The Study

The main purpose of the study was to explore, in a very preliminary manner, the status of global education in the primary and secondary schools of 52 countries in various regions of the world. In addition, it was hoped that the report of the data could serve to promote dialog among the various global education participants and programs throughout the world. In the questionnaire that was developed for the study, a major effort was made to focus on a small set of questions that were easily understood. They were standard questions raised by those who study curriculum and its development worldwide. Questions had to do with philosophy and definition of global education, curriculum content, methods of teaching, teacher training, implementation and monitoring responsibility, problems and barriers, and new initiatives. A chapter was devoted to each topic and most chapters were divided into a (a) report of the data (what is) and (b) normative statements derived from international experts in the field (what should be). Questionnaires were sent to individuals identified in a variety of ways as having some knowledge of global education. Some names came from participant lists from international conferences having to do with global education topics. Others came as referrals from American global educators. Some respondents were personal acquaintances of the principal investigator who had some involvement with global education. The net result was responses from 40 countries. Then, in 1995, membership in the International Association for Intercultural Education was sought. Using the IAIE mailing list, responses from twelve additional countries were obtained in rather short order.1 There were four major limitations to the study. First, the data were gathered over several years. Things may have changed in some countries during that time. While this may be true in a few of the countries where questionnaires were filled out early in the process, it was not a very significant worry simply because educational change has not occurred that rapidly anywhere in the world. A second limitation was that of having only one respondent per country. Each person who did complete the questionnaire was knowledgeable about education, and specifically global education, in his or her country. Even so, no one could be expected to know everything that was taking place. In a number of cases, questionnaire data were actually supplemented from other sources in the final report. It is important to remember that this study was not intended to describe all global education efforts in the world. It was carried out as a way of initiating international dialog about global education. All countries of the world were not represented in the study. One or more individuals were contacted in slightly more than 100 countries. It is interesting to speculate as to why some people did not respond. The most obvious possibilities seemed to be (a) global education was not a familiar concept in some places in the world (the study data tended to verify this speculation); (b) the people contacted were not as knowledgeable about global education as thought; (c) even though there were English, Spanish and French versions of the questionnaire, language was a problem; (d) potential respondents never received the questionnaires; (e) people felt they were too busy to respond or were somehow averse to answering questionnaires (e.g., fear of political risk); (f) the questionnaire was perceived as unclear, too difficult, or not important. There were more subtle possibilities, also. A few responses clearly suggested that some people in lesser developed countries saw global education as a Western concept, not appropriate to them because they were more interested in nation building. Similarly, there were few responses from nations where religious values dominated, and those that were received suggested an interest in the promotion of those values rather than any form of what is perceived as secular globalism.