Heidi Hayes Jacobs

Alan November

School Showcase

Each year, the Partnership for Global Learning conference features a showcase of student work that demonstrates global competence.

Languages Translate to a World of Learning

Imagine a whole generation of multilingual Americans that can help meet workforce and national security needs. A new Congressional bill might translate to just that. But this vision has to start in schools.

Language study can be a launching pad to create a more globally focused school, and open doors for your students when they go off into the world. “Our kids are going to be working in global marketplaces. We can’t pretend that isn’t coming,” says Shari Albright, professor at Tritinity.

Despite this imperative, school board members and parents may balk at the idea of starting or expanding a language program, and especially for critical languages like Chinese. For one, they may not be immediately convinced of the benefits to learning a second language, especially if their students tend to stay close to home after leaving high school and college. Or, a school’s existing Chinese program may not be doing enough to keep students engaged.

Connect the Global with the Local

Albright says when she went to Mathis, Texas to start an internationally focused school, she worried about possible opposition. School board members wondered why they needed an international school if their graduates didn’t leave Texas. It took just one guy on the school board–a welder–to turn the tide in favor of the program, Albright says. The man pointed out that he ran an international business; he made cattle guards–metal grates that keep cattle from wandering away–and exported them to India.

The response, Albright says, was, “Wow, we’re having international business right here!”

You might also convince reluctant parents by showing them their own clothing labels, as one New York educator did, and pointing out how many of the items they own are made outside US borders.

Get Beyond Food, Flags, and Festivals

When you start a critical language program, consider how you can get students and the school community to want more. Create pen-pal programs or establish a sister-school relationship with those who speak the target language. Exchanging letters or e-mails with students around the world can help your students dispel stereotypes, and give them a first-hand account of what life in other world regions.

Simulate, as much as you can, the experience of life in another country. Take kids on a field trip to a place such as Heifer Ranch, in Perryville, Arkansas, where students live like they would if they were in a developing country. It’s key to make sure that when your students see hardships in other countries they are able to empathize, rather than simply glad they don’t live there.
Create an Interdisciplinary Program

Emphasize how learning Chinese, for example, can help students learn about the world by tying learning about China across disciplines. English teachers can include books by Chinese-American authors and history teachers can introduce expanded lessons on Chinese history.

Even biology teachers can offer a supportive lesson on environmental science when language teachers discuss current affairs, such as China’s environmental policies, Albright says.

“We see time and again that it’s the school’s language program that drives a school to look more deeply into what else they can do in the curriculum,” Albright says. “When a school says ‘we want to have a global vision,’ then suddenly your (language) program looks terribly important.”

Author: Alexandra Moses

Discussion questions:

What would you do to convince your school community that it needs a Chinese language program?

How do you make sure students studying Chinese gain a global understanding and leave the language class wanting to know more?

Global Competence

by Anthony Jackson

In matters of national security, environmental sustainability, and economic development, what we do as a nation and in our everyday lives is inextricably intertwined with what governments, businesses, and individuals do beyond our borders.

This new reality helps us more clearly define the role that education must play in preparing all students for success in an interconnected world. Congress and the Obama Administration are investing unprecedented resources in American education, betting that our outmoded, factory-age system can be fundamentally transformed to prepare students for the rigors of a global economy. They have challenged states and school districts to set clearer, higher standards and assess student progress in more creative ways, prepare more productive teachers, and provide effective intervention in failing schools.

These are necessary strategies for change, but insufficient to create the citizens, workers and leaders our nation needs in the 21st century. Missing in this formula for a world-class education is an urgent call for schools to produce students that actually know something about the world–its cultures, languages and how its economic, environmental and social systems work.

The concept of global competence articulates the knowledge and skills students need in the 21st century. Globally competent students must have the knowledge and skills to:

Investigate the World. Global competence starts by being aware, curious, and interested in learning about the world and how it works. Globally competent students ask and explore critical questions and “researchable” problems – problems for which there may not be one right answer, but can be systematically engaged intellectually and emotionally. Their questions are globally significant, questions that address important phenomena and events that are relevant world wide – in their own community and in communities across the globe.

Globally competent students can articulate the significance of their questions and know how to respond to these questions by identifying, collecting, and analyzing credible information from a variety of local, national and international sources, including those in multiple languages. They can connect the local to the global, for example, by explaining how a local issue like their school recycling program exemplifies a global process far beyond their backyards.

From analysis to synthesis to evaluation, they can weigh and integrate evidence to create a coherent response that considers multiple perspectives and draws defensible conclusions –be it an essay, a problem or design solution, a scientific explanation or a work of art.

