INT. J. SCI. EDUC., 1999, VOL. 21. NO. 7, 731-743
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The emergence of global thinking among American and Russian youth as a
Contribution to public understanding
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Jack Hassard,Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA USA and Julie Weisberg Agnes Scott College, Decatur, GA USA
The purpose of this study was to examine some elements of American and Russian students' emerging global perspectives. As part of the GTP-Georgia/Russia exchange project, 150 high school students from Georgia (USA) and 150 high school students from Russia participated in three, year-long programs of collaborative environmental research and cross-cultural exchange. We conclude that environmental science education must stress not only cognitive but also affective outcomes necessary for the assumption of planetary stewardship.
Introduction
In 1995 the Global Thinking Project (Hassard, 1997a) received the first of three grants to fund the exchange of 100 American and Russian students and 30 teachers each year for three consecutive years1. The goal of the exchange program was to promote communication and understanding between students in Georgia (USA) and Russia through collaborative study, discussion, and action on local environmental problems. Through collaboration at a distance using the Internet, and through face-to-face meetings, we hoped to enhance the American and Russian students' awareness of each