As the global consciousness of teachers (and students) increases in response to planetary realities, more and more teachers are becoming de facto global teachers -- often without using that particular label. They are doing so as a response to the obvious educational needs of our students. Many of these global teachers wish for a clear template to apply to their classroom. When is our teaching "global"? What makes it so?
In the next three posts, we will attempt to provide some guidelines that will confirm to ourselves that our teaching is indeed "global." We will seek 3 different approaches to determining what makes our instruction global: (1) "Instinctive" globality; (2) Robert Hanvey's five dimensions of global understanding; and (3) the global dimensions that guide teaching for global awareness in the UK.
Many teachers, particularly older teachers who went to college before global education became fully established, simply follow what a colleague has called the "instinctive" approach to global awareness (here the term "instinctive" is used in its "spontaneous," or "visceral" meaning, rather than in its narrower psychological meaning.). "Instinctive" global teachers implement global education by using a comprehensive philosophical outlook to inform their pedagogical decisions. Often motivated by thoughtful internationalism or humanism, they arrive at common sense decisions about the educational needs of their students and apply them to classroom instruction using usually self-developed ways and means. They were global teachers before they adopted the term "global."
These teachers are guided by strong guiding principles and beliefs, such as, "we are all equal members of one common humanity," or "there is more that unites us than separates us as human beings," or "we should advance humanistic attitudes in our teaching," or "prejudice is not a rational or acceptable way of dealing with others who are different from us." Instinctive global teachers normally are surprisingly effective, since they have typically arrived at the global dimensions of education on the strength of their own convictions -- often relying on powerful self-reflection, logic, and a thoughtful analysis of our planetary reality. In the classroom, they employ the same tools of every successful teacher, simply adding a thoughtful question, an incisive comment, or a key global insight as they cover the required material.
Teachers more formally grounded on the conceptual frameworks of global education may occasionally underestimate these "self-made" or instinctive global teachers; that would be a serious mistake. The sincerity of their outlook and the power of their convictions most often make this group of teachers extremely effective. Yet, even these self-made global teachers can improve their effectiveness by adding a more structured conceptual framework to their teaching -- this is where Robert Hanvey comes in.
Just as we can perceive beauty in a painting or a piece of music, we can also perceive the beauty of clean, clear, and simple conceptual frameworks in the world of ideas. Robert Hanvey (1976) has given us one such approach. It is "beautiful" in its clarity, simplicity, and applicability to any classroom situation. Although many people have sought to revise, modify, or add to Hanvey's dimensions, they remain the single most powerful model of global education available to us. Hanvey maintains that there are 5 "dimensions" of global understanding. The implementation of any one of those dimensions at any moment in our teaching can make our instruction "global." They are not esoteric variables, but clear, simple guidelines that are easy to relate to.
In our next blog,we will focus on Robert Hanvey's dimensions. One day, history books will acknowledge the power of his inductive thinking and the enormous value of his contribution to education.
Until soon, then.
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Mr. Lamas,
ReplyDeleteYou mention that your “perspective on global warming, human rights, or any other global issue reflects your cultural/historical conditioning, your personal experiences, and even your personality structure”. It is believed that the human mind can be conditioned into believing or doing anything a certain factor wishes to condition it into. However may this human conditioning be the reason why some of us on one side of the world believe that the “others” do not question their historical conditioning while the other side is thinking the exact same thing? Does our government control more than just our economy and laws but also our historical mind conditioning as well and shape it in any way they want us to believe of the “others”? These questions of course can be answered by Hanvey’s belief that we “should acknowledge that our perspective (historical conditioning) is only one among many”. Evidently this is only my personal perspective of Hanvey’s ideas however if we unite all of our perspectives and accept that it is only one of the many based on our historical conditioning will the way we affect our reality really make it possible to become globally aware? Will we be able to determine the global facts bias and make sure we are really aware of reality and not the made up lip service? These are some thoughts to ponder about that can be critical to our global education. If we don’t learn how to crawl we will not be able to walk therefore, I believe we must be sure to define our world reality first and then educate our nations before our beliefs and historical conditioning become nothing more than lost truth in lip service.
-Gerry Rivadeneira
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ReplyDeleteMr.Lamas,
ReplyDeleteAs I read this post and comtemplated the concept of "de facto" global teachers, my thoughts wrapped around one question. Do you think that enough teachers will grasp this concept, particularly in parts of the world where this new way of teaching is not being advertised? For instance African countries, or some South American countries. I think that you're right to say that adding a more conceptual framework would help these teachers (and sometimes these teachers do develop without the need of global education being advertised to them) however I wonder if enough individuals will have the human integrity, humality, and strength to develop this way of teaching on their own. I think this is a problem as it is this type of teaching that as you say will create the leaders of tomorrow, and I wonder if the ignorance of the new world in certain parts of the world will make it so that the already powerful countries that are slowly embracing this way of teaching ( US, UK, etc) will gain even more global leadership, while the countries that may fail to produce enough effective leaders will become even less powerful in our global community.Never the less I applaud your attempt to provide a guideline for "de facto" teachers around the world, and admire the fact that you made this blog with not only your local colleagues in my mind but kept in mind all those who may stumble upon it in the future to come.
Estefania Chavez
I guess what they say is true the old will always be more wiser global education always will be something you can't teach by the book because history always changing and a text book will always be outdated by the time it publish. Teachers that want to teach global education always will have to work hard to be updated on all the current news and when you talking about gloabl issues you have to make sure that your students understand that when something is happening somewhere else in someway it going to affect you so you should never neglect a problem because it not staring at your face right now. I guess the older the teacher the more experience they are in understanding the concept of the domino effect wherwe one problem will cause a whole bunch of problems. They also will be able to understand more of globnal issues.
ReplyDeleteI agree with some teachers grasping this concept of "de facto", but do you really think students of this era are prepared to have such a change in education, especially in the U.S. where most students aren't as interested in learning as they should. Do you also believe that people in this day and age are ready for such a change considering how preoccupied the world is with all the other problems that are going on in the world?
ReplyDeleteMr. Lamas,
ReplyDeleteI do believe and agree that some teachers do grasp the concept of "de facto". But my thoughts about this concept has me concerned and questioning what the majority of the other comments relate to. The concept of "de facto" is a good concept but the majority of students in public schools(specifically), are not interested. First of all, because many students do not believe that education is the most important because it will not give them money for the car or the piece of machinery they desire at that moment. Although in the long run, after they have studied and received their careers, they receive the car, and much more than they would have ever expected. Another reason that should also be in all teachers' minds is, are the students ready. Do the students have the self-esteem they need to receive such an education? Are the teachers going to indulge the students to enjoy what they are being taught? I'm not saying the classroom has to be "party-centered", but there could be some exciting lectures that the students are most likely to be interested in.
Stephanie Jiron