Education Faculty's Book Highlights Advantages of Globally Engaged Teachers

When Nilufer Guler, Ph.D., associate professor of education, started asking for proposals for her latest project, she wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of responses.

But the theme of her new book, titled “At School in the World: Developing Globally Engaged Teachers,” must have been pretty inspiring. Guler and her co-editor, Carine Ullom, Ed.D., received 58 chapter proposals around incorporating global citizenship and intercultural competency into the classroom.

“You always hope to get a good response for a project like this,” she said. “But we weren’t expecting this many great works.”

As impressive as the number of proposals was their quality and their variety, she said. Reflecting the theme of the book, Guler said its authors from across the world share a broad array of research from different perspectives and using different methodologies.

“We were shocked and pleasantly surprised at the scope of this work,” she said.

“At School in the World,” a two-and-a-half yearlong project for Guler and her colleague, includes chapters that examine teacher exchange programs and their effect on individual teachers' intercultural competency, an examination of education NGOs focused on education and practical studies of implementation for global engagement work at the curriculum level. Guler said each piece seemed to complement the next while bringing a unique perspective to the table as well.

Together, they form a coherent case for why global engagement and intercultural competency are important tools for training teachers who are effective, no matter the setting. Guler, who serves as the current Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Faculty Fellow and whose work has often emphasized the importance of understanding the unique needs of diverse communities, calls this skill “cultural agility,” and she said it’s becoming more of a necessity than a nice-to-have.

“Education is the most powerful tool to improve a society,” she said. “Teacher educators have a domino effect; they are responsible for their students and their students’ students. People are more mobile than they have been at any point in history, so we are not living in our little villages anymore, we are in a global world. Teachers need to be ready for this diversity.”