Current trends, challenges, and issues in education include the movement of knowledge and innovation-based jobs offshore, advances in technology changing how students interact and learn from people around the world, and growing technology gaps between developed and developing nations. Governments face pressures to increase education quality while reducing costs, as students must now compete internationally. Additionally, globalization has reduced the connection between schools and local communities, with learning becoming more individualized online instead of through face-to-face activities. These shifts affect secondary students through changing opportunities after graduation and how they interact with teachers and peers.

1. Current Trends,
Challenges, and Issues
In Education
Felicia McCollum

2. Current Trends
• Technology changes human relations
– Changes in educational technology-especially the use of the
internet and other computer forms and the growth of distance
learning.
– Advances in technology allow people to interact in new ways
that were previously obscured by geographical, economic or
social boundaries.
– Effect On Students: Student contact can be across great
physical distances. Students are able to learn from various
people all throughout the world.
• Knowledge and innovation-based jobs are
moving
– Western companies have already learned that it makes sense
to move industrial jobs offshore. Today, many companies are
beginning to move their creativity and Research &Development
jobs to markets with lower labor costs.
– Effect On Students: Less jobs are available when students
get out of school. There is large scale unemployment in those
communities where those industries were previously located.
Moravec, John W. ( June 18, 2007)

3. Current Challenges
• Governmental Pressures
– Most governments are under pressure to reduce the growth of
public spending on education and to find other sources of
funding for the expected expansion of their educational
systems.
– Needs to be a readily supply of skilled workers
– Effect On Students: The average level of education is
increased in the labor force which mean students graduating
from secondary school would need to be prepared to enter
college instead of going directly to the workforce. The quality
of education a student receives is being compared
internationally.
• Technology Gaps
– Increasing the technological gap and digital divides between
advanced countries and less developed countries.
– Education deficits are greater in developing countries
– Effect On Students: Students in less developed countries
do not have the same opportunities as students in advanced
countries, which results in illiteracy rates being very high
Smith, M. K. (2002).

4. Current Issues
• De-localization and orientations in
education
– Globalization has severed the link between locality
and schooling and undermined the idea of
community schooling. Strengthens idea that school is
separate from the community where it is located.
– Limits the amount of interaction with local shops,
agencies, and groups.
– Learning is highly individualized
– Effect On Students: The sense of “community” is
lost among the school and the student. Many of the
activities that previously involved face-to-face
interaction, or that were local, are now conducted
across great distances. Students use social
networking to connect with friends, instead of actual
field trip, teachers use online simulations for various
learning activities.
Carnoy, Martin and Rhoten, Diana. (February 2002)

5. Affect On Secondary Students
1. Knowledge and innovation-based jobs are moving
2. Technology changes human relations
3. Technology Gaps
4. De-localization and changing technologies and
orientations in education
5. Governmental Pressures

6. References
• Carnoy, Martin and Rhoten, Diana. (February 2002), . The Meanings of Globalization for
Educational Change. Comparative Education Review, Vol. 46, pp. 1-9 .
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/324053
• Smith, M. K. (2002). Globalization and the incorporation of education. The Encyclopedia
of Informal Education. Retrieved from ww.infed.org/biblio/globalization.htm.
• Moravec, John W. ( June 18, 2007). Top Ten Global Trends The Force Us To Rethink
Education. Retrieved from
http://www.educationfutures.com/2007/06/18/top-ten-global-trends-that-force-us-to-
rethink-education/