Global Teaching in Indiana: A Quantitative Case Study of K-12 Public School Teachers

Striving to educate globally competent, multiliterate citizens has been at the forefront of many initiatives in the U.S. In Indiana, the Department of Education and higher education institutions have taken steps to internationalize teacher education. However, previous research in Indiana has shown that even teachers who  believe  that  global  education  is  important  may  not  be  teaching  it.  The  purpose  of  this  study  was  to describe  current  K-12  Indiana  public  school  teachers’  descriptions  of  their  practices  that  promote students’  global  readiness  using  the  Teaching  for  Global  Readiness  Scale.  The  conceptual  framework, Teaching for Global Readiness, is an empirically validated model of four dimensions: situated practice in the local context, integrated global learning with the standard course of study, instruction from a critical frame,  and  transactional  experiences  where  students  engage  in  active  learning  through  intercultural collaboration. Overall,  teachers  scored  highest  on  the  subscale  of  situated  practice  (e.g.,  valuing diversity,  breaking  down  stereotypes),  and  lowest  on  transactional  experiences  that  involved  technology for  cross-cultural  collaboration. Teaching  experience  and  travel  abroad  were  not  found  to  be  a determining factor for being able to teach for global competence