-centred education and provides useful insight into how students engage with sustainability in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends the dominant understandings of empathy – as a trait, state, communication or relationship – by conceptualising it as a virtue and as a tool to address anti-Asian hate crime. Drawing upon the writings of the Confucian philosopher Xunzi, this article interprets empathy as a personal quality that attests to one's moral excellence. It is argued that Xunzi's concept of empathy revolves around the ethical attributes of zhong (authenticity) and ren (humaneness). This article amplifies Xunzi's formulation of empathy by applying it to anti-Asian hate crime in the U.S. The authors propose that Xunzian empathy is a powerful tool to address racism and violence towards Asians through two related and mutually reinforcing approaches: undoing fixation by identifying and eliminating racial/ethnic prejudice and discrimination; and habituating humane conduct by internalising and exhibiting li (normative behaviour) towards fellow human beings. These two approaches and a Confucian construal of empathy as a virtue can be enacted in schools through the strategies of role-taking, empathetic pedagogy, and Global Citizenship Education curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]