Weigh Perspectives. Globally competent students recognize that they have a particular perspective, and that others may or may not share it. They are able to articulate and explain the perspectives of other people, groups, or schools of thought and identify influences on these perspectives, including how differential access to knowledge, technology, and resources can affect people’s views. Their understanding of others’ perspectives is deeply informed by historical knowledge about other cultures as well as contemporary events. They can compare and contrast their perspective with others, and integrate their own and others’ viewpoints to construct a new one, when needed.

Communicate Ideas. Globally competent students understand that audiences differ on the basis of culture, geography, faith, ideology, wealth, and other factors and that they may perceive different meanings from the same information. They can effectively communicate, verbally and non-verbally, with diverse audiences. Because it is increasingly the world’s common language for commerce and communication, globally competent students in the US and elsewhere are proficient in English as well as in at least one other world language.

Communicating ideas occurs in a variety of culturally diverse settings, and especially within collaborative teams. Globally competent students are able to situate themselves in a variety of cultural contexts, organize and participate in diverse groups, and work effectively toward a common goal.

Globally competent students are media and artistically savvy; they know how to choose and effectively use appropriate technology and media to communicate with diverse audiences, including through respectful online social networking. In short, they are technology and media literate within a global communications environment.

Take Action. What skills and knowledge will it take to go from learning about the world to making a difference in the world? First, it takes seeing oneself as capable of making a difference. Globally competent students see themselves as players, not bystanders. They’re keenly able to recognize opportunities from targeted human rights advocacy to creating the next out-of-the-box, must-have business product we didn’t know we needed. Alone or with others, ethically and creatively, globally competent students can envision and weigh options for action based on evidence and insight; they can assess their potential impact, taking into account varied perspectives and potential consequences for others; and they show courage to act and reflect on their actions.

Apply Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Expertise. Is global competence all skills and no knowledge? Hardly. As true now as at any other time, learning content matters. Global competence requires that the capacities described above be both applied within academic disciplines and contextualized within each discipline’s methods of inquiry and production of knowledge. Globally competent students learn to think like historians and scientists and artists by using the tools and methods of inquiry of the disciplines.

Global competence also requires the ability to understand prevailing world conditions, issues, and trends through an interdisciplinary lens as well, in order to understand the interconnectedness of the issue and its broad themes as well as subtle nuances. A competitive advantage will go to those students in San Francisco or São Paulo who know what’s going on in the world, can comprehend the interconnectedness of environmental, financial, social, and other systems, and understand how the relative balance of power between societies and cultures has significant short-and long-term consequences. Educating students for global competence requires substantive, developmentally appropriate engagement over time with the world’s complexities.

Learning about and with the world occurs within and outside of school, and it is the work of a lifetime. Globally competent students are life long learners. They are able to adapt and contribute knowledge and understanding to a world that is constantly, rapidly evolving.

Global competence is a crucial shift in our understanding of the purpose of education in a changing world. Students everywhere deserve the opportunity to succeed in the global economy and contribute as global citizens. We must fashion a more creative and visionary educational response to the interconnected world of the 21st century, starting now.

Anthony Jackson is vice president for Education at Asia Society.

Discussion
Do the qualities described in this article encompass what students should know and be able to do in a global economy? Please share your perspectives and experiences in the comment board below.

Systems Thinking

The room hummed with giggles and mutters of “one, two, three, four, I declare a thumb war,” as a few dozen educators thumb-wrestled their way through a presentation on systems thinking.

Sound strange? Imagine, then, doing it with your students to illustrate how preconceived notions can influence actions. Instructor Joan Yates, project manager for systems thinking in the Catalina Foothills School District in Tucson, Arizona, asked the teachers to thumb-wrestle for one minute with the goal of getting the most pins as possible.

Most took that to mean the goal was to win. After all, a game requires a winner – right? In systems thinking, the answer is: Not necessarily. Yates pointed out that her instructions were to get the most pins; to actually get the most, the participants should have cooperated and taken turns getting pins, without a winner.

The exercise is just one example of how teachers can introduce systems thinking concepts to students. It’s an approach that incorporates instructional tools to enhance learning about literature, history, current events, and science, and uses exercises to train students to think differently.

In a nutshell, Yates says, systems thinking considers the relationship between the parts of a system, and the “dynamics those relationships produce.” A system can be anything – a novel, a historical event, a culture, a scientific formula. All are made up of different pieces that form the “system.” In systems thinking, you look at the whole of something, the individual parts of that whole, how those parts make the “whole” what it is, and how one action to a piece of the system can affect the entire thing.

Change those habits

Systems thinking in education helps develop students who can understand the value of other opinions, and see things from a different perspective, Yates says. Introducing mental modeling, which is ingrained assumptions that ultimately influence how we see things and what we do, can be a good place to start.

The thumb-wrestling exercise, and others, such as asking students to fold their hands or cross their arms in the opposite way they normally do or walk up stairs starting with the opposite leg, encourages students to throw off their own mental models. They have to step out of their comfort zones and try new ways of looking at things.

