An event titled Summit on US/China K-12 Education: Global Collaborations and Partnerships was held on May 1, 2008 at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation in Raleigh, NC.
A series of speakers addressed various themes related to global education, speeches accompanied in many cases by excellent Powerpoint presentations. For materials related to the summit including the Powerpoint slideshows, go to
. This event was picked up as a state news story by NBC channel 17 of Raleigh.
These five themes represent important topics for the department and the college to consider in re-visioning its educational curriculum for preservice teachers and graduate students.
As the Powerpoint files become available at the Friday Institute web site, they will provide more thorough and detailed information than my brief notes below that were taken during this event.
Participants from Western Carolina University who traveled to Raleigh to attend the event are: Dr. Lois Petrovich-Mwaniki, Director of International Programs and Services, Dr. Robert Houghton, Dept Head, Elementary and Middle Grades; Dr. Marylou Matoush, Literacy specialist in Elementary and Middle Grades, Dr. Chris Blake, English Dept, and Dr. Sharon Dole, specialist in Gifted and Talented Education.
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Speaker.
Kathryn M. Moore, Dean College of Education, NC State
Interesting difference:
China has 5 times the US population.
[my comment: Jiangsu province has 70 million to 7 million of NC]
Issues in common:
China educating 20% of world's youth.
Both countries see a need for promoting entrepreneurship and innovation.ƒ
Need to:
increase faculty exchanges,
showcase best practices
stimulate new partnerships
Speaker. Provost Larry Neilson - NCSU
UNC tomorrow commission
lst recommendation - our global readiness, major finding, students be personally and professionally successful and to do so university must enhance global competitiveness of institutions. Must make the university a global univ in a global society.
The State Board of Education today will sign a memorandum of agreement with Chinese educational system in to give special funding to 11 schools in partnerships with 11 schools in Jiangsu Province in China. Jiangsu is in the eastern part of United States with Shanghai in its southern parts.
Question: How big is this province, how much bigger than NC.
Sept 8, 6 pm, next seminar, Senator Bill Bradley, emergence of the new Russia at Stuart Theater.
Speaker. Mrs. Mary P. Easley, first lady of NC, executive in residence at NCSU, directs mellenium lecture series, great addition to NC State community.
NC is 9th largest state and is growing rapidly in terms of population and business strength.
Building curric that builds collaboration skills.
tech provides good ways to continue our dialogs
exports 59% increase to China from NC, business robust on both balance sheets
NC Bank of American, spent 3 billion to get control of China construction bank
NC has over 12 schools teaching Mandarin.
Nanjing Normal University is now in partnership with NC
Speakers. Betsy Brown, Special Asst to the Provost, Director of NC State Confucius Institute who introduced Vivian Stewart - vice pres for Education and Chinese Education Specialist, Asian Society
[get her slideshow from the web site at top of document]
Slide. The Next Economy
▪ need sci and tech literacy
▪ need critical thinking about sustainable economies
▪ globally competitive
Slide. Global competence
This is a core competence not measured in our educational testing.
Globalization is driving demand for an internationally competent workforce.
1 in 5 jobs is tied to international trade
Most future business growth will be in overseas markets
New faces, new places.
increasing diversity in our schools and workplaces require citizenry with increased understanding of other cultures
New national and human security challenges
need for global collabaration to solve, e.g.: climate change, AIDS, avian flu, water shortages, terrorism.
What is global competence?
▪ Knowledge of the world regions, cultures, and global international issues.
▪ Skills in communicating in languages other than English, working in global or cross-cultural environments, and using information from different cultural sources around the world
▪ Values/perspectives of respect and concern for other cultures and peoples (these are your new work mates)
Increasing Calls for Global Knowlege and skills.
Innovations in Schools
3 min clip of Walter Payton College Prep High School program.
[if not on slideshow, then email her for i]
Diverse Schools in Chicago. (running on Mac...)
4 years language requirement, heavy international team teaching via videoconferencing
What are the Elements of a globally-oriented school?
(From Goldman Sachs Prizes Competition and Asia society's international studies scholars network)
• Global vision
• Modernize curriculum by integrating international content across all subject areas
• Emphasize language proficiency
• and 3 other bullets - going too fast
Global Vision
Does your school mission statement, graduate profile, and graduation requirements focus on preparing students for the interconnected world of the 21st century?
Modernize curric.
• Soc studies: world history, international economics
• English: lang arts, chinese novels and poetry in translation
• Science, comparative study of different rivers
• Arts, chinese film, asian art of museums on web sites
• physical education: martial arts
Growth of interest in Chinese lang programs
# of schools, 200% increase in 4 years 04-08, largely in private schools but expansion in public schools
Growth of interest in Chinese lang programs
• National Chinese lang programs
• 2,400 schools want to offer the AP in Mandiarn
• 50% incrase in higher ed enrolment sicne 2000
• ciy and state initiative-Chicago, LA, connecticut, kansas, min, ohio, oklahoma, oregon, utah, wisconsin
• beginning of distance learning programs
• Need to focus on quality of programs to create real proficiency and not many do.
