Abstract
Emmanuel Jean Francois is a prolific writer with a cause. In his second to last book, he introduces the concept of glocal education in order to support students, scholars, activists and practitioners in creating more access opportunities to quality education for all. He successfully challenges ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches to education, but becomes somewhat distracted by a multitude of self-introduced terms, frameworks and corresponding abbreviations.
For many years the internationalisation of education has been regarded as synonymous with global mobility. Since his Global Education on Trial (2010), Transcultural Blended Learning and Teaching in Postsecondary Education (2012), and his last book Transnational Perspectives on Innovation in Teaching and Learning (2018), Jean Francois has been building on the ideas of ‘think globally, act locally’, and ‘think locally and act globally’. Also in Buiding Global Education with a Local Perspective, he asserts that internationalisation of education goes beyond mobility programmes. In his words, it is about integrating ‘local cultural differences . . . based on a globalization framework’ (p 62). The result is glocal education. Jean Francois maintains that glocal education engages students and teachers with different backgrounds in transformative learning experiences. And that could be anywhere: at home as well as abroad. The book clearly aims to analyse and support the integration of students’ diverse international and intercultural experiences. It challenges an assimilation, or homogenisation of these experiences, as it is ‘contaminated in many respects by the discontents about the negative consequences of globalization of the poor and the middle class, in local contexts’ (p 59). In other words, internationalisation of education has not been accessible enough for less privileged students, as it often excludes them as equal partners. Jean Francois thinks that the broad umbrellas of international and global education, while key foundational concepts for learning and development, are not enough: we need – more targeted – glocal education.
The middle part of the book (chapters 6-9) is the most insightful as it contains Jean Francois’ main argument. The first part (introducing globalisation, international education and glocalisation) and the last part (applying glocal education to pedagogy, didactics and leadership/management) can be read as context to the book’s main argument. Chapter 6, on ‘glocal symbiosis’, puts forward the idea of internationalisation of education as a construct of an insider (‘local’) and an outsider (‘global’) perspective. Ideally, this construct is based on equal standing and is not geographically based. This is further explained in chapter 7. There, Jean Francois gives the example of bringing a typical ‘outsider’s’ drive to extend operations beyond one’s national border, to a typical ‘insider’ situation, where one primarily wishes to make a national impact in the lives of the local community. In his view, this glocal partnership can function as a ‘common language’, empowering students with very different backgrounds to engage in meaningful, transformative learning experiences. However, in order to do so, it needs local and global stakeholders to do three things: address unhealthy bias and assumptions, take the necessary risks, and resolve miscommunication.
How these expectations can be verified is explained in chapters 8 and 9, with a focus on what Jean Francois calls partnerships with ‘real potential’ (p 110). When there is a contradiction between a global standard (eg the right to freedom of opinion and expression: article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), and a local context (eg, in today’s terms, a ban on mass anti-COVID-19 protest in various parts of the world), Jean Francois asserts that a successful internationalised programme accounts for such a contradiction. Only then it can be truly glocal because the partnership is of equal standing and the local context is not automatically regarded as problematic. In order to explain ways to validate global-local partnerships, he (re-)introduces helpful but somewhat excessive frameworks and tools such as the Four Cs (Community, Commitment, Communication, Conflict Resolution), the Cross-Societal Readiness Asessment and a Transculturality Framework. Jean Francois previously explained these last two in 2012 (Transcultural Blended Learning and Teaching in Postsecondary Education) and 2014 (Financial Sustainability for Nonprofit Organizations). Although they do enable the reader to come to grips with the concept of glocal education, they rather distract from what seems to be the core argument of the book: rigorous and respectful collaboration builds effective educational experiences.
Building Global Education with a Local Perspective is a useful book, as it addresses the key issue of access opportunity in the context of an over-interpreted (ie ‘slippery’) concept such as internationalisation of education. It is very clear in its assertion that ‘global competence is an ultimate goal that nobody can achieve’ and that ‘it would be more appropriate to talk about global competence in context’ (p 147). The questions and activities at the end of every chapter help to reflect and dialogue. They are appropriate and very practical invitations to connect one’s own practice with theory, and to work and plan ahead to benefit student learning outcomes, faculty development and returns for schools and universities. Students, scholars, activists and practitioners are advised, though, to take some of the intricate terms and abbreviations with a pinch of salt. In my view, terms such as ‘Uniquesameness’, ‘Sameuniqueness’ and abbreviations such as GIC (Glocal Intructional Context), LIP (Locally Informed Pedagogy), GIP (Glocally Informed Pedagogy), LBT (Learning By Teaching), TAI (Teacher As Instructor), LBO (Learning By Organizing), RIT (Research Informed Teaching), LTN (Learning Through Networks), LTC (Learning Through Cases), LTI (Learning Through Immersion) and MICS (Motivation for Internationalization Curriculum Scale) distract from the book’s main purpose. And a worthwhile purpose it is: to explore and examine effective education.
Today, the COVID-19 crisis presents us with alternative (technological) ways of teaching internationally. Together with Jean Francois’ useful glocal education concept introduction, they might well lead to more inclusive approaches to global learning, beyond an outdated global mobility paradigm for a minority of students.