1. Globalization and Education
Karen Heine
MED 560
August 27th
Scot Brewer

2. Abstract
In this presentation, two trends and four major issues in contemporary education will
be explored. Trends in education result from a need for change---a new program
or position---which often prove to be temporary. I would suggest that the idea of
literacy coaches being hired at the secondary level to aid teachers in multi-literate
instruction will be a fad, diminishing as issues of time constraints and self-efficacy
doom this new position to fail. If the results aren’t positive early on for this
program, funding will dwindle and the program will disappear. In addition to these
trends is a major problem facing the modern and very global student: anxiety. In
this presentation, I link anxiety to greater global expectations, but as a result of the
increased demands on these students, test scores often fall and electives
disappear, replaced by mediation. The underlying challenge for our educational
system is to address one of the greatest challenges of the new shrinking world
which is to teach students how to be truly collaborative, rather than covertly urge
a competitiveness which is not healthy at this age, or any age for that matter.

3. Trends in Education
One contemporary trend that has appeared in education recently is that of Secondary-level
Literacy Coach. The 2001 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) government mandate emphasized
literacy and created this new type of position in middle schools and high schools across the
country. With recent grant money, literacy coaches are flooding the hallways, assisting
content teachers in incorporating literacy units, including key vocabulary that is content
specific, and urging teachers in all disciplines to have students write in a more expressive
manner. These coaches meet with individual teachers to help them develop a plan to
improve student reading and writing. This trend seems to stem, not only from NCLB, but also
the increase in globalization, adding ELS students to an already struggling reading population.
The challenges of this trend to move into a full-fledged program of the future are as follows:
1. For this program and the literacy coach to be successful it will require collaboration, mutual
trust and equal voice (Gross, 2010). Gross posits that this may be a challenge depending on
how the teacher perceives this new literacy coach and had both positive and negative results.
2. Literacy coaching also requires an “openness to change, willingness to be reflective and
collaborative, and time for the transformation” (Gross, 2010, 136). Although many of the
teachers seemed will to try, time was a noted challenge in this study.
Broadening the definition of what it means to be literate is also a trend affecting global education
today, prompting the term multiliterate which includes technologies like podcasts, electronic
books, and social media (Kellough and Kellough, 2011).

4. Major Issues in Education
The increase in anxiety stemming from a globalized society which now expects more from
students, adding culture studies and technological advancements to an already large
secondary curriculum, is “counterproductive to academic performance”(Kellough and
Kellough, 2011, 18). This can cause low-performance schools to decrease
expectations, reading and writing less, at a time when students must know even more. This
puts added stress on students, especially in low-income schools, which exacerbates the
problem. The NCLB legislation then precipitates a shift toward math and English Language
Arts (ELA) and students move farther from electives which can be a safe place where
students find success. So, students again become more stressed continuing this cycle of
anxiety. The challenges underlying these major issues, which are intertwined in public
school, is the rapidly changing requirements schools must exist within that govern their
funding which controls the programs and classes that can be offered, which affects students’
anxiety; since student anxiety has been linked to performance and student performance can
be linked to funding, this is a vicious cycle in need of repair.
Of course, only a couple of major issues have been explored here and
those are all interconnected as are many other issues in the public
education system of today.

5. Challenges in Education
Since the last point explored major issues in globalized education and indicated that anxiety
belonged in this category, a major challenge facing the next generation of global learners
must involve how we treat each other. Schools have evolved from one room facilities where
everyone knew each other and many went home together, to a training ground to enter a
competitive work force. One of the greatest challenges for our new global world is to help
develop our moral education. In today’s educational system, we ask students to work
collaboratively in groups to create a product, but then we corrupt this paradigm by
encouraging students to compete against each other ((Nodding, 2010). In order to address
the anxiety students feel in this global and much more competitive market, we must make
schools a safe learning environment. Bullying, gang violence, and economic woes may be
plaguing our children; however, the anxiety that most students feel to perform competitively
against their peers is one of our greatest challenges since it is driving childhood obesity
numbers to soar and causing students to miss days of instruction due to mental anguish and
physical ailments. Maslov identified decades ago that if students didn’t feel safe, nothing we
change about instruction will change their performance in their perceived unsafe world.
Nodings (2010), of Standford University, offers one solution to this challenge: the Care
Theory. If we teach with caring and we teach the students how to care about others, learning
will improve.

6. The Effects of these Trends, Major
Issues, and Challenges
Literacy and mult-iliteracy The Care Theory
• Teachers at my school • My students feel anxiety
resent our new literacy and stress in an Advanced
coach because she comes in class where their grade
as an expert to take time often depends on the very
person with whom they are
from an already stretched told to compete most
curriculum fiercely.
• Students lose their favorite • My students worry more
elective since they must about how they will “look”
spend more time in a and not what they are
subject they hate. learning.

7. References
Gross, P. A. (2010). Not Another Trend: Secondary-Level Literacy Coaching. The Clearing House, (83), 133-137.
doi:10.1080/00098651003774844
Kellough, R. G., & Kellough, N. G. (2011). Secondary School Teaching: A Guide to Methods and Resources (4th ed.). Boston, MA:
Pearson Education, Inc..
Noddings, N. (2010). Moral education in an Age of Globalization. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 42(4), 390-396.
doi:10.1111/j.1469-5812.2008.00487.x