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Adaptive Education
Written in November 2007 by GSF President, Dr. Chris Harth, this principled statement derives from theories of complexity and geopolitics and from decades of research and best practices in the field of international education. It provides a working executive summary of GSF's forthcoming research report on Global Literacy and Competence. For more information about this piece, the related report, or the larger project, please contact Dr. Harth or submit our online information form.
Adaptive Education for Our Emergent Global Era
By Chris Harth, Ph.D.
We live in an increasingly dynamic and interconnected global age. Ongoing technological advances continue to modify the effects of geography on our small planet. Distance, for instance, no longer provides the same degree of protection or insulation that it once might have. However outdated and inapplicable, longstanding mental maps and entrenched views and practices are sticky and difficult to dislodge. Even with the world changing rapidly around us, some people remain steadfast in their beliefs and routines, recognizing neither the need for change nor the potential risks and costs of being left behind. For the sake of ourselves and others, we need to recognize and respond strategically to such changes, to think anew about the best way to prepare our students and young citizens for the challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century, and to help generate a critical mass and self-perpetuating dynamic for adaptive education at all levels.
Growing international connectedness, the preponderance of the United States, and a participatory socio-economic and political system all place a premium on the global literacy and competence of the American citizenry. Nevertheless, many Americans lack even rudimentary knowledge of international affairs, to say nothing of relevant skills, useful perspectives, or a commitment to engagement. The available research on the under-preparedness of young Americans is staggering. A recent survey conducted by National Geographic and Roper, for instance, found that one in five Americans aged 18-24 cannot locate the Pacific Ocean on a map of the world, the same percentage that thinks the Amazon River is in Africa. One in ten cannot locate the United States. For that matter, one third of young Americans think the U.S. fought against the Soviet Union in World War II, place Darfur in Asia, and estimate the population of the U.S. as one-to-two billion. A comparable percentage would both miss a conference call scheduled in a different time zone and travel in the wrong direction in an evacuation. Other studies indicate that less than one in three graduate from college, with similar numbers of college students requiring remedial work. For that matter, only one in three young Americans tend to vote, which is more than the number who read a newspaper. Even fewer travel abroad or speak a second language.
These are not isolated indices. National Assessments of Educational Progress (NAEP) conducted by the United States Department of Education reveal large numbers of high school seniors performing at “below basic” levels in subject areas like economics (21 percent), geography (29 percent), civics (35 percent), and US history (53 percent). Similar gaps are evident in skill development, with more than a quarter of American students performing at “below basic” levels in both writing (26 percent) and reading (27 percent), and more than a third in both math (39 percent) and science (46 percent). In international comparisons conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), American students finished in the bottom half of all categories but reading (where it finished tenth of 29 OECD members), with particularly poor results in science literacy (16th), math literacy (20th), and problem solving (21st).
While most educational experts are aware of such troubling statistics and recognize the challenges ahead, many Americans remain blissfully ignorant, pretending that our oceanic moats offer protection and that everyone admires and seeks to emulate the United States. Even the most knowledgeable, experienced, and committed educators, administrators, and policymakers, however, are struggling to keep up with the rapidly changing global context. With pressures growing from the top down for measurable progress in key areas targeted by the No Child Left Behind legislation and resistance at local and state levels to outside pressures for educational change, trying to improve the global competence of young Americans might appear daunting. Difficulty, however, does not obviate necessity. In fact, recent trends in both education and global affairs, especially increasing connectedness between the United States and the rest of the world, make reform and internationalization imperative. The potential consequences of action or inaction are far reaching and directly impact individuals, educational institutions, communities, countries, and our planet as a whole.
Based on a realistic assessment of this shifting operational context and our lack of preparedness for it, as well as on decades of related experience and research, the educational approach described herein draws on complexity theory and emphasizes the interactivity of adaptive agents, dynamic structures, and feedback loops between and among them. Principled and practical, progressive and pragmatic, the resulting synthetic hybrid offers a sensible strategic vision for how we could and should best prepare our students and citizens for success, service, and leadership in our emergent global era.
All students and citizens should be equipped with certain knowledge, skills, and perspectives that can help them to meet challenges, to seize opportunities, and to make the most of their lives. In our world, such challenges and opportunities appear increasingly global in scope. Accordingly, young people should develop the capacity to recognize these global changes, to think critically and strategically about how to proceed, and to collaborate with diverse partners, including those from other cultures and countries. As entrenched and efficacious as traditional thinking and approaches may have once been, they no longer suffice. Shifting circumstances warrant a reassessment about what is necessary and desirable in education. Most importantly, we need to think constructively and expeditiously about global literacy and competence and how we can cultivate them in our students -- the citizens and leaders of the future.
