Globalization has brought more and more peoples and societies around the world into contact with "international" standards of law, commerce, and communication. That process has also enabled a number of formerly underdeveloped societies to experience extraordinary patterns of economic growth, especially in the last third of the twentieth…

World systems theory and feminist scholarship each have a great deal to offer the other, but the connections between the two have not often been recognized. The potential contributions from world systems theory include: (1) its understanding of history, (2) its understanding of what that history comprises, and (3) how it employs Marxist historical…

All nations face similar choices related to the cost, scale, quality, relevance, access, and flexibility of their learning systems. Adaptive learning systems are learner centered, change focused, value based, technologically mediated, and built on open systems principles. Adaptive learning systems have the capacity to empower the learning…

Proposes a world systems approach to comparative education to overcome the limitations of mainstream case/country-study approaches and the omission of non-Western perspectives. The approach analyzes the existence worldwide of nation-state controlled education systems, which are structurally similar, yet socially differentiated and ideologically…

This document examines the underlying rationale for the development of a global approach in consumer studies. The concept of consumer ethics is discussed and the consumer decision-making process is placed within an ecosystem perspective of the marketplace. The model developed introduces educators, marketers, and consumers to a more global…

This paper presents a systems model for an elementary social studies program that will provide a base of understanding, human values, and skills to help children now, and later on as adult citizens, to take a humanistic global view as they make decisions. It is proposed that the social studies curriculum deal with interrelated systems--the social,…

In a rapidly changing world, schools need to reorient their curricula to ensure adequate preparation of children for the future. Among the fundamental changes affecting society are the diversification of lifestyles, the development of genetic engineering, trends toward automation, and the information explosion. The educational crisis reflects…

This article discusses the viability of concepts such as complex systems theory, evolutionary theory and chaos theory as metaphors for being able to give a global perspective of one particular school described in a previous article entitled "Leading people in a chaotic world." The article restates and re-explains this one particular case in…

Defines and compares world system theory and dependency theory. Explains the advantages to anthropology, its students, and students from other disciplines. Defends the teaching of world system theory as an interdisciplinary course. Discusses problems with and reactions of faculty in other social sciences. (JS)

Discusses the Anthropology Department at SUNY College at Brockport and the orientation of its faculty and students. Advocates a systems approach to education and suggests teaching strategies that incorporate political economic principles in the anthropology curriculum. An eight-page list of sources in political economy useful for teaching is…

Advances made, and not made, in the education of health professionals in the decades since establishment of the World Health Organization are reviewed. A period of more structured work is now recommended, including more objective definition of goals, real program development, and strategic planning with installation of systems. (MSE)

Advocates a curriculum based on the knowledge of the past, the awareness of the fast-changing present, and the planning of alternative futures--enriched by a nonlinear systemic approach to knowledge and infused with a cross-cultural and global consciousness--to produce well-educated, well-adjusted, responsible, and mature students. Sixteen…

The French sociologist Jacques Ellul has had great influence on contemporary thought about the role of science and technology in the emerging global society. His books "The Technological Society" (1954) and "The Technological System" (1980) characterize the new social context as a tightly interlocked global technological system…

By tracing major ideas in the evolution of educational history between 1899 and 1985, the document takes readers from the traditional emphasis on citizenship training in social education to the current focus on teaching about the world community and the interdependence of its people and systems--cultural, ecological, economic, linguistic, racial,…

This essay is a call for world-systems analysis of education. It defines the central features of world-systems analysis, discusses the literature pertaining to the emergence and consolidation of a world economic system, points up some promising research by comparative educationists, and suggests some areas for future research. (Author/KC)