Understanding students’ global interdependence in science instruction

Abstract

Multiple American educational organizations such as the National Education Association, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, and the Council of Chief State School Officers have advocated for globalizing the K-12 curriculum. The National Science Teaching Association (NSTA) in a position statement on international education and the Next Generation Science Standards have produced goals and standards for internationalizing the science curriculum by addressing topics such as climate change, environment, and disease that cross borders. In contrast to those pronouncements on the curriculum, this article views global science education through an instructional lens that focuses on a students’ global interdependence in science continuum allowing researchers and casual observers to classify science classroom activities into one of five stages based on the interdependence during instruction of students in two or more countries. At the continuum’s lowest stage labeled isolated, instruction is contained within a classroom with students having no interaction with students in another country. At the highest end called collaborate, students in two or more countries are working jointly to co-create a solution to the task before them. This science education continuum can also be used to categorize technology and engineering activities and could be adapted for use in other curricular areas including mathematics, language arts, and social studies, used as a tool to complement scholarship about a range of education topics from social justice to curriculum to student motivation, or inform pre- and in-service teacher education.