Mining the Present: Reconstructing Progressive Education in an Era of Global Change

Overview & Synopsis

This paper explores what might be seen as a paradox at the heart of the current push to "globalize" education: at a moment when administrators, especially in higher education, are seeking to globalize their programs (often for reasons having to do with increasing international competition and decreasing funding for education), global education offers a window through which progressive ideals might be re-asserted in increasingly standardized teaching and learning environments. To demonstrate, we offer our own attempts to globalize our teaching practice, through both personal and historical narratives. Ultimately, the paper seeks to complicate global education--both historical and contemporary versions--as we draw upon the work of John Dewey in an attempt to reconstruct our own particular version of a location-specific, globally minded, progressive education practice.