National history curriculum: Finding space for a critical global education By Phillip Albert Hophan B.A., Ithaca College, 1998 THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Curriculum Studies) UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA DECEMBER 2006 © Phillip Albert Hophan 2006 11 Abstract This investigation provides important insights for how a critical model of global education might be incorporated within national history pedagogies, in the face of increasingly strident neoliberal policy making in education. The demand of teaching, learning and theorizing in the contemporary political environment of the United States or Canada exerts undue pressure on students, teachers, and educationalists in the name of standardization, assessment and global economic preparedness. This research illuminates the critical possibilities that lie in the cracks of such oppressive policies, possibilities that may encourage students and teachers to act more substantially in defense of a globally infused national history education. Numerous foundational definitions of global education and four emergent models are extracted from a survey of North American global education literature, since 1980. These models are located in the official national history and social studies curriculum of the state of California and the province of British Columbia, respectively. Neoliberal educational policymaking is examined for its bearing on the advancement of global education in these jurisdictions. Significant differences in findings in California and British Columbia are explicated. Freirean critical pedagogy is considered as a theoretical framework for students and teachers to employ in turning back the neoliberal tide, by finding and utilizing space within the official national history curriculum for the rooting of a critical global education. Table of Contents Abstract iii Table of Contents iii Preface iv Acknowledgements... viii Dedication x Chapter I Introduction 1 Purpose 1 Context 3 Significance 9 Research questions 14 Chapter II Methodology , 15 Data collection and analysis 15 The researcher 20 Limitations of the study 21 Chapter III Literature Review 25 Chapter IV Global education models 57 Learning about the world 70 Learning how to live in the world 72 Learning how to compete in the world 76 Learning to transform the world 80 Chapter V Place of global education in contemporary official curriculum documents 84 Official social studies curriculum documents in British Columbia 85 Official history curriculum documents in California 95 Chapter VI Neoliberal policy making and the advancement of global education Ill Globalization 116 Education 122 National history curriculum and Global education 131 Chapter VII Finding space within the official curriculum for a critical global education.... 138 Freirean critical theory 141 Implications for teachers and students 158 Chapter VIII Conclusions and recommendations for further research 166 References 172 Appendices 195 Appendix A: Global education: Definitions, conceptualizations, models 195 Appendix B: Summary list of curriculum documents 196 iv Preface Given this investigation's interest in curricular documents, it is appropriate to describe briefly my own conception of curriculum. This research suggests a set of implications for the teaching and learning of national history in California and British Columbia. It does not empirically reflect the work being done by actual teachers and students in their classrooms in these two jurisdictions. If educationalists, teachers and students are to make use of this research, they must accept and embrace the emancipatory possibilities that exist around curriculum design and delivery. An educationalist maintaining a restrictive interpretation or definition of curriculum may consider the findings of this research too ambitious or utopic. This educator must decide if the findings are convincing enough to adjust his or her outlook on curriculum. The educationalist who finds my curricular orientation compatible with his or her own, more easily accepts the notions of critical pedagogy forwarded here. In my opinion, teachers should be activists who advocate for children on a daily basis. Curriculum is the spirit and practice of this daily advocacy. Curriculum documents at some level are helpful to organizing meaningful classroom activities. However, when curriculum is heavily mandated, teacher and students cannot create curriculum together in a local and organic manner. As teachers and students approach the daily goings-on of the classroom, they should be inspired and excited by the possibilities that lie on the horizon of their teaching and learning. This inspiration is the curriculum Doll (2000) speaks of when he describes curriculum as " . coursing, as in an electric current" (p. xii). As teachers and students negotiate the intellectual challenges associated with the practice of this conceptualization of curriculum, they become aware of specific trials that face them at the hands of the neoliberally inspired official curriculum. Mandated curriculum and assessment in California is pervasive; it can easily dislodge the inspiration students and teachers share as they investigate, and attempt to improve, the world in which they, and many others, live, work and play. In British Columbia, it is my contention that the current provincial curriculum and examinations are the early stepping-stones toward what has become a pressing matter in California. Here, it is helpful to quote John Dewey (1935) at length as he provides insight into this conceptualization of the work of teachers and students: What will it profit a man [or woman] to do this, that, and the other specific thing, if he has no clear idea of why he is doing them, no clear idea of the way they bear upon actual conditions and of the end to be reached? The most specific thing educators can first do is something general. The first need is to become aware of the kind of world in which we live; to survey its forces; to see the opposition in forces that are contending for mastery; to make up one's mind which of these forces come from a past that the world in its potential powers has outlived and which are indicative of a better and happier future, (p. 7) For critical pedagogy to be employed as a useful framework for teaching and learning, curriculum must be conceptualized in this manner. Teachers and students who create meaning out of the educational experiences they share are behaving contrary to a conceptualization of curriculum that is economically inspired by and politically mandated for use in every North American classroom; standardization, here, is the objective of neoliberal1 policy making. 1 In this investigation, neoliberalism is continually defined and conceptualized, but always from a critical perspective that finds neoliberalism an oppressive ideological movement. There exits, although no reference will be made to these influences, a field of support for neoliberalism as the driving economic force in the world since the 1960's. Furthermore, there are groups, for example, on the conservative right in the United States and Britain which have problematized neoliberalism for their own explicit reasons. This investigation does not agree with these distinctions, nor does it attempt to include them in this report. At the same time, curriculum may be theorized in a largely pragmatic manner. The nature of the official curriculum invites students and teachers to exploit the structures and expectations inherent of the school day, to find space2 within that system for the rooting of alternative projects. While teachers cannot realistically look forward to a complete reform of the four-walls, bells-a-ringing, lunch-served-on-a-plastic-tray realities of most school settings, their work as educators can be transformative. On the other hand, if the official curriculum is allowed to dominate the minds and actions of students and teachers, standardization results and all those involved will suffer the consequences of a paralyzing daily existence. Curriculum can inspire praxis for and between teachers and students. This condition is not easily acquired. Henderson and Kesson (2004) offer insight into the matter of achieving a balance between the theoretical and the pragmatic nature of education when they suggest teachers might reach a point of "curriculum wisdom" in their educational venture. It is my assertion that successful propagation of content knowledge depends to some extent on the teacher's state of mind. When teachers and students strive for curricular projects such as the one researched here, the learning that goes on far outweighs what is gained through the implementation of an official curriculum. Those who mandate the curriculum might believe that students are better off not envisioning a different world and that students need not be inspired to act upon what they know and what they have experienced in the interest of humanity. Teaching and learning under these conditions limits the ability of the curriculum to inspire intellectually based responses to future problems. This is not an appropriate means by which to educate our children or to reform society, locally or globally. The cross-fertilization of critical, practical and 2 The term "space" is employed here as a metaphor for the possibilities teachers and students have to forward emancipatory projects in spite of the formal structures of the official school curriculum. This clarification reflects