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Exploring Leadership through International Education Civic Learning through Study Abroad in Uganda 10 Adam Weinberg, Rebecca Hovey, and Carol Bellamy Leadership education in the twenty-first century cannot ignore the global risks, opportunities, and realities of our interconnected world; so too international education cannot avoid its responsibility to provide the knowledge and vision needed to resolve critical issues we will face as a global community. A model of international education is needed that acknowledges the diverse global community in which institutions are based and learning takes place. In linking leadership and international education, we propose an alternative approach to both based on recognition, reciprocity, and responsibility toward others. Basing our work on the concept of an “ecology of learning” to describe community-based education (Longo 2007), we refer to a “global ecology of learning” in which students learn through deep cultural immersion in communities through international education (Hovey and Weinberg 2009). Educational opportunities based in local communities, or learning ecologies, offer insight into how societal problems are constructed, perceived, and resolved through the actions of local citizens. In particular, we address the internationalization of undergraduate education as a way to think about and act upon leadership development as a dimension of moral responsibility and democratic civic engagement in an increasingly globalized world. Over the past two decades, notions of leadership in the United States have been profoundly shaped by the unexpectedly swift collapse of the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991 and a rebirth of American exceptionalism in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001. Within U.S. higher education, both of these historical events stimulated policy efforts to enhance our knowledge of global affairs and of the emerging and uncertain realities that would follow such dramatic shifts 204 moving forward in our world order. Many of the current initiatives to internationalize U.S. higher education were formulated in response to these events and the perceived need to strengthen our national security, economic competitiveness, and democratic leadership through education (Hovey 2004). However, as many internationalization initiatives sought to assert U.S. competitiveness, other voices raised questions regarding the need for peaceful coexistence and collaboration in the face of common threats such as climate change and global health pandemics. The Simon legislation , named in honor of Paul Simon, the former senator, acknowledges both concerns with its claim that “We are unnecessarily putting ourselves at risk because of our stubborn monolingualism and ignorance of the world” (nafsa 2003, p. 1). At the same time, globalization trends beyond the control of U.S. national security have been altering the landscape of higher education around the world. Knight makes the following claim regarding internationalization of higher education : “Since the 1990s, it has become a formidable force for change, perhaps the central feature of the higher education sector” (Knight 2008, p. 3). Knight’s analysis of five key elements of globalization—the knowledge society, information technologies, market economies, trade liberalization, and changing governance structures—emphasizes the fluid context of institutional change and its relationship to new economic, technological, and political forces at play in the world. The rush to internationalize higher education, however, lacks a sound understanding of the kind of leadership needed for the social challenges we face in the twenty-first century. Students born after the fall of the Berlin Wall and raised in a Web-based media society already understand the arbitrary nature of borders, nations , and information. What is not addressed in this rush to make sure our students and faculty “know the world” is the more profound question of how “to be in the world.” This is not merely an existential question, for we must learn to be with others in a global civil society and to create the social fabric of this new society . International education needs more explicitly to address the need for alternative approaches to leadership. To do so involves learning from how others lead. A Shift in Thinking As a starting point, we posit that our ability to prepare students to be leaders in the twenty-first century requires shifting our thinking about higher education in four fundamental ways. First, we have to position civic education as a central driver of higher education. Clearly, higher education has civic roots. American colleges and universities were founded to produce informed citizens (Colby, Erlich, Beaumont, and Stephens 2003; Colby, Beaumont, Erlich, and Corngold 2007). However, it is also clear that, throughout the twentieth century, civic education was not a driving priority for colleges and universities. This has shifted...

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