Scholars and policy-makers in the United States have argued that internationalization and the development of global competence is essential in preparing K-12 students for what is an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world (Boix Mansilla & Jackson, 2011; Duncan, 2010; Longview Foundation, 2008; Reimers, 2009). To that end, global education has been increasingly framed as a national priority, as evidenced in the release of the first-ever U.S. Department of Education strategy, "Succeeding Globally Through International Education and Engagement" (2012). The strategy emphasizes the need to prepare U.S. students to participate in today's globally interconnected society and draws on four key rationales: economic competitiveness and jobs; global challenges; national security and diplomacy; and a diverse U.S. society. A sense of urgency permeates the text of the strategy, with emphasis placed on U.S. students falling behind relative to their global peers and the resultant danger of the U.S. failing to compete economically or advance national interests in a global arena. In short, this policy document lays out the value of global education from a national perspective, with little treatment of how teachers themselves may make sense of these calls to globalize their teaching practices or what implementation may look like on a local level. In addition, little consideration is given to questions about the level of “global competence” U.S. teachers themselves must possess in order to enact an internationalized curriculum (Zhao, 2010). As the discourse of internationalizing U.S. schools becomes increasingly popular in policy and academic circles, implications for teachers—as local-level implementers—must be taken into consideration. As a result, this study sought to understand teachers’ perspectives on this national priority and how they themselves define, value, and perceive global education.

This study drew on a broadly interpretive conceptual framework, influenced by literature in the field of policy implementation. We considered policy formation, messaging, and implementation to be a “highly complex and contingent enterprise,” shaped by the experiences, priorities, and values of multiple actors at multiple levels (Honig, 2006, p. 4; see also McLaughlin, 2006;). Implementation is not merely a technical consideration but is a negotiated process, driven by the meaning individuals make of calls to change approaches to teaching and learning (Nudzor, 2009; Weaver-Hightower, 2008, Yatnow, 1993). Though policy documents can prioritize any number of educational objectives, teachers mediate these messages based on understandings that derive from their own experiences, attitudes, and contexts for teaching, which in turn influences their response to calls to modify their teaching practices (Coburn, 2004). Thus, the key theoretical framework for this study was Spillane, Reiser, and Reimer’s (2002) theory of sense-making, which is broken down into three main categories that interact in complex ways: individual cognition, defined as “how individuals notice and interpret stimuli and how prior knowledge, beliefs, and experiences influence construction of new understandings” (p. 388); situated cognition, in which “multiple dimensions of a situation influence the implementing agent’s sense-making from and about policy” and context functions as “a constituting element in that process” (p. 389); and the role of representation, which considers how policy stimuli influence the sense-making process of local-level implementers such as teachers.

This presentation will first provide background on the U.S. internationalization strategy, including a brief analysis of the text of the actual strategy and an explanation of its surrounding rationales and discourses. It will then introduce the three levels of sensemaking theory and provide an analysis of teacher interview data, highlighting how these teachers make sense of increasing calls to educate for global competence in the United States. The presentation will conclude with a discussion of implications, particularly the complexity of defining and understanding “global education” and its potential implementation challenges.

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