Need to focus on Quality of Programs
• start earlier
• more immersion like experiences (Skype, videoconferencing, and online connections to native speakers)
• create supply of teachers to teach languages- visiting teachers but also need US training program to certify teachers.
• better articulation between programs
Partner Schools
"every school in the US should have a link with a school in another country."
Conneticut has links to more than 85 schools with schools in Shandong province, with teacher and student exchanges.
Partner Schools
How to build successful partnerships:
• Encourage equal reciprocity
• build relationships
• personal commitment
• maintain direct initiatives at state/provincial levels
• develop state and local collaborations
• observe cultural protocols and behaviors
• prepare memorandum of understanding/agreements (think about how the small group that gets involved with global studies can impact and influence the rest of the school)
Teacher professional development
• National Consortium for Teaching about Asia offers seminars in 40+ states
• Teacher travel and study - Fulbright, Rotary, Han Ban, Freeman
• Vermont: More than 1/3 of teachers have traveled to Asia
askasia.org, social study teachers,
guidebook for secondary schools. Going global: Preparing U.S. students for an interconnected world
Washington, D. C. July 10-12, 2008, global conf for educators, title?
END of PPT and speech.
7-8 minutes of table discussion
What do we now know having come, and what might we do? Audience members come to the floor microphones. One member of the audience asked all to consider how to respond to Jack Mccafferty CNN broadcast - http://cbs5.com/local/McCafferty.CNN.China.2.703955.html to his deeply offending comments about Chinese as thugs and products as junk.
Center for International Understanding
folks want Vivian's slideshow and it will be found here http://www.fi.ncsu.edu/USChina
Yong Zhao, Director of the US-Chia Center for Research on Educational Excellence and University distinguished prof of ed at Michigan State University
What Knowledge is of most worth: re-imagining education for a global society.
http://2mminutes.com/about.html
Zhao is disturbed by the video's projection of China and India as like the Soviet Union in the 1980's, the competitive enemy that is heavily stereotyped. 54 minutes, six kids
Directs US thinking to be in competition like cold war.
We have gotten off on the wrong track with reports of US doing poorly in international competition. "national crisis of math scores"
Four letter word, NCLB, driving education, with so little time an so little resources so what should we be teaching? Technology redefines talents. Schools need to respond to it.
Once you adopt them then everyone is defined into those who can and can't, who can't read and can, who can climb "stairs" and those who are in wheel chairs.
Major educational thinker. During the industrial revolution, Herbert Spencer, 1859, wrote What knowledge is of most worth? Find it on www.Gutenberg.com. It was the beginning of modern curric.
Today we can announce the death of distance , "electrically contracted, the globe is no more than a village. Marshal Mcluhan, 1964
The Globe (flatworld, the global village)
Diversity - using population size, wealth distribution, terttairy education
royalties and license fees exports
toy exports
inequality is huge. high % that cannot read.
how do you make sense of each other in videoconf
.iton and decolinzation that have at one pt domianted the world.
must accept that not only kid on block.
Today highly interdependent with alliances based on economic interests, not on ideology.
maps of many different perspectives.
What one country is giving up in educational goals, other countries are adopting.
US wants better readers, China wants more patents.
Why can't Johnny Read or Add vs Why can't asians think?
Asian perspective: knowledge-centered, centralized, discipline-based, outcome-oriented, but may lose creativity so wishes to be like United States.
US, child-centered, decentralized, activity-based, process-oriented but wishing to be like China
Global Free Flow - what does it mean for new education, businesses can located elements of business anywhere around the globe. Example: The Cooper car, an English brand, owned by German company, built in 14 different countries.
What do we learn to become indespensable?
US is center for digital animation, 20 billion in surplus comes to the U.S. because of this creativity.
How to teach kids to be so unique they cannot be replaced.
"Herbert Hoover, worst president in United States history until recently" was hired by Chinese emperor to be mining expert during time of Boxer rebellion.
Our students are global in their future, work from or move to, but still global.
If others offer cheaper salaries, then what are we offering that is unique?
A Whole New Mind
InformationTION AGE: L-DIRECTED THINKING
SEQUENTIAL, LITERAL, FUNCTIALL, TEXTUAL, ANALYTIC, ASIA, AUTOMATION, Abundance (in developed countries, you look for things that are not just functional that make you feel good, why iPod vs mp3 player; buy car or buy how it makes you feel, Gucci bag holds less than plastic bag
Essential Aptitudes in the Conceptual age, design, story, symphony, empathy, play, meaning construction) left brained aptitudes.
