11-11-2015,
@ Annual Conference of CUFA
New
Orleans, LA
As I begin these
comments, I’d like you to keep two images in your mind: 1.) a silver bullet and
2.) a scenic, continuous path. These images hopefully make sense to you as I
move through my comments.
These papers I’ve been
asked to discuss, document greatly needed research effort to advance global
learning. Although they
each address different dimensions of the programs and practices associated with
global education and teacher education, taken together, these papers address
programs and practices as a continuum of the development of global educators.
This continuum spans university course-taking, pre-service social studies
instruction, K-12 social studies education, and onward into teacher
professional development.
Global learning must not be confined to one course, one teacher,
or course of study. Instead,
it must be continuously cultivated. Doing so provides what Hillary Parkhouse
described as “the amalgamation of disorienting experiences and pathways into
global education at all levels.”
The collection of
papers for this symposium, and the recently released book it’s based upon (The State of Global Education:Learning
with the World and its People), come at a critical point in time for the
future of schools and in particular for global educators.
The
field we love faces serious challenges.
Educators and policy
makers are wrestling with what the future of our schools should look like. Joel
Westhimer, in his latest book, “What
Kind of Citizen”, puts this question front and center. “What kind of
schools are best suited in educating our children for the common good?” Let’s
be clear, wars are being wagged and battles are being fought worldwide over the
future landscape of schooling- let alone, schooling in an increasingly global
and multicultural age. As
these battles and conversations occur, it’s imperative there’s a coalition of
global educators, committed to the field’s founding principles and advocating
for the importance of students learning about the world, its people, and
issues.
Research is desperately
needed to inform our work as we seek out answers to perennial questions on the
type of global education best suited to meet the challenges of today. Fourteen years removed from the
horrors of 9/11, nations are increasingly reverting back to “nation building”
and more isolationist domestic policies. Comments such as “we need to stop
spending all that money on other countries”, “that’s their problem”, and “keep
those foreigners out” have become common place in classrooms and in the media.
In fact, Ron Leiber (2015)
in the NYTimes reports overall U.S. charitable giving is surpassing
pre-recession peaks, yet, giving to international causes and organization
continues to decline, and makes up less than 4% of all yearly donations.
While technologies
provide new opportunities in both reach and impact for immediate global
communication and collaboration, tensions continue to mount across several
nations and regions as they work to close their borders and cut themselves off
from the world. As one 10th grader recently told me when
discussing the flow of undocumented workers to the U.S., “we need to build
higher and stronger walls” … and no, this tenth grader was not Republican
presidential candidate Donald Trump.
My fear is that we’re
entering a “retreatist” age in global education, one centered on building walls
versus bridges. These
walls prioritize national allegiances at the cost of global affiliations and
obligations. Nationalists must be reminded that there is no retreating from those
issues, threats, forces, and values that bind humanity. No nation working alone
can fight the threat of man-made climate change, avoid the reach of radical
extremism and terrorism, or benefit from the development and innovation that
occurs through global collaboration and scientific exploration.
It must be noted that
work done in the name of promoting global education can actually work against
some of the commitments described by our authors today. A new wave of global education, coined Global Education Inc. by Stephen Ball (2012), is infecting
curriculum and instruction in schools around the world. Global education
incorporated is tightly packaged as school reform on a global scale, and
advances neoliberal policies and scripted best practices. Its curricular
tenants center on the need to learn about the world and its people in order to
dominate global markets, control access to capital and resources, and to spread
the gospel of free market capitalism. These
pre-packaged policies and resources are bundled, exported, and sold as market
based solutions in the name of “advancing global learning”. Under this framework global
education has become a commodity entrenched in corporate profits and worldwide
markets, for sale to the highest bidder. Global
learning is branded, mechanized, benchmarked, and connected to corporate
education reform that values high-stakes exams over authentic student global
experiential learning opportunities. These 10 step plans are scripted, hot off
the assembly line, and often for-sale at your local Walmart.
As these ideological
battles occur, it’s imperative there’s a coalition of global educators
advocating for the importance of students and their teachers learning about the
world, its people, and issues in a meaningful way. This makes me genuinely
appreciate even more the papers included for review and discussion in this
symposium, which we will now discuss:
Hillary, Ariel, Jessie,
and Jocelyn’s paper, “You Don’t Have to Travel the World”: Accumulating
Experiences Toward Globally Competent Teaching” provides greatly needed
research on the significance of multiple pathways into being a global educator.
Their finding is simple yet profound: The future of global education is a journey
and path, not some pre-conceived destination. In this paper, the authors,
identified the various means by which teachers develop their own pathways to
global competence. Participants
noted it wasn’t one international travel experience, one book, or even one
professional development that accounted for their self-identification as global
educators. Instead, participants felt it was an accumulation of life
experiences, or disorienting
experiences and their reflection on them, that
prompted them to incorporate global perspectives. My advice to the authors would be
to better unpack what constitutes a “disorienting experience”, and how this
disequilibrium can be integrated and leveraged to advance global learning in
teacher preparation and teacher professional development.
Sarah Matthews and
Hillary Landorf paper, “Discussions within Online Learning Formats: Are
Meaningful Encounters With Difference Possible?” pushes us to consider the
opportunities and challenges associated with using online learning tools (namely
MOOCs) in order to promote
global learning. The core of their argument encompasses that “meaningful
encounters with difference” matter, and the need to determine if online
learning tools (in all their hype and popularity) allowed for meaningful affordances
in global learning. Their
reviews of using MOOCs to advance global learning are mixed: Students gain
through their access to multiple perspectives (cognitive domain) and the
opportunity to reflect on their own identity formation (intrapersonal domain).
