Transnational Eduation

The Importance of a Global Education

Global education has significantly increased in importance and prominence in K-12 education over the last two decades. Not only are students learning about the world through new technologies, they are also interacting with it. Being fully immersed in the twenty-first century has placed new importance on understanding cultures other than our own. New technologies are placing distant peoples only clicks away.
Global education has developed as a K-12 effort to teach young people about their globally connected world. It focuses on teaching students to see the world through multiple perspectives of diverse people and it purposefully addresses stereotypes of The Other. Unlike international studies, it is centered on the concept of connectedness – recognizing local/global connections, the commonalities all humans share, and understanding how national borders have become practically irrelevant for many global actors, from multinational corporations to polluters to terrorists. It also focuses on the development of globalization over time and space. The World History Association applies global education to history. Global education purposefully challenges ethnocentrism, national chauvinism and cultural relativism through cross-cultural experiential learning.
Whether it is in teaching about diverse local cultures, world cultures, literature, environmental studies, US or world history, global educators purposefully address stereotypes and challenge exotic images that students bring with them into the classroom. They develop lessons to replace misconceptions with information on the complexity of cultures, cultural conflicts, and global issues. They teach critical thinking skills so that students learn to challenge sweeping generalizations. The identification of students’ prior knowledge as well as stereotypes and images of the culture or country under study is considered by many global educators to be their first step in planning a new...