Global Identity In Multicultural And International Educational Contexts

The increased movement of people globally has changed the face of national and international schooling. Higher levels of mobility have resulted from both the willing movement of students and their families with a desire to create a better life, and the forced movement of refugee families travelling away from war, famine and other extreme circumstances. This book explores the idea that the complex connections created by the forces of globalisation have led to a diminishing difference between what were once described as international schools and national schools. By examining a selection of responses from students attending international schools in Brazil, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Philippines and Switzerland, the book discusses key issues surrounding identity and cosmopolitan senses of belonging. Chapters draw from current literature and recent qualitative research to highlight the concerns that students face within the international school community, including social, psychological, and academic difficulties. The interviews provide a rich and unique body of knowledge, demonstrating how perceptions of identity and belonging are changing, especially with affiliation to a national or a global identity. The notion that international students have become global citizens through their affiliation to a global rather than a national identity exhibits a changing and potentially irreversible trend. Global Identity in Multicultural and International Educational Contexts will be of key interest to researchers, academics and policy makers involved with international schooling and globalised education.

The increased movement of people globally has changed the face of national and international schooling. Higher levels of mobility have resulted from both the willing movement of students and their families with a desire to create a better life, and the forced movement of refugee families travelling away from war, famine and other extreme circumstances. This book explores the idea that the complex connections created by the forces of globalisation have led to a diminishing difference between what were once described as international schools and national schools. By examining a selection of responses from students attending international schools in Brazil, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Philippines and Switzerland, the book discusses key issues surrounding identity and cosmopolitan senses of belonging. Chapters draw from current literature and recent qualitative research to highlight the concerns that students face within the international school community, including social, psychological, and academic difficulties. The interviews provide a rich and unique body of knowledge, demonstrating how perceptions of identity and belonging are changing, especially with affiliation to a national or a global identity. The notion that international students have become global citizens through their affiliation to a global rather than a national identity exhibits a changing and potentially irreversible trend. Global Identity in Multicultural and International Educational Contexts will be of key interest to researchers, academics and policy makers involved with international schooling and globalised education.

This book examines dominant discourses in multiculturalism and cultural identity globally. It critiques dominant discourses and debates pertaining to multiculturalism and cultural identity, set against the current backdrop of growing social stratification and unequal access to quality education. It addresses current discourses concerning globalisation, ideologies and the state, as well as approaches to constructing national, ethnic and religious identities in the global culture. It explores the ambivalent and problematic connections between the state, globalisation, and the construction of cultural identity. The book also explores conceptual frameworks and methodological approaches applicable to research on the state, globalisation, multiculturalism and identity politics. Drawing on diverse paradigms, ranging from critical theory to globalisation, the book, by focusing on globalisation, ideology and cultural identity, critically examines recent research dealing with cultural diversity and its impact of identity politics. Given the need for a multiple perspective approach, the authors, who have diverse backgrounds and hail from different countries and regions, offer a wealth of insights, contributing to a more holistic understanding of the nexus between multiculturalism and national identity. With contributions from key scholars worldwide, the book should be required reading for a broad spectrum of users, including policy-makers, academics, graduate students, education policy researchers, administrators, and practitioners.

This conceptually rich and empirically grounded book draws upon expertise from a panel of emerging and established international scholars to explore the institutionalization and effect of multicultural education on a global scale. Previous studies of multicultural education have largely ignored the significance of understanding the combination of multiple sociopolitical influences on multicultural education in both policy and practice. Filling this void, this book sheds light on the two main reasons for taking a “glocal” perspective on multicultural education. First, children should be provided with meaningful learning opportunities to acquire the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to live in a culturally and ethno-linguistically diverse society, where the distinction between the local and the global is becoming blurred. Second, understanding both the “global grammar” and the “local semantics” of multicultural education helps researchers and policy-makers grasp the whole picture of multicultural education as an evolving social construct and phenomenon. This new book provokes a new round of discussion and research to expand and enrich our inquiry into cultural diversity and educational inclusion.

This book analyses the experiences of multicultural education in nine very different international settings uncovering insights from a vast variety of educational contexts. Taking a multi-critical approach in reporting and discussing problems faced by increasingly multicultural and multilingual societies the nine case studies reflect radically different assumptions about what counts as ‘ difference’ and what should be the appropriate ways for education systems to respond to differences. While each country’s approach seems unique, analysis of the divergent treatments of internal population diversity elicits a genuinely global instance of the increasingly shared phenomenon of cultural pluralism. Discussing various successes and failures of policy enactment, theory, pedagogy and management of diversity, the book isolates both the differences and similarities in the unique geopolitical and socio-historical contexts of the countries investigated. A key value of the book is that it greatly expands the range of settings, experiences, epistemologies, ontologies and practical experiences that are typically encountered in mainstream discussion of what counts as 'multicultural education'. In effect, all societies are in some way ‘dealing with difference’ – this volume helps widen the scope of reflection and thus facilitates increased, global ‘learning from difference’.

This book explores the evolution and current state of the scholarly field of comparative and international education over 200 years of development. Experts in the field explore comparative and international education in each of the major world regions.

Arising from the legacies of the twentieth century - unprecedented worldwide migration, unrelenting global conflict and warring, unchecked materialist consumption, and unconscionable environmental degradation - are important questions about the toll of loss such changes exact, individually and collectively. As large-scale and ubiquitous as these changes are, their deep specificity re-inscribes the importance of place as a critical construct. Attending to such specificity emphasizes the interconnections between contexts and broader movements and remains a prudent route to articulating critical interconnections among places and peoples in complex times. This book of essays turns to such specificity as a means to examine the inflections of migration on identity- displacement, disorientation, loss, and difference- as sites of both regression and possibility. Fusing autobiography and cultural analysis, it provides a framework for a critical education attuned to such concerns.

International service learning (ISL) programs are growing more popular with students looking to advance their skills and knowledge to become global citizens. While the benefits of these programs among students are well documented, little is known about the implications they have on host communities themselves. This volume explores the impact of ISL programs on members of host communities (e.g. host families and local partner NGOs) who are increasingly influenced by the presence of international students in their lives. Drawing upon post-colonial, feminist and other critical and decolonizing theories, it examines the complicated power relations between North American ISL students and host communities in East and West Africa, the Caribbean and Central America. It stresses the importance of developing trusting relations between ISL students, faculty and individuals in the host communities to create mutually engaging learning experiences.