How Are Teachers Responding to Globalization

"Research and Practice," established early in 2001, features educational research that is directly relevant to the work of classroom teachers. Here, I invited global education scholar Merry Merryfield to help us understand what "global education" looks like in classrooms today. --Walter C. Parker, "Research and Practice" Editor, University of Washington GLOBALIZATION is changing our lives. Global economic systems shape our job opportunities, consumer goods, investments, and quality of life. Global media and communication systems allow us to observe events as they happen around the world and discuss them across national boundaries. Americans are working with people around the world to address global issues of biodiversity, acid rain, and disposal of toxic wastes. Immigrants, refugees and guest workers have created an intermingling of diverse languages, religions, and cultures within our nation's communities and schools. As youth culture absorbs fashions, ideas, and material culture from the global milieu, Korean pop stars borrow from American rap, and American children watch Japanese cartoons. Global interconnectedness is even evident within the backlash against globalization by people across the planet who fear it is usurping national sovereignty, endangering the environment, or corrupting cultural norms. (1) How are educators responding to globalization, its effects on American communities, and its controversies? The primary goal of global education is to prepare students to be effective and responsible citizens in a global society. Toward this end, students need to practice real-life skills, gain knowledge of the world, and develop expertise in viewing events and issues from diverse global perspectives. How are social studies teachers preparing young people to understand their globally interconnected world, its issues, histories, and conflicts? Research points to four main strategies: multiple perspectives, global interconnectedness, global issues, and cross-cultural experiences. Multiple Perspectives: Seeing the World through the Eyes of "The Other" Many social studies teachers infuse global perspectives into the social studies through the teaching of multiple, often conflicting, perspectives. Teachers select an important event or issue and have students examine it from different peoples' points of view. A classic example is teaching multiple perspectives on early encounters between Europeans and native peoples in Asia, the Americas, or Africa. This is often done by having students examine materials that capture the variety of perspectives and experiences of explorers, settlers, and indigenous people. Analyzing information from conflicting points of view enables students to develop skills in perspective consciousness and critical thinking as they come to appreciate how people's cultural, economic, and political lenses shape their actions and worldviews. Teachers use multiple perspectives to teach important historical events (such as the Crusades, the spread of Islam, the Treaty of Versailles), contemporary events (South Koreans protesting against U.S. bases, suicide bombers in Israel), and concepts, such as democracy. (2) The pedagogy of multiple perspectives often involves comparing primary source documents such as letters (to teach about different experiences and points of view during the Vietnam War), literature (stories written by immigrants from different countries across different time periods), oral histories (comparing narratives of former slaves, free blacks, slave owners, and abolitionists), or media (the film "South Africa Belongs to Us," available in video from California Newsreel, takes students into the lives of five South African women from diverse backgrounds during apartheid). In some school districts teachers invite people from the community to share their knowledge and experiences. The reflections of refugees from Bosnia, a feminist from Turkey, a Japanese American whose family was interred during World War II, or a former Peace Corps volunteer in Liberia can open students' eyes to knowledge and ways of thinking that may not be found in the pages of textbooks. …