Understanding Global Education and Culture

Monday, April 23, 2012

 

One of the concepts that helped me understand global education in the classroom, especially in relation to my service learning placement, was the differentiation between tourist, traveling and global classrooms discussed in the Wisconsin guide for Planning Curriculum in International Education.  The article describes three different levels of internationalizing the classroom.  The tourist level is the most basic of the three, in which students focus on differences and the exotic.  The teacher acts as the tour guide and the students sample foods or stereotypical traditions of the country of interest.

The traveling classroom takes the global focus one step further and incorporates more in depth studies of history, politics and other topics pertaining to the culture.  Students are more engaged in the material and international teachers and guests are invited to further the discussion in the classroom.

Finally, the global classroom studies a culture or issue focusing on the complexities and contradictions of the topic.  The students communicate through world languages and collaborate with other classrooms in the country as well as abroad.

This article made me realize the different levels of international education and the ways in which they can be confused for a global classroom.  The concept of the global classroom forced me to think beyond my pre-existing notions of global education.  I will admit that coming into the class I assumed global education to be at the level of the traveling classroom.  I thought that bringing in international guest speakers and spending more time on international discussions was all it took for a classroom to become more global.

While this is a good start, the guidelines for a global classroom outlined by the Wisconsin plan pushed me to think further than these basic ideas.  After reading this article and working with these concepts, I began to observe real-life examples in the first grade classroom I worked with this semester.  As much as I hate to admit it, the classroom is very much focused on the tourist perspective.  Students are taught about other cultures and countries through stereotypes.  I was very excited to work with the students before St. Patrick’s Day because it was the perfect opportunity for me to incorporate my country of expertise.  I was very upset that the extent of the lesson focused on leprechauns and the “luck of the Irish.”

In order for student to become more globally competent teachers need to move away from focusing on holidays and stereotypes. I would love to have seen the classroom incorporate interconnected cultural themes throughout different subjects and topics.  I would have also loved to see more opportunity for two-way communication between the teacher and the students.  Allowing the students to ask questions about cultures not only brings international discussions to the forefront, but it also peaks student’s curiosity and encouraged future research.

The “levels of complexity” that we discussed in class was a concept that helped me to better understand the culture of my country of expertise.  I loved how the levels of complexity were compared to a flower, a bouquet, and a garden.  The level of the flower focuses on the individual and the way an individual exists within a culture.  The bouquet level looks at a distinct group within a society of people.  Finally, the garden level looks at the entire culture as a whole and the characteristics that describe the society in general.  This made a very complex concept easier to understand in relation to culture.

Discussing the different levels of complexity helped me work through my understandings of Irish stereotypes.  When thinking about the country of Ireland, the typical American tends to think only in stereotypes.  The first things that come to mind are shamrocks, leprechauns, and the potato famine (if you’re lucky).  These stereotypes emerge from an inability to look beyond the garden level of culture.  It wasn’t until I was living in Ireland that I myself began to think outside of typical stereotypes.  Interacting with Irish people at a personal and group level really made me understand the complexity of the culture as a whole.

This concept also helped me in developing my lesson plan.  It was important for me to keep in mind that Irish folklore traditions do not apply to every person in every circumstance.  At one point in time, there was a large group that believed in the presence of fairies and other mystical creatures.  While this does tell us about the culture of Ireland, it does not tell us about the culture of each individual.  Most people today do not continue to believe in the fairies, but they accept the stories as a part of their history and culture.

With these guidelines in mind, I am now able to analyze the culture of Ireland from different levels of complexity.  There are so many aspects of culture that are difficult to understand, and analyzing them from difference perspectives (the individual, the group, the society) makes the process a bit less difficult.