How can we enable students to understand who they are and how can they be best educated to succeed in both their own local communities and in the global context? What kind of teaching practices, theoretical frameworks and social aims are involved? My particular study is situated in a rural secondary school in Bangladesh, but the questions have relevance for schools, especially rural one, throughout the world as they tackle the gaps between the high order expectations of national curriculum statements and the resources and expectations of their local environment. In many case national curriculum goals focus on preparing students to operate in a transnational context. For the countries of Europe it is primarily a pan-European context: for Bangladesh it is the global marketplace.

As a teacher educator, I suggest that in Bangladesh contested purposes of education are played out at policy level, in people's perceptions, as well as at the micro context of a school. Some of the complexity is because we try to impose global realities onto the face of the local context without considering that most of the people live in their own culture, customs and language. The global realities are driven by the forces of free market capitalism which materially have still failed to acknowledge the issues of poverty and oppression. In such a complex situation what should be wise and ethical educational actions for a school?

This paper briefly reports the context and experience of a rural secondary school participatory action research project and examines in more detail strategies used by participants to develop and trial pedagogical approaches which can equip Bangladeshi students to live and learn in both local and global context.

In particular it reports ways in which research can promote empowerment and collaboration  and provoke further examination of local challenges and opportunities and to develop relevant and accessible teaching practices. In broad terms this paper reports the major outcomes of a collaborative project on the question:  how can the school and its communities develop pedagogical approaches which can enable  students to live and learn in a globalising world?

The conceptual framework for the discussion draws on understandings of educational praxis in a rural secondary school through Freirian critical educational practices and committed participation of the teachers in the research process (Freire, 1995; Kemmis and Smith, 2008, & Lather, 1991) and which directed towards ethical ends.

An examination of the local context of education within an overtly global context and process of navigating through the currents they generate aligns with the conference theme of creativity and innovation in educational research. In particular, the exploration of how local and global perspectives of education both interrelate and clash and of how interdependence and independence are necessarily interwoven in contemporary educational visions, challenges notions such as ‘providing  students with techno-scientific knowledge  and ensuring  economic development ’.   And while the context of the project affirms values of research, collective empowerment, development of creative and critical learning community, it offers re-inscription of such values within grounded localised contexts. 

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