What a Difference a Global Education

Paradigm for Social Studies Teacher

Education Can Make

Jason R. HarshmanTami A. Augustine

 The Ohio State University

American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) Conference

 Indianapolis, IN

 March 2, 2014

Purpose & Rationale

RQ: How can we develop a more globally minded approach to teacher education and what does this pedagogical approach mean for transformative thinking by teacher candidates?

“little work to date on understanding what impact global citizenship education programs have actually had on students’ perceptions of their roles and responsibilities as global citizens” (Richardson, De Fabrizio, & Ansu-Kyeremeh, 2011, p. 96).

“I am honestly ashamed of my worldview. I ultimately viewed everywhere outside of the U.S. as a place that needed help and guidance from either U.S. participation or observation. I figured I could be used someday as a teacher over in some third world country or even just help build a few houses. I still plan on doing both of those things, however, I will no longer be going into world traveling with such a Euro-centric viewpoint. I am completely guilty of what we have been discussing in class—I have always looked at history from only the White American perspective.”

Pre-course reflections“Our social studies education throughout school was very one sided. They did not teach from any point of view than the typical text book stand point. There are many items listed on the "Other Teachers' Decisions" that the way my teachers taught falls into. For example, the teachers tended to reaffirm stereotypes among other groups and portrayed other cultures through an American viewpoint rather than from the actual cultural view point.”

“My high school and undergraduate education was definitely lacking a global touch…Once I got to college, the only world cultures class I took was, again, history. My education about the modern-day world and even recent history is severely lacking. The fact that those sort of classes are not required for even a future Social Studies teacher makes it difficult for more global educators to enter the workforce and the vicious circle continues.”

Problem #1: Globalization• Dichotomizing the

local and the global.

• Focus on markets and technology.

• Something that happens around us.

Problem #2: The Current Events Approach

Problem #3: Schooling

OR

Global Education is…• “an approach that develops students’ knowledge, skills, and

dispositions to promote individual and collective responsibility for a sustainable, equitable, just, humane, and peaceful world.”

• “A way to prepare students to develop a critical perspective that would allow them to view the world with critical understandings and concern.”

• “A method of helping students develop a sense of social responsibility and commitment to finding just and peaceful solutions to global problems.”

• “A critical study of cultures, peoples, and systems of various nation-states yet which must avoid exotic understandings of cultural practices.”

• “A way to promote global issues such as diversity, equity, and social justice, especially issues of power, privilege, oppression, racism, sexism, classism, xenophobia, exploitation, and more.”

Ukpokudo, O.N. (2010). Teacher preparation for global perspectives pedagogy. In B. Subedi (Ed.) Critical global perspectives: Rethinking knowledge about global societies. (pp. 121-142). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Constructing a Global Education Paradigm in the Social Studies

As “the degree of frequency of events involving global interdependencies” continues to rise, the inclusion of more perspectives in order to learn about the complexity of global issues is needed (Pike & Selby, 1988, p. 3).

“Idealizing the global as a novel process of interconnectedness conceals inequality and disguises the long-standing interdependence and imbalanced power relations among countries, regions, and cultures” (Agbaria, 2011, p. 70).

“It is this perspective—local, critical, and in light of prevailing global economic competition—that must become a part of global education” (Gaudelli, 2013, p. 554).

“Basic principles and purposes of civic education and citizen development are stunted and distorted when discrimination against minorities remains a social norm. But the social studies curriculum, with its traditional focus on history rather than issues, often treats racism and prejudice as though these are resolved social events, historic artifacts from a previous period” (Nelson & Pang, 2006, p. 116).

Open-Mindedness

Awareness of the diversity of ideas and practices to be found in human societies around the world, of how such ideas and practices compare

Examining the thoughts and feelings of others from their own perspective and includes perspective consciousness

Foundational Habits of Mind

EmpathyInterconnectedness

Connection of global systems and dynamics

Of students, communities and other peoples – inequities

- Risky - Political - Cultural

- Articulates worldviews through "subaltern knowledge”

- Liberating

- Examination of unequal global formations

- Develops knowledge, skills and dispositions for critically studying

cultures, peoples, and nation-states

- Global issues: power, privilege, oppression

- Embodied - Sacred & Grounded in

Truth - Dialogic

- Redemptive

Spiritual Pedagogy Critical Global Education

Overlap

Tami A. Augustine

Globally Minded Approaches to Teacher Education

“teachers need to work on themselves…rather than becoming dogmatic or close-minded, teachers can ready themselves, through a variety of exercises, for the challenges, difficulties, and possibilities of education in a globalizing environment” (Hansen, 2011, p. 33).

Bond (2003): Three approaches are often used by faculty to internationalize curriculum

• Add-on• Curricula infusion• Transformative approach

Content and Perspective Development

Contemplative Practice

We found the silence you kept talking about. And I feel like it got us ready to learn and we could start thinking deeper. Really let us open our mind completely.

When we do the meditation, I feel as if I’m a new person after it. I’m not stressed. My mind is clearer. And then, you can really actually get into deeper stuff. You can actually talk about stuff like that. Well, me personally, I can clear out the stress, clear out the checklist, and then really talk about the stuff that we need to talk about. It’s good. I really like that.

connecting with stillness

connecting with stillness

“We focus on the outside world in education and don’t look much at inwardly focused reflective skills and attentions, but inward focus impacts the way we build memories, make meaning, and transfer that learning into new context” (Yang, 2012).

A N D

I N

World Religions Panel

• Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism• “The truth is one, the wise call it by

many names.”

• Faith not as a religion – but as a way of life.

