Teaching Globalization Issues to Education Students: What's the Point?

Abstract

We argue that teaching the dynamics of globalization to education students is an important aspect of teaching for social justice and for the development of critical awareness, thinking, and sensitivity. We begin this position paper by briefly characterizing globalization and exploring a range of approaches to teaching this topic. We then describe some of the challenges and risks of teaching globalization issues. We reflect on the responses of our students, looking at such issues as guilt, paralysis, disconnection, fear, pity, and anger. We end by describing how teaching about globalization can support our broader goals as critical educators, which include helping students to disrupt commonsense understandings, to unlearn dominant ideologies, to think systemically, and to create new habits of learning.

Kathy Hytten is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Administration and Higher Education at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Her research interests include philosophy of education, critical theory, diversity, democracy, social justice, and globalization.

Silvia Cristina Bettez is an assistant professor in the Educational Leadership and Cultural Foundations Department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her primary areas of specialization include sociology of education; race, class, and gender intersections; critical multicultural education; qualitative research methods; and feminist gender studies.