Geography Education for “An Attainable Global Perspective”

Abstract

This article considers approaches to promoting global perspectives as both cognitive and affective learning outcomes within geography education. Particular attention is paid to the work of Robert Hanvey, who proposed “An Attainable Global Perspective” in the 1970s, which explicitly ties to the content and perspectives embedded in geographic education. However, this approach was situated within a particularly American perspective on the nature and value of “global” education. This paper both endorses and updates Hanvey's ideas, aiming to spur dialog among geographers to internationalize the discussion of how geography education can foster more truly global perspectives.

Keywords::

• global education
• internationalization
• learning outcomes

Acknowledgements

We thank the three anonymous reviewers of this manuscript for sharpening the focus of the essay and suggesting some of the questions for further discussion we pose at the end.

Notes

^1. All of the AAG Center for Global Geography Education's educational resources may be retrieved from http://www.aag.org/cgge.

^2. The international “GeoCapabilities” project is comparing the content, organization, and positioning of geography in the national curriculum standards and frameworks of several countries. See http://www.aag.org/geocapabilities for updates to this project.

^3. Hanvey himself later coauthored, with Alan Backler, a textbook for secondary geography education in the USA, called Global Geography (1986).

^4. The CGGE website now lists more than a dozen studies, from varied international settings, that confirm this outcome.