Making a Case for Global Education: Revisiting Pre-Service Teacher Lesson Planning Methods

Globalization has tightened the bonds of interconnectedness and interdependence among nation-states. Students are destined for careers that are profoundly international in nature. They need to develop global literacy aided by a global education. This paper mandates the need for global education as part of the pre-service teacher-training programs. “Globalization, simply put, denotes the expanding scale, growing magnitude, speeding up and deepening impact of transcontinental flows and patterns of social interaction” (Held & Mcgrew, 2002, p. 1). Even in its simplistic connotation, “globalization engenders complexity” (Suarez-Orozco & Qin-Hilliard, 2004, p. 5). It subsumes three crucial areas of the marketplace: (a) the economic world (Dunning, 2002) accelerated and dominated by modern technologies of transport and communication; (b) cultural globalization (Appadurai, 1996), which is a direct result of the media blitz causing the disappearance of local customs, norms and lifestyles (Huntington, 1996); and (c) the geopolitical side of globalization (Friedman, 2006) caused by the breaking down of nation-states (Wallerstein, 1979) and their interdependence (Kerr, 1979) together with the fluidity of national boundaries. It was imperative to include globalization as the springboard for this paper because education for the future is so inextricably connected to the relentless advance of globalization and its repercussions. The late Ron Mofatt (2007), president of the National Association for Foreign Student Advisers (NAFSA) had this to say: “Competencies once considered essential for productive professions within a regional or national economy are no longer the coin of the realm in a market place without borders” (para. 1). He added, “Global systems generate global issues that can only be addressed with global competencies” (para. 1), and global competencies can only be achieved through global education. Making a Case for Global Education Many scholars have attempted to define global education (Case, 1993; Hanvey, 1982; Merryfield, 1998). There are a few issues that are central to all of the definitions, namely interconnectedness and interdependence, multiculturalism, and sustainable development. All educators seemed to follow a “borrow and add approach in developing the definitions” (Gaudelli, 2003, p. 6). “Preparing global-ready students requires schools to rethink their mission, priorities and objectives. [which should include] students developing perspectives and skills to mitigate the growing cascade of challenges resulting from globalization’s ubiquitous reach” were Mofatt’s words while chairing a NAFSA meeting in 2007 (para.1). This statement is related to an essential question that educators, researchers, and policymakers face today: What do students have to learn that will facilitate their entry into a geocultural and geopolitical world? Is it understood that they will share global citizenship with the global workforce because “seismic demographic changes are transforming the workforce across the world? ” (Hewitt Associates Survey, 2004, p. 5). Because of these changing demographics in the population, it is expected that this country will need a larger portion of them skilled in the critical areas of job vacancies,