“Am called Kah Moma, born in Mutengene - Cameroon. From a family of five and am the second child. My parents are still alive both engaged in petty trading business.

Did my primary and secondary schooling in Buea - Cameroon where i obtained my GCE ordinary and advanced level. I then proceeded to the University of Buea - Cameroon where i had my Bsc Degree in Sociology and Anthropology in 2008.”

Modeling a Simulation: Global Education, Curricula, & CCSS

“our lessons on citizenship education brought to our attention the importance of teaching with open-mindedness to all perspectives.  In discussing standards and perspectives, we took the previous lesson that stressed representing multiple voices and incorporated that into an introduction to the standards.  We learned how these “voices” can be represented and still teach the standards.”

Global Education Resources Scavenger Hunt

I thought it was important that this source was from the Great Britain because it was more likely to be unbiased about the US use of fracking. Similarly, it allowed me to understand whether or not other countries, like Great Britain are using fracking as well.

I knew that I wanted to incorporate multiple perspectives but I had trouble thinking where they could come from. This website had specific viewpoints on fracking that made it easy to create participants in a fracking conversation.

#toFrackOrNotPresident Obama, Prince Alwaleed, Sandra Steingraber, Dan Dinges, and Larry Jenkins

This Saudi Arabian website contained information on The Kingdom Holding company. It gave me information on Prince Alwaleed and what the company he owns does that was crucial for understanding what his perspective on fracking in the United States.

Global Agents

“teachers need to work on themselves…rather than becoming dogmatic or close-minded, teachers can ready themselves, through a variety of exercises, for the challenges, difficulties, and possibilities of education in a globalizing environment.” (Hansen, 2011, p. 33)

"Uniting the flavors of many nations under one menu." Hybridity? Deterritorializing food and culture? Border crossing? A product of and for global capital? What about homogenizing and conflating a nation’s multiple cuisines into a single flavor?”

“We proceeded down the alley and encountered many people BUT nearly all had headphones plugged into their ears or were chatting on their cellphones. It was quite sad to see this amount of alienation because the reason for which we were patrolling High Street was interconnectedness to the world not to some phone or some headphones. Think about this for a moment. Can not the mindless devotion to cell phones and the plugging in of earphones be a powerful metaphor for how many of our fellow women and men think about the larger world? Everyone seems to be in their own little worlds and don’t see the wider world.”

Community and Cross-cultural learning• Noor Islamic Center• Multiculturalism/Global cultures in

the North Market

• Global Agents in School Districts• Dabakh African Restaurant• Banana Leaf Indian Restaurant• Somali Women and Children’s

Alliance

http://gcc.concernusa.org/

• All this has made me more open-minded I would definitely say because I started this program crying in your office saying I can’t do this. I’ve come a ways since then so that’s been transformative definitely and maybe being just more accepting of other people’s views in social studies especially. Because I think sometimes I let my pride issues like run where I just don’t want to listen to other people’s opinions but I think I’ve become better with that. Like with John. I was really mad at him after that conversation about feminism, but now we talk more and we actually have a lot of the same beliefs. This all helped me be able to talk like that and listen.

Open-Mindedness

I think that’s one thing that a lot of us struggled with and are probably, at least for myself, am now able to push past that and understand what she means. Looking at people that we thought were evil or did something terrible and things like that. Seeing them as a person and realizing something had to make them tick to do that. When you stop “othering” them you can see something happened to this person. I just had a kid at school fight and I really thought about that video and empathy and realized he didn’t necessarily just do that because they wanted to pick a fight but that maybe there was a deeper lying reason for that and I at least needed to slow down and ask him about it.

Empathy

• The whole interconnectedness through a spiritual lens kinda has got me thinking a lot. I just thought we were connected through trade and stuff like that. Like – you are always connected to something and someone.

• I originally said that I thought interconnectedness was this (interlacing fingers) but now I don’t think so cause interconnectedness can’t just do this (pulling fingers apart). It’s not that simple – if you wanted to disconnect something you’d have to go through like a million strings to try and get one out and then it would all knot up anyway. I mean – we might think it’s possible – but is it really?

Interconnectedness

Reflective Inquiry and Application in the Social Studies Classroom

• How can students effectively use critical media literacy to analyze the power dynamics of Western dominant nations and those they effect to foster a critical global perspective?

• How does a global education approach to teaching citizenship education inform instruction in a 21st century social studies classroom?

• How does critical pedagogy inform teaching for global mindedness in a 21st century social studies classroom?

• How will incorporating a critical global education approach to teaching for social justice in the social studies classroom positively effect students’ motivation and learning?

“There is no such thing as a complete global education, but I do think that we can achieve a thorough global education. Have I been given this through my 17 odd years of schooling? No. Do I think that I have been given the tools to make this a reality in my own future? Yes. Can I make this a reality for my own students? Well that will require a great deal of change from far more important educators than myself, but you better bet I am gonna try.”

Resources

IMPLICATIONS/TAKE AWAYS

• Global teacher educators do not only teach about global education but incorporate and model globally minded practices throughout their course(s).

• Global teacher education provides pre-service teachers with opportunities to develop perspective consciousness and cross-cultural skill development.

• Global teacher education requires that pre-service teachers decenter their worldview to more thoroughly examine and teach about complex global issues.

Contact Information

• Jason R. Harshman: E-mail: harshman.22@osu.eduTwitter: @tchlrnchnge Website: http://jasonrharshman.weebly.com/

• Tami A. Augustine: E-mail: augustine.19@osu.eduTwitter: @tchheartmindWebsite: http://augustine16.wix.com/teachheartmind