Findings: Global perspective
Education schools were not rated on this standard. Information relative to the standard is offered to the institution and the public in order to plant a seed of thought as to what expectations relative to this standard might legitimately be held for education schools and the institutions in which they are housed. That said, our analysis found that a majority of Illinois institutions do not seem to be imparting an understanding of the world, its history and its cultures by the measures of this standard.
Only four institutions have a relatively large percentage of foreign undergraduate students—just one of the ways schools might be evaluated positively on this standards—only 26 percent have established foreign language requirements for all teacher candidates. Further, while many schools offer some coursework related to world geography or foreign cultures (usually as electives in broader categories of general education requirements), only 30 percent of institutions require that students take such classes.
One program to look to for guidance on engendering a global perspective is Northeastern Illinois University, which offers a program of student teaching in South Korean classrooms that supplements, rather than substitutes for, local student teaching. (Unfortunately, other institutions that offer student teaching options abroad allow teacher candidates to substitute teaching abroad for a local, supervised student teaching experience.)
There were two institutions at which we were unable to identify any institutional characteristic, coursework or program relevant to the standard. For all but these two, we were able to assess performance on this standard more easily than we had anticipated.
