Seite 2 ZEP 23. Jg. Heft 3 September 2000
David Selby
Global Education as
Transformative
Education
Zusammenfassung: David Selby stellt ein Modell Globa-
len Lernens, das von vier Säulen getragen wird. Globale
Erziehung im Sinne Selbys vollzieht sich nicht allein durch
die Beschäftigung mit globalen ökologischen oder ökono-
mischen Problemen, sondern muss von einer grundlegenden
Veränderung unseres (industriellen) reduktionistischen
Blickwinkels und Bewusstseins - hin zu einem holistischen
Selbstverständnis begleitet werden.
Varieties of Global Education
Towards the close of the first regional conference on Glo-
bal Education organised by UNICEF MENA (Middle East
and North Africa) and held at Broumana, Lebanon, in July
1995, I was asked, as conference consultant, to prepare a
short notice a transparency conveying the essence of global
education. For better or worse, I presented delegates with the
following:
Global education is an holistic paradigm of education
predicated upon the interconnectedness of communities,
lands, and peoples, the interrelatedness of all social, cultural
and natural phenomena, the interpenetrative nature of past,
present and future, and the complementary nature of the
cognitive, affective, physical and spiritual dimensions of
the human being. It addresses issues of development, equity,
peace, social and environmental justice, and environmental
sustainability. Its scope encompasses the personal, the local,
the national and the planetary. Congruent with its precepts
and principles, its pedagogy is experiential, interactive,
children-centred, democratic, convivial, participatory, and
change-oriented.
It needs to be made clear at the outset that there are multi-
ple interpretations and many varieties of global education
and that the term has experienced the same kind of "semantic
inflation" that has beset terms such as "sustainable
development" and "sustainability" (Sauvé 1999). For some,
global education is akin to a world affairs course in a high
school curriculum, offering an all-too-rare timetable slot for
students to consider global issues and international relations
in a systematic way (Heater 1980). For others, it is a project
to infuse the social studies curriculum particularly, but not
exclusively, at intermediate and senior grades with a "global
perspective" (Petrie 1992; Werner/Case 1997). Significantly
the national vehicle for the promotion of global education
in the U.S.A. is the National Council for the Social Sciences.
For yet others, global education seeks to promote the study
of global issues and themes, such as sustainable futures, qua-
lity of life, conflict and security, and social justice, across
the curriculum within an integrated, interdisciplinary or trans-
disciplinary framework (Lyons 1992). Implicitly, or in some
cases explicitly, the "buck" stops at the curriculum (and its
associated learning and teaching methodologies). A further
school of thought, in which I include myself, argues that
global education is nothing less than the educational ex-
pression of an ecological, holistic or systemic paradigm
(Capra 1996; Capra/Steindl-Rast 1992) and, as such, has
implications for the nature, purposes, and processes of
learning and for every aspect of the functioning of a school
or other learning community (Selby 1999, 2000; Pike/ Selby,
forthcoming).
If, within the fabric of the global education debate,
differences regarding scope provide the warp of the argument,
the weft concerns ideology, goals and purposes. There are
those who perceive purpose in terms of increasing competi-
tiveness, reinforcing dominance and buttressing decline
within the global marketplace. The Illinois State Board of
Education document, Increasing International and
Intercultural Competence through Social Sciences, for
instance, speaks of the need to equip students for effective
participation in a world in which it is necessary to "court
foreign investors and markets for locally produced goods"
and Toh Swee-Hin (1993) has noted a similar commercial
strategic argument in some Canadian global education
mission statements. Knowing about global interdependen-
cies, (some) global issues, and other cultures will thus increase
"global competitiveness". Such a position is, perhaps, the
baldest manifestation of the "liberal-technocratic" paradigm
of global education within which global interdependencies
are viewed uncritically (i.e. as symmetrical), culture is treated
fragmentally and superficially rather than holistically and
paradigmatically, and a management interpretation of the
"global village", with its reliance on experts and elites, is
overtly or covertly embraced (Toh 1993). Set against this is
a "transformative paradigm" of global education which is
"explicitly ethical", encourages a critical global literacy
(interdependencies at all levels viewed as preponderantly
asymmetrical), highlights the "pervasive reality of structural
violence", embraces a radical pedagogy, and is liberationist,
empowering and ecological (Toh 1993, p. 11-14). Another
divide of significance that has recently opened up within
the field is between those whose work is (often uncritically)
humanistic in tone and assumptions, and those calling for
biocentric expressions of global education in which the hu-
man project is decentered (Pike 1996/Selby 1995). The glo-
bal education I want to discuss here is of the biocentric,
holistic, and transformative genre.
A Four-Dimensional Model of Global Education
I would like to propose a four-dimensional model for glo-
bal education. The model comprises three outer dimensions
and an inner dimension, reflecting the global educator's twin