There is a strong support base for including a global perspective in science teaching. The global perspective is an underlying basis for an interdisciplinary and multicultural approach to science teaching. This can imply that individual courses---say, chemistry---can involve students in interdisciplinary and multicultural thinking, as well as school districts developing individual science courses. Some potential goals of global perspecitve include:
1. Perspective consciousness: An awareness of an appreciation for other images of the world. Students can learn to understand how people in Eastern, as well as in developing nations conceptualize the world. Global thinking will enrich the activities of students by involving them with a world that is multicultural.2. State of planet awareness: An in-depth understanding of global issues and event, including the identification of the important global problems facing the planet, and what it will take to get them solved.
3. Cross-cultural awareness: A general understanding of the defining characteristics of world cultures, with an emphasis on understanding similarities and differences.
4. Systemic awareness: A familiarity with the nature of systems and an introduction to the complex international system in which state and non-state actors are linked in patterns of interdependence and dependence in a variety of issue areas.
5. Options for participation: A review of strategies for participating in issue areas in local, national, and international settings. Technology-related systems of communication enable all students to communicate with people in remote places.
There are a number of ways that the global perspective can be applied to science teaching: infusing globla education into the science curriculum, integrating it into planning, using technology, and developing curriculum models. The first three implications can be implimented by individual science teachers, whereas the fourth implication will require the collaboration of state science curriculum planners, or district level science coordinators.