However, transactional distance creates a barrier that prevents meaningful
social interaction or social responsibility- which proves to be a barrier to
global learning. Interestingly enough, at the end of the paper, the authors
note that due to outside pressures, they created and aligned a fully online
global learning course into their Master’s program. This course was built with
these newly found learnings in mind in order to protect the integrity of global
learning. I encourage the authors to disclose this “research into practice”
method earlier in their paper, and work to empirically validate the disclosed
online instructional design for global learning courses.
Timothy Patterson’s paper, “On the Modern Silk Road: A Case Study
of the Limits and Promise of International In-service Teacher Professional
Development,” considers the challenges and affordances of in-service teacher
professional development through international experiential learning (global
study tours). The author
debunks the notion that international experiences are inherently transformative
for teachers.
Like the first two
papers, Tim refuses to “buy into the silver bullet” associated with global study
tours and global learning. Here he challenges the dominant discourse on this
topic and calls for investment and preparation time for reflection (before,
during, and after the tour) and the importance of genuine and quality
cross-cultural interactions. He suggests this is one area where the potential
to develop truly global educators may be blunted if international experiential
learning opportunities are not properly planned and executed. While these findings evolved out
of an externally sponsored global study tour, it would be interesting and
insightful if Tim drew from the experience of Sarah and Hillary (to put this
research into practice) via leading his own study tour. In particular, the
field could greatly benefit from insights into computer mediated (before,
during, and after) reflection that advance global learning.
Bill Russell and Cynthia Poole’s paper, “Globalization of
Elementary Teacher Preparation in The United States: A National Snapshot,”
presents findings from a nationwide study on the extent to which global
education university coursework and cross-cultural/co-curricular activities
have been incorporated into American elementary teacher preparation programs
before and after the year 2000 and the effects of this incorporation on the
global perspectives of current elementary school teachers. Like Sarah and Hillary,
Bill and Cynthia employed the Global Perspectives Inventory (GPI) to assess
participants global perspectives. Their findings indicate that while
universities and teacher education programs have promoted global education (the
rhetoric), and global education courses have increased in elementary teacher
preparation in recent years, there has been no significant increase in the
global perspectives of the teachers graduating from those programs (reality).
Again, we see an example of a “silver bullet” (number of global content
courses) falling short of expectations. In
fact, this study concludes that today’s teacher candidates are worse-off in
regards to their global learning than their predecessors- despite having
completed more global content courses. I’m
reminded of Hillary Parkhouse’s claim a strong global education is a
professional journey and not a final destination. Bill and Cynthia suggest
global content courses offered by American schools of education may not be
meeting global education goals. I can’t help but wonder for my own selfish
curiosity if global education courses, housed in a College or Department of
Education, would do a better job?
Guichun Zong’s paper, “Globalization and Teacher Education: Teaching about Globalization through Community-Based Inquiry,” notes how globalization remains an underexplored yet significant topic for teacher education scholars. Her paper provides a thorough account of how globalization in teacher education is often framed as an uncritical acceptance of the taken-for-granted context. This is quite fitting, based upon the four papers previously reviewed. Despite their hype and popularity there exists no silver bullet that can save us (i.e. global content courses, MOOCs, global study tours, etc.). Guichun explores approaches to integrating the concept of globalization into teacher education curricula. Using “Atlanta in the World” as a case study, she presents how local communities can be used as resources by teacher educators to help university students demystify globalization and develop rich historical understandings of global and local connections. This approach joins the others presented, on how educators need not physically leave the country in order to learn about the world, its people, or issues. Guichun has established a significant scholarly footprint in the area of global education, and I would encourage my accomplished colleague to continue her greatly needed exploration of interdisciplinary, community-based, experiential, global learning opportunities in teacher education and challenge her to take up this idea of “paths and a continuum” in her own work. That is how does this fantastic course fit into the continuum of coursework, readings, and field experiences that her students are experiencing.
Guichun Zong’s paper, “Globalization and Teacher Education: Teaching about Globalization through Community-Based Inquiry,” notes how globalization remains an underexplored yet significant topic for teacher education scholars. Her paper provides a thorough account of how globalization in teacher education is often framed as an uncritical acceptance of the taken-for-granted context. This is quite fitting, based upon the four papers previously reviewed. Despite their hype and popularity there exists no silver bullet that can save us (i.e. global content courses, MOOCs, global study tours, etc.). Guichun explores approaches to integrating the concept of globalization into teacher education curricula. Using “Atlanta in the World” as a case study, she presents how local communities can be used as resources by teacher educators to help university students demystify globalization and develop rich historical understandings of global and local connections. This approach joins the others presented, on how educators need not physically leave the country in order to learn about the world, its people, or issues. Guichun has established a significant scholarly footprint in the area of global education, and I would encourage my accomplished colleague to continue her greatly needed exploration of interdisciplinary, community-based, experiential, global learning opportunities in teacher education and challenge her to take up this idea of “paths and a continuum” in her own work. That is how does this fantastic course fit into the continuum of coursework, readings, and field experiences that her students are experiencing.
I’m proud of the
contributions of this coalition of global educators (in the papers and as
published in our book), and instead
of seeking out the “silver bullet” in global education, let us encourage
scholars to seek out and investigate the continuum and pathways into global
learning.
Thank you.
*Note: Dr. Maguth was asked to review papers included for
presentation in the 2015 CUFA conference titled, “Global ed in teacher ed:
Programs and practices”. Discussant:
Brad Maguth, University of Akron Global Ed In Teacher Ed: Programs And
PracticesJeremy Hilburn, UNC-Wilmington; Sarah Mathews, Florida
International University; Hilary Landorf, Florida International University;
Hillary Parkhouse, UNC Chapel Hill; Timothy Patterson, Temple University;
Cynthia Poole, University of Central Florida; William Russell, University of
Central Florida; Guichun Zong, Kennesaw State University
