Responsibility for Implementing and
Monitoring Global Education

Chapter Six began by examining data about the current responsibility for implementing and monitoring global education. This involved the consideration of (1) how educational decisions, in general, were made in the countries under study, and (2) how decisions, specifically about global education, were made in these same countries. Most of the nations in this sample had centralized educational systems, at least at the pre-collegiate levels. That is, educational decisions flowed from a national ministry charged with overall responsibility for education through regional offices of some kind to local authorities. In such systems, it generally was the responsibility of those at the school level to implement the decisions that were made for them at these superordinate levels. There was sometimes a bit of room for teachers to be creative, but that tended to occur seldom, according to respondents. This was particularly true in systems where there was heavy emphasis upon students having to pass standardized examinations in order to progress to a next level of schooling. There was more global education activity found in decentralized systems, wherein there was freedom to make decisions at levels of the system closer to the schools. There were a variety of models of decentralization in the various state, provincial, lander, and canton systems. Unfortunately, in some nations, there was a trend toward the centralization of some educational decisions. On the other hand, there were reportedly some formerly highly centralized systems that had done a great deal to decentralize educational decision-making. These shifts from centralized to de-centralized and from de-centralized to centralized educational decision-making seemed to be motivated as much by political considerations as by any sound educational thought. In the normative section of the chapter, the regularities of schooling (e.g., the domination of teacher talk in the classroom, age grading, tracking and streaming), as well as the bureaucratic nature of the educational enterprise, were discussed. Global education was described as embedded in enlightenment ideas and as calling for the development of self-awareness, transcendence, and rationality (understanding, commitment, action). The single school was proposed as the unit where most educational decisions should be made because it was here where all of the forces came together for planning, acting, and problem solving and it was here that democratic ideals were best implemented. It was suggested that there was need for a variety of supportive structures. Supportive leadership and the development of a service mentality rather than a directive one within the superordinate structure were discussed. University-school collaborations also were suggested. Existing networks focused upon aspects of global education were described. These included the Associated Schools Project mentioned previously, the Baha’i worldwide network of schools, the International Baccalaureate Organization network, and the U.S. Peace Corps World Wise Schools. Each was described in some depth. Finally, a number of internet-based networks focused on aspects of global education were detailed.