Globalization and Education

Karen Heine

MED 560August 27th

Scot Brewer

Abstract

In this presentation, two trends and four major issues in contemporary education will be explored. Trends in education result from a need for change---a new program or position---which often prove to be temporary. I would suggest that the idea of literacy coaches being hired at the secondary level to aid teachers in multi-literate instruction will be a fad, diminishing as issues of time constraints and self-efficacy doom this new position to fail. If the results aren’t positive early on for this program, funding will dwindle and the program will disappear. In addition to these trends is a major problem facing the modern and very global student: anxiety. In this presentation, I link anxiety to greater global expectations, but as a result of the increased demands on these students, test scores often fall and electives disappear, replaced by mediation. The underlying challenge for our educational system is to address one of the greatest challenges of the new shrinking world which is to teach students how to be truly collaborative, rather than covertly urge a competitiveness which is not healthy at this age, or any age for that matter.

Trends in EducationOne contemporary trend that has appeared in education recently is that of Secondary-level

Literacy Coach. The 2001 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) government mandate emphasized literacy and created this new type of position in middle schools and high schools across the country. With recent grant money, literacy coaches are flooding the hallways, assisting content teachers in incorporating literacy units, including key vocabulary that is content specific, and urging teachers in all disciplines to have students write in a more expressive manner. These coaches meet with individual teachers to help them develop a plan to improve student reading and writing. This trend seems to stem, not only from NCLB, but also the increase in globalization, adding ELS students to an already struggling reading population.

The challenges of this trend to move into a full-fledged program of the future are as follows:1. For this program and the literacy coach to be successful it will require collaboration, mutual

trust and equal voice (Gross, 2010). Gross posits that this may be a challenge depending on how the teacher perceives this new literacy coach and had both positive and negative results.

2. Literacy coaching also requires an “openness to change, willingness to be reflective and collaborative, and time for the transformation” (Gross, 2010, 136). Although many of the teachers seemed will to try, time was a noted challenge in this study.

Broadening the definition of what it means to be literate is also a trend affecting global education today, prompting the term multiliterate which includes technologies like podcasts, electronic books, and social media (Kellough and Kellough, 2011).

Major Issues in EducationThe increase in anxiety stemming from a globalized society which now expects more from

students, adding culture studies and technological advancements to an already large secondary curriculum, is “counterproductive to academic performance”(Kellough and Kellough, 2011, 18). This can cause low-performance schools to decrease expectations, reading and writing less, at a time when students must know even more. This puts added stress on students, especially in low-income schools, which exacerbates the problem. The NCLB legislation then precipitates a shift toward math and English Language Arts (ELA) and students move farther from electives which can be a safe place where students find success. So, students again become more stressed continuing this cycle of anxiety. The challenges underlying these major issues, which are intertwined in public school, is the rapidly changing requirements schools must exist within that govern their funding which controls the programs and classes that can be offered, which affects students’ anxiety; since student anxiety has been linked to performance and student performance can be linked to funding, this is a vicious cycle in need of repair.

Of course, only a couple of major issues have been explored here and those are all interconnected as are many other issues in the public education system of today.

Challenges in EducationSince the last point explored major issues in globalized education and indicated that anxiety

belonged in this category, a major challenge facing the next generation of global learners must involve how we treat each other. Schools have evolved from one room facilities where everyone knew each other and many went home together, to a training ground to enter a competitive work force. One of the greatest challenges for our new global world is to help develop our moral education. In today’s educational system, we ask students to work collaboratively in groups to create a product, but then we corrupt this paradigm by encouraging students to compete against each other ((Nodding, 2010). In order to address the anxiety students feel in this global and much more competitive market, we must make schools a safe learning environment. Bullying, gang violence, and economic woes may be plaguing our children; however, the anxiety that most students feel to perform competitively against their peers is one of our greatest challenges since it is driving childhood obesity numbers to soar and causing students to miss days of instruction due to mental anguish and physical ailments. Maslov identified decades ago that if students didn’t feel safe, nothing we change about instruction will change their performance in their perceived unsafe world. Nodings (2010), of Standford University, offers one solution to this challenge: the Care Theory. If we teach with caring and we teach the students how to care about others, learning will improve.

The Effects of these Trends, Major Issues, and Challenges

Literacy and mult-iliteracy• Teachers at my school

resent our new literacy coach because she comes in as an expert to take time from an already stretched curriculum

• Students lose their favorite elective since they must spend more time in a subject they hate.

The Care Theory• My students feel anxiety and

stress in an Advanced class where their grade often depends on the very person with whom they are told to compete most fiercely.

• My students worry more about how they will “look” and not what they are learning.

References

Gross, P. A. (2010). Not Another Trend: Secondary-Level Literacy Coaching. The Clearing House, (83), 133-137.

doi:10.1080/00098651003774844

Kellough, R. G., & Kellough, N. G. (2011). Secondary School Teaching: A Guide to Methods and Resources (4th ed.). Boston, MA:

Pearson Education, Inc..

Noddings, N. (2010). Moral education in an Age of Globalization. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 42(4), 390-396.

doi:10.1111/j.1469-5812.2008.00487.x