Global competences
see vivian's slide, speak lang, contract with global problems.
McDonaldizationandStarbucks in the Forbidden City: GlobalConsumeris. (exports obseity, and a way of living (clean bathrooms) McDonalds taught Japanese how to relax. They had a cultural habit of not touching food, but can't use chopsticks on a big Mac.
Globalization brings cultural clashes, cultural identifies, zenophobia,
"philosophy of the classroom today is the philosophy of the gov tomorrow." Abraham Lincoln.
My hope is in educators.
Global challenges. example
Climate Change and the Bird Flu: Global elephant in the local bedroom
[travel teams vs work teams is like visitor vs. family
a peaceful global village is made of globally interdependent members who recognize that lifting their team member lifts them.}
Think about the organizational and psychological difference between those two concepts. Travel teams are easy - the low hanging fruit that is easy to grab.
Travel "together" decorating my mind with the novelty of the world around me. If I travel, I travel thru you (my type of interaction is "visiting" interaction a more distant relationship, if we work together, my interaction is something different, how? it is interdependent, a work-team is a work-family, when I travel I can still slip easily into competitiveness.
vs work together, need to develop the concept of "day-night schools", using the Chinese boarding school system to connect with teachers in the evening in China.}
Schools as global enterprises, products, resources, market, staffing
massively multi-player online game to learn about China,
http://enterzon.comhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiangsu the province partnered with state of NC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Jiangsu_CN.png, map of provinces (Is Shanghai in Jiangsu or is it its own province)
Speaker. Break out session - New Literacies in the US and China: Global Connection in Teacher Education
see New Literacies Collaboration at the Friday Institute site on the web, started a partnership with Conneticut.
See threat in that Internet is transforming what it means to be literate in the 21st century, and NC not spending time on what to put in place in our schools to make this happen.
Henry Jenkins (2006) 21st century's literacies framework.
Bloom's tax translating into play,performance, simulation, appropriation,
Don Leu's book, handbook
World is Flat, personal computer enabled millions to be composers
spread of internet connected them to share
software standards enable global connections seamlessly
Global Inernet Usage (Coiro, Knobel, Lankshear, & Leu, 2008, p.3)
Future supply of college graduates slide
Preliminary study, class blog between 19 american and 11 chinese education students. Only some students participated but was interesting.
American authors writing about China, but Chinese reading same material did not agree.
3 themes
• Internet can be distraction
• credibililty of info must be constantly checked
• teach students how to evaluate web info
They created a survey out to teachers in China and U.S. and ranked various topics about educational goals. They rated critical thinking and problem solving skills as the most important skills.
The least important - media literacy (presenter feels that this must rise to the top as need critical perspective of what is in the media including on the web).
Most groups say they have never taught video editing or wikis. All lack access to hardware.
Differences - Chinese teachers rate creativity ranked it 4th, American teachers ranked it 10th.
Chinese use more mobile tech or podcasts. US more likely use digital cameras, ppt, presentations and games in the teaching
US spend 4.3 h/ week using a computer in class; chinese students spend 24 h/week
Ed policies
US has NCLB, while China policy is highlighting innovation and creativity.
sum up
Prensky, "kids are training themselves - in the absence of anyone doing it for them, to be ready for the world of the 21st century."
Teachers can learn from each other and from the kids.
next teacher - cultural responsive teaching
next Assessing Cultural sensitivity
Intercultural development Inventory (Mitchell R. Hammer & Milton Bennett,1999, 2001).
50 question online inventory to both sophomores and juniors .
uses model of intercultural stages (DMIS),
denial/defense/reversal (ignorant bliss)
Minimization (us vs the other, one of the other party feeling superior)
Acceptance/Adaptation
43% in defense-dinaial,
47% m, 6 % in adation,
did again with juniors before coursework and got similar results, then went to work with curriculum.
Took lessons out to schools to teach cross-cultural understanding.
Taught "happy English" songs to teach English to share with global partners via Cultural Studies Blog. Students performed and shared online then sent web site to partner schools.
Poem, each line about their culture from a different student.
http://blogs.lib.ncsu.edu/page/elm460After curric, they retested, got improvement from 1 semester.
[I think dept should give the inventory and see where our students our to compare with their data. I think we'll come out ahead.]
New speaker - each person told their own story, shared. Teach a lesson which required student to engage.
Speaker. Governor Jim Hunt - led information reforms in NC. He is 1 of 10 most influential people in Education. "Education is our future."
China and US responsible for greatest contributions to global warming. This is just one example many needs that require partnership. This effort should begin with our schools.
