WHAT MAKES IT GLOBAL ? PART l

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.