As a starting point, all students should have a base level of knowledge in key subject areas, including mathematics, the sciences, the arts, the humanities, and social studies. As E. D. Hirsch and others have argued, this essential background information enables people to be “culturally literate” and to more effectively interact with others who share such knowledge. Given thickening webs of global interactivity and the expanding context for learning and living, we need to update our definitions of core knowledge to include essential elements from non-Western cultures, which currently include nearly 85 percent of the world’s population. While knowledge of our Western heritage remains indispensible, it grows less sufficient daily. Increasingly, our students should have awareness of and appreciation for other cultures. They need to understand where we came from, where we are currently, and where we might be heading. Toward this end, they should study world art, literature, and religions, as well as world history, geography, economics, and politics. Multidisciplinary, issue-oriented classes in global affairs, especially those with real-world, service-learning opportunities, offer one promising vehicle for engaging students; there are, however, myriad means to effect such ends. Ultimately, approaches should be tailored to audience, context, and purpose -- as with any effort to communicate, instruct, or collaborate.
While background knowledge is indispensible, it is but one of three essential components of global literacy and competence. We live in a high-tech era with an abundance of accessible information. Facts, theories, and other bits of information can be retrieved via any computer or phone connected to the Internet. While digital divides still prevent all people from having equal access to such information, we often find ourselves now wrestling with too much information, trying to discern what is reliable and relevant for a given question and whittling away less germane sources. Increasingly, students need to learn how to ask the right questions and how to sift through various sources of information to find workable answers. Moreover, they need to be able to identify and research important issues, to analyze and share the information they process, and to collaborate with people from other parts of the world to solve our shared problems and realize our shared opportunities. In this respect, the premium on cross-cultural communication skills and foreign language proficiency continues to grow, as does the value of some technological competence and computer skills. At the same time, we cannot afford to slight more traditional concerns with reading and writing. Nor are quantitative and scientific skills any less important in our current era. In this respect, the growing challenge with developing global skills, as with global knowledge, is to integrate emergent concerns with core concepts, building on the necessary base to generate a higher and more appropriate level of sufficiency -- in terms of both knowledge and skills -- for our changing global context.
Arguably even more important than skills and knowledge are perspectives and attitudes. These help shape our vision, define our character, and influence how we live our lives. They also affect the questions we ask, the knowledge we pursue, the skills we develop, and how we put all of these to work. Given this role as underlying drivers, perspectives and attitudes might be the single most pivotal element in education. More specifically, in our global age, we need to cultivate global perspectives and attitudes in our students and citizens, including awareness of our growing interconnectedness, appreciation for other cultures, and tolerance of different viewpoints and opinions. They should recognize both similarities and differences, avoiding prejudice and bigotry as they try to learn about themselves and others. Top priorities also include an inquisitive spirit and a life-long love of learning, as well as an understanding of complexity and an appreciation for nuance. In shifting terrain with emergent actors, inchoate identities, and evolving ends and means, our citizens must be intellectually engaged and agile, open-minded and pragmatic with their selection of appropriate tools and techniques, and ready and willing to adapt to changing conditions.
The same philosophy holds for teachers and educational administrators. To be clear, there is no single pedagogy or curriculum to impart such knowledge, develop such skills, and cultivate such perspectives -- which, ideally, can be combined in suitable, multifaceted, age-appropriate learning opportunities. While identifying “best practices” can illuminate interesting possibilities and help generate creative insights, multiple approaches to teaching and learning can and do bear fruit. Regardless of whether one subscribes to Howard Gardner’s notion of multiple intelligences or Bob Sternberg’s concept of multiple facets of a single intelligence, most educators agree that students learn in different ways. By targeting specific learning styles and abilities with differentiated instruction, in and out of the classroom, educators can and should tailor curriculum, instruction, and related programs to best fit a given context and the needs of individual students. Wherever possible, learners and educators alike should set and be held accountable for high standards. They should process feedback, reflecting on experience and incorporating new information while looking ahead, thinking strategically, and applying lessons learned to the next steps forward. They also should be offered ample resources and support to succeed in such tasks. Time to reflect on teaching or to confer with colleagues from other disciplines teaching the same age students, for instance, can be invaluable for promoting more meaningful and effective instruction, as can asking four essential questions: (1) what are we doing; (2) why are we doing it; (3) is it working; and (4) how do we know.
The ideal educational environment grows from a collaborative community of life-long learners committed to exploring our world and to making a positive contribution to it. Properly organized and supported, such a group can generate a critical mass and self-perpetuating dynamic for progressive improvements in how we educate and prepare our students and young citizens -- thus, simultaneously serving the community well and setting a positive example that can engage others. Wherever possible, growing awareness and skill development should be combined with greater empathy toward our fellow humans and responsibility toward our shared habitat. In our emergent global era, service and stewardship go hand-in-hand with success and leadership. Moreover, as circumstances continue to change, we must prepare ourselves, our students, and our citizens to recognize and adapt to such changes in an ongoing process of learning, sharing knowledge, and striving to effect a better reality on local, regional, national, and global levels. To do any less is to sell all of us and our shared future short.
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