Teaching about Global Issues in the Classroom

Today's students will face issues and problems that are global scale and require a collaborative global effort to resolve effectively. To help prepare students to resolve these global issues, students must learn to participate in the global democratic process as part of their citizenship education. In particular, scholars argue students need to engage in authentic examinations of actual real-world global issues in the classroom to better prepare them for the roles as democratic global citizens. In the U.S., the world history course serves as an ideal curricular space to incorporate teaching about global issues in the classroom. However, there is little empirical research exploring how high school world history teachers are actually teaching about global issues in their classrooms. To fill this gap, this study examines how nine high school world history teachers in Florida think about and describe teaching about global issues within the context of their world history classrooms using a qualitative interpretative interview design with elicitation tasks. Based on the data collected the participants believe that the world history course serves as an ideal curricular space to incorporate teaching about global issues and help students develop the civic tools needed for future global citizenship. The study also reveals the challenges that teachers face when attempting to teach the civic aims of the course. Namely, political polarization and the official standards. This study's findings provide empirical evidence that incorporating issue-centered instruction in the world history classroom can be used as a pedagogical tool to help prepare students to be active and caring members of a global democratic community.