Yates says it’s important to take time to do these physical activities because the more senses that are engaged, the more likely someone will retain the material and really get out of those comfort zones. “It shocks people,” Yates says. “It discombobulates people enough that they physically feel. It gets them on more than one level. You increase the likelihood that someone will retain it, the more senses you engage.”

Systems thinkers also develop certain “habits,” or ways of approaching problems and situations. The Waters Foundation, which supports systems thinking in schools, has 13 habits. If you use some of the systems thinking lessons and tools, students will start to develop these habits, but you can introduce them specifically.

The habits of systems thinkers include: considering long and short-term consequences of actions (such as, if you have money, thinking both about what happens if you spend it immediately and if you put it in the bank); recognizing there might be unintended consequences to your actions; identifying the circular nature of complex cause and effect relationships (the bee buzzing around the flower is a system, where the bee needs the flower and the flower needs the bee); and looking at things from different angles and perspectives.

Tools for teaching

Practicing systems thinking in schools can be a big or small thing. In Yates’ Arizona district, systems thinking is integrated into all the classrooms, beginning in kindergarten. But there are a number of tools individual teachers can use to give their students the benefits of a systems thinking approach.

Useful for literature and social studies classes in particular is the “ladder of inference.” It helps students understand how they and others get to certain conclusions or form certain opinions (their own mental models). Literally a ladder, it starts at the bottom rung with what you know about yourself and works up: first you notice certain things, then you add your own meanings to what’s around you, then you develop beliefs based on those meanings, and finally, you doing something because of your beliefs. It’s a reinforcing loop, since the beliefs you develop are based on your personal experiences, and your beliefs affect what you notice about things and the meanings you apply.

Use that ladder to analyze why a character does something. Take any character – say, Huck Finn – and start with what you know about him, what he does and notices in the story and how his experiences and background affect what he does. It’s a great way for students to understand how cultural and other experiences shape a character and why they might behave peculiarly, Yates says. Social studies teachers also can use this to study a character in history.

A behavior over time graph is another systems tool to increase understanding. Simple line graphs that can be used with kindergartners on up, they look at what is changing and how it is changing. In English class, students do this in response to reading by examining how a character or situation changed over the course of several chapters. In social studies, a current events teacher can use it to give students an understanding of how a world event unfolds. Take a newspaper article on a global issue and ask students to create a graph to illustrate the events in the story and what happened.

Creating a deeper understanding

Systems thinking isn’t just about the tools to help students see the world with a better lens; it also can give them a greater grasp of why things happen a certain way. Things are circular in systems thinking, and recognizing the complex nature of cause-and-effect relationships can help students understand why things happen.

One practice useful for students is called “fixes that fail.” Fixes that fail loops start with a problem and a solution to that problem. But rather than solving the problem, the solution creates an intended consequence, which reinforces the problem, perhaps making it even greater.

Students can use this to examine the Vietnam war, for instance, showing how the United States’ actions led to greater problems rather than solving the original one. Yates says many current and historical events can fit into fixes-that-fail loops. Teachers also can have students look at global events in which bad fixes were avoided.

Using systems thinking approaches in the classroom creates students who can see from another perspective and look deeper to why world events play out in certain ways. “If students develop those habits of thinking systemically, and they look at any global issue, they are going to ask different questions,” Yates says. “They are going to ask questions with a broader perspective.”

When students leave her Arizona school district, Yates says, she hopes they take this way of thinking into everything they do.

Author: Alexandra Moses

Discussion questions:

Do you use systems thinking in your classroom, and what benefits to students have you seen? How easy or difficult is it for them to throw off those mental models?

Graduate Profile

Successful schools in the 21st century prepare students to be globally competent, and ready for college. This guiding belief shapes Asia Society’s International Studies Schools, a network of mostly urban schools who prepare its students to be innovative contributors to the global knowledge economy and interconnected world.

Asia Society’s International Studies Schools Network (ISSN) graduates are Ready for College. They have successfully:

• Completed a globally focused course of study, including classes, extracurricular activities, and international travel, that has enabled them to develop interest and demonstrate expertise in a specific world culture or an important international issue.
• Earned a high school diploma with credits sufficient to pursue a college education in the United States or abroad or to pursue other rigorous post-secondary education.
• Learned how to identify options, evaluate opportunities, and organize educational experiences in college to enable them to pursue a career within the global economy.

ISSN graduates are Prepared for Success in a Global Environment. They:

• Are 21st century literate and are proficient in reading, writing, listening, and speaking in English and in one or more other language.
• Analyze and evaluate global issues from multiple perspectives, gather and synthesize relevant information from around the world, and draw conclusions that consider the impact from various viewpoints.
• Understand how the world’s people and institutions are interconnected and know how critical international economic, political, technological, environmental, and social systems operate interdependently across nations and regions.

