I had a wonderful conversation today with a graduate student who is studying Educational Anthropology. (What a fabulous description of a field of study that is so needed today.) Rebecca was living in the Northwest while her husband was stationed at McChord Air Force Base in 2005-2006. For about 9 months she was the best possible intern/volunteer/assistant/”do anything that needs to be done” person I’ve ever met. She helped me put on a Youth Summit “Beyond Islam: Understanding the Muslim World,” a United States Institute of Peace grant that I had when I was working at the World Affairs Council. She also helped organize the Early Language Symposium at the UW and the Heritage Language Workshop with Dr. Shuhan Wang in January, 2006, that was part of the International Education Coalition’s launch of its “Expanding Chinese Language Capacity” initiative.
In the past five years, Rebecca has been studying Arabic and traveling to the Middle East regularly. She is now preparing for her dissertation field work in Jordan where she plans to develop case studies in comparative and international education.
You may be wondering what Jordan has to teach “us” in the U.S. Quite a lot. In fact, it turns out that we in the U.S. know almost nothing about educational systems in a number of nations. That’s something that Rebecca would like to change. I’m glad to introduce you to her here and look forward to her posts!
Michele
Sadly we in the U.S. know almost nothing about many things about many nations and I humbly submit myself to the “we.”
As someone of Pakistani descent who has more of a connection with Pakistan than the average American, I am often really suprised by the fact that the only information another has of Pakistan and life there is from some brief portrayal (usually negative) of this country.
I’ll be very interested to hear what Rebecca has to share about Jordan and otherwise. Maybe I’ll ask my sister to engage in the dialogue—she is an educator in Pakistan.
Thank you for such a warm welcome! I’m gratified and encouraged by the Global Competence blog and conference. I’m a firm believer that we must put the “world” in “world-class” education. This effort involves all the stakeholders in quality education: policy makers and politicians, business leaders, teachers and administrators, parents, and students. There are two crucial sides to global competence in education that are intertwined: knowledge and relationships.
With the information and communication technology available to us today, there is no reason why we cannot bring virtual face-to-face international interaction in the classroom using technology like Skype video chat or organizations like iEARN or Bridges to Understanding. Knowledge ABOUT other countries is much more meaningful when they come from friends and peers from those countries.
Another, vitally important element to global competence is learning lessons from education practice and research around the globe. Schooling is essentially an experiment in cultural meaning-making in a society, and undergoes almost constant reform as the individuals involved, needs, and resources change. We can learn much from the results of these experiments in other countries that can inform our own continual efforts to improve education. Global competence is reciprocal.
One example of a useful lesson is the Jordanian education in foreign language. All Jordanian students start studying English in first grade and must continue throughout secondary school. French or other foreign languages are offered in middle school. By all objective measures and by my personal assessment, Jordanians have reached an extremely impressive level of English fluency in school children. This is even more impressive when situated in the historical context, since Jordan’s 92.3% literacy rate, gender parity in education, 97% school enrolment and 85% university enrolment show gains of twenty to thirty percentage points in less than twenty years. This case study of successful foreign language education contrasts harshly with the failure of the US schooling to teach students foreign languages. Granted that the role of English as a global language complicates a direct comparison, there are benefits from studying the processes of teacher training, language assessment, curriculum development, integration into social life, and public discussions about education policy and reform.
Interesting. I just had a call today from a parent in Spokane whose granddaughter is learning French from her mother at home. She has traveled to China herself and was impressed that they were teaching English in grade school. She was wondering what — if anything — was happening in Spokane. Anyone from Spokane care to report?
(By the way, a great resource for families that want to raise bilingual (or multilingual) children is The Bilingual Edge: Why, When, and How to Teach Your Child a Second Language by Kendall King and Alison Mackey.)
The Global Education Summit that Rebecca referenced is being convened by Global Washington http://www.globalwa.org on November 18 in Seattle. Rebecca is coming out to join the conversation table and share her unique perspectives.