Global Education

The Historical Context

Since the late 1960s, global education has developed as a curriculum reform movement that attempts to respond to the increasing interdependence and rapid change that characterizes the contemporary world. Beginning in the developed world, notably in the US and the UK (where the term ‘world studies’ was initially preferred), the ideas and practice of global education, in various formats and guises, have gradually spread around the globe and can be found in at least 38 countries on six continents (Tye, 1999). The roots of global education in Europe can be traced back to the interwar movements of the 1920s that sought to use formal education as a vehicle to promote a more sustained peace and, post-1945, flourished under the banner of ‘education for international understanding’ (Fujikane, 2003; Heater, 1980; Richardson, 1996). During the Cold War era, seminal work in the US by Lee Anderson (1979), James Becker (1979) and Robert Hanvey (1975) sought to expand the Eurocentric social studies curriculum by infusing perspectives from other world regions and promoting understanding of global systems (Merryfield, 2001). In the final quarter of the twentieth century, the rationale for incorporating a global perspective in the curriculum shifted as the multiple and inexorable impacts of globalization became more starkly apparent (Anderson, 1990). During the same period, students' apparent lack of knowledge about global issues and world geography, and their concomitant lack of preparedness to face the realities of an interdependent global system, began to cause alarm among educators in Western nations, particularly in the US (Merryfield, 1991; Torney, 1977).

Throughout its short history, global education has been characterized - and, some would argue, troubled - by the search for a single, widely accepted definition that encompasses its diverse content, pedagogy and philosophical positions. As will be explored in this chapter, the wide range of ideological and pedagogical assumptions to be found in the host of educational initiatives that shelter under the umbrella of ‘global education’ renders an agreed and succinct definition unlikely. Popkewitz (1980: 304) contends that the term global education operates more as an educational slogan, a label that creates a ‘unity of feeling and spirit about the tasks to be confronted in schooling’. To add to the confusion, global education is regarded by some as an overarching concept that provides unity and [Page 469]coherence to several related fields, including development education, environmental education, human rights education and peace education (Greig et al., 1987; Heater, 1980; Tye, 1999). Some clarity is provided by the various conceptual frameworks that are frequently cited in the literature, including those of Case (1993), Hanvey (1975), Kniep (1986), Merryfield (1995, 2001), and Pike and Selby (1995, 1999). From among these frameworks, it is possible to discern some common threads that are likely to be found in the conceptual make-up of most theoretical articulations of global education. These are:

• global connections and interdependence;
• global systems;
• global issues and problems;
• cross-cultural understanding;
• human beliefs and values; and
• awareness of choices for the future.

In practice, global education in the classroom may not feature all of the threads found in proponents' theoretical models. Pike (2000b: 65) found several common ideas explored by teachers in Canada, United States and United Kingdom.

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