• Are proficient in the use of a digital media, can evaluate the validity and integrity of information, and can identify sources of bias.

ISSN graduates are Connected to the World. They:

• Understand and value the opportunity to work collaboratively with individuals from cultural backgrounds different from their own and can see the world from the perspective of others.
• Are comfortable and competent in different cultural settings and know how to shift behavior and language to respectfully interact with people from different backgrounds.
• Understand that decisions and actions taken in the United States may have international consequences and that events worldwide may have national and local implications.
• Understand their responsibility to make ethical decisions and responsible choices, to weigh the consequences of their actions for themselves and others across the globe, and to act toward the development of a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world.

Learn with the World

December 8, 2010, Washington, DC — PISA is an enormously valuable mechanism. It provides the foundation for a serious dialogue among nations on what works in education, and how those successes can be adapted to different geographic, cultural and political contexts.

The recently released 2009 PISA results are grounds for both optimism and concern for the United States. The data shows that the US ranked 17th in science, which is an improvement from 21st in 2006. Much of these gains come from improvement among the lowest-performing students.

But performance in reading and math remains relatively flat. The US ranked 14th in reading, virtually the same ranking as the 2003 test which is the most recent comparable test for the US; and 25th in mathematics, the same ranking as in 2006. These rankings are average or below average compared to other OECD countries.

Equity in performance among US students remains a major issue. Student performance varies widely within the US from region to region—meaning, ultimately, that students in some states are going to be more competitive within a global economy than students in other states.

Student performance is tied more directly to family income status in the US than in the highest-performing countries. Sadly, our poor families are receiving a sub-standard education compared to others in the world.

But what the data also show is that there are American schools and school systems that beat the odds; where low-income students do perform at high levels. It isn’t that we don’t know how to educate poor children well, we just don’t seem to know how to do it consistently.

Another notable finding in the 2009 PISA data is the rise of Asia. Among the top scorers in all three subjects were Asian countries and provinces, led by Shanghai and Hong Kong and followed by Singapore, Korea and Japan.

If you take the average of scores in reading, math and science for each of the 65 nations or provinces taking PISA in 2009, and rank them all on that composite average, eight of the top ten are Asia-Pacific nations or provinces. The United States would rank 26th.

The rise of education in Asia is no accident. It reflects policies and national investment strategies that recognize the tight link between the quality of education and growth in the economy. The most advanced Asian nations live by what we used to take for granted but seem to have lost sight of: good jobs and a rising standard of living require high-quality education for every student.

A recent study by OECD shows what an enormous benefit improving student performance could have for the economy. The study suggests that raising average PISA scores by 25 points over the next 20 years could imply a gain of $41 trillion for the US economy over the lifetime of the generation born in 2010.

Asian nations have aligned their education goals to economic development and built strong school systems by scouring the world, including the United States, for effective practices and weaving them together in ways that mesh with their cultural values.

High-performing Asian school systems, like high-performing nations elsewhere in the world, truly have a global orientation. Policymakers consistently benchmark their systems against international standards, teachers and principals are encouraged to learn about the world, students learn a great deal more about the rest of the world than in the US and all are expected to learn a second language from an early age.

Indeed, while not measured by PISA, the US is considerably behind in language skills. According to figures just released by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, only 18% of US students study a foreign language. That’s a disturbing statistic when the business and defense communities are telling us that knowing more languages means more dollars for American business and more security for US citizens. Learn more and sound off on this issue.

Learning world languages is a key element of what it means for students to be globally competent: to be able to frame and investigate issues of global significance, weigh perspectives, communicate across cultural and linguistic boundaries and take action on global issues, be they across the planet or in the neighborhood.

At Asia Society, we’ve worked over the past seven years with school districts to create a network of schools called the International Studies Schools Network where every student is involved in language study, and where developing students’ global competence is at the center of a rigorous, college preparatory curriculum. It was encouraging to hear Secretary Duncan say this morning that it is hugely important to expose students to the world around them if they are to be successful in a global economy.

The school network we have helped create is but one of a great many schools and school systems in the US and worldwide that are combining academic rigor for all students with a global outlook. When the US created its current education system 100 years ago that has led to a century of American greatness, we borrowed ideas from the leading nations of that era. Now, as Secretary Duncan said this morning, “We have a great deal to learn from other nations that are out-educating us today.”

The 2009 PISA results come at an extremely important moment in US education policy. Congress and the Obama Administration have an historic opportunity to come together and forge a bipartisan agreement on reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. A new No Child Left Behind law can and should draw on the lessons of PISA to ensure that all our students graduate ready for college and are on the path to being productive citizens of the global innovation age.