PREFACE

Building Trust Through Education:  A Global Perspective explores the role of education as a global phenomena within an interconnected and interdependent world. In this textbook, we cover the main tenets of several interrelated fields: globalization, international development and global education policy, all of which connect to a global perspective of education.

Each section of this textbook is designed so that it presents a contained learning module with follow-up questions and links for further exploration. Although there is a logic in the arrangement of the sections, they can be studied separately or in any order. You will find central text flanked by supplemental content and/or alternative representations that respond to or challenge the dominant discourses around main themes.  These alternative representations are an acknowledgement of the many dimensions of any single theme. Occasionally, case studies have been added allowing the reader to further explore the issues and questions raised in the section.

• The first section explores the development of globalization. What exactly is globalization? What have been its positive and negative aspects? What tensions have been created?  It is difficult to understand education in global perspective without first understanding the multi scalar, multifaceted effects of globalization.
• The second section focuses on education as a global phenomena: its role in international development, and the creation of a global education policy.
• The third section examines methods to analyze the complex and changing dynamics of education in a global perspective. It also presents some questions of ethics and trust, and the roles of teaching and learning within the context of globalization. We explore the question: what is the role of education when people and ideas become mobile, diversified, dangerous or contentious?
• The fourth section is a direct engagement with current issues, and extends the debates on education further into practical application. It challenges readers to use their knowledge to represent and re-imagine an education that is responsive to an interconnected and mutually dependent world. We ask how conflict, climate change, human rights, global citizenship and other such global movements may influence or be influenced by concepts of education.

As you read this textbook, you will find various debates and theories represented in a variety of different ways: static and interactive text, video, graphics and images, and more. In the spirit of open educational resources, we encourage readers and users of this textbook to add similar multimodal and multimedia representations of the themes represented, as well as identify new themes. This underscores the premise that learning is a fluid, constantly changing, transformative process. Our goal in creating this textbook is to explore what education brings to a world in which knowledge is critical, connected and shared. It is our hope that the platform created here will continue to evolve and will be used by undergraduate students interested in exploring the field of education both locally and globally.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sonia Mehta, Assistant Professor of Education (NTT) at Macalester College, teaches courses in Education and the Challenge of Globalization and Education and Social Change. Her research interests focus on international and global studentship and pedagogies of Education, Critical Social Cartography, Comparative and International Studies in Education and the Sociology of Education.