The purpose of this study is to examine how selected educators responded to dramatic changes in the world and provided leadership in seeking to change education in order to be better able to prepare citizens to cope with the increasing internationalization of society as it impacts people in their everyday lives. The study has two major foci: the roots of events and their formal and/or informal connections with the people that shaped the global education movement; and the intellectual biographies of James Becker and his life-long colleagues Lee Anderson and Chadwick Alger as they pertain to the subject. This study provides an overview of the last thirty years of global education in that context.
International/global studies should be viewed as interdisciplinary, involving the arts, humanities, sciences, technology and mathematics as well as foreign languages and the social studies. Global peace and conflict resolution, global ecology and environmental protection, human welfare and human rights are among the issues that need to be integrated into the curriculum for the youth to be prepared for a world-centered perspective in education as we approach the twenty-first century.
This study was conducted employing qualitative inquiry methods with an interpretive/constructivist approach. It has been constructed primarily on interview data gathered from the interviews with James Becker, and Chad Alger and the works of these and other leaders in global education in addition to the primary sources and supporting literature to enhance the historical context.
The role of leadership in achieving educational change and continuity through global education was significant especially in generating, developing and promoting the ideas, and in developing the connections between people, agencies, organizations, and institutions through teaching, writing, editing, chairing, lecturing, and taking on various other active duties at such establishments as were influential in educational circles.