The widely cited, though highly contested, idea that "the world is
flat" (Friedman, 2004) carries with it a call for education to
provide a leveling effect across continents and cultures Students
in Skokie or in Skopje, as the theory goes, are expected to
experience a school curriculum that shares certain common elements,
goals, and purposes. Such a globalized view is not, however,
without its complications. This book addresses some of the issues
that arise when the transmigration of educational ideas occurs,
with a particular eye toward the ethical dilemmas that curriculum
workers face in international contexts. The authors who have
contributed to this volume explore, through case examples and
critical reflection, what happens when ideas that are drawn from
one set of cultural norms and experiences is introduced into other
cultural contexts. In many cases these are the stories of "donors"
and "hosts," of structured inequities of power and influence, of
disparities in material resources, and, as expressed in one of the
cases, the dynamics of the "colonizer" and the "colonized." A
recurrent theme concerns the challenges faced by educators working
internationally to reconcile their own ethical predispositions
toward equity and cultural responsiveness with certain tacit
assumptions about the appropriateness or value of curriculum
practices brought from the "developed" world for teachers and
students in the "developing" world. How these dilemmas are
navigated forms the content of this collection of reports from the
field written by those who engage in this complex and important
work. While the content of this volume is situated at the
intersection between the field of curriculum studies and
comparative education, it is fundamentally a book about curriculum.
Most of the authors come from various disciplinary backgrounds with
specializations in curriculum development in content areas such as
social studies, geography, or mathematics. As "outsiders looking
in" on the field of international education and with thoughtful
reflections grounded in practice, the authors provide a new set of
insights into the challenges of international curriculum work.
Finally, since many of the questions raised by the work included
here are ethical in nature, the book begins and ends with analyses
that link the practical realities presented in the cases with
contemporary philosophical thought. This, then, can be seen as the
primary contribution of the book to the educational literature as
it offers a careful and well-articulated synthesis of theory and
practice in the field of international curriculum work. This
publication would make an important contribution to courses in
curriculum theory and practice, comparative and international
education, and international development outside of the field of
education.
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