January 2008 issue of the www.ibo.org magazine will feature responses to the editor's questions (sample answers from my email reply):
1. How should teachers instill a global awareness in students?
Role modeling by teachers and staff, and case studies are still the most powerful way to demonstrate the value and manner of exercising such things as respect, curiosity and mindfulness of context when trying to understand a person or organization’s behavior. Around the age of 10 is when young people seem to form a world scope of understanding and begin to wonder how they personally might move within this global frame, so that is the ideal time for guided discussion and examples from other places and times that the 10 year olds can identify in.
2. Why is it important for teachers to be internationally aware?
Before anything else, formal education is about the teacher-student relationship. Just like the act of speaking, so too of learning, the matter is fundamentally a social act. Once rapport is established between student and teacher, as well as student and student, then actions, attitudes and expressions of the teacher and one’s peers are bound to make an impression on a person in the learning community.
3. What example should teachers set to students?
Demonstrate one’s own strong curiosity and resourcefulness (tempered by respect) in trying to figure out the significance and ways that something (cross-cultural) seems to work. At all times the teacher should make clear the distinction between Knowledge (gathering information), Understanding (arranging the information in useful ways), and Wisdom (applying one’s understanding to a practical purpose). When put to intercultural examples this means distinguishing between observations that seem salient, interpretations while examining one’s underlying assumptions, and action or implications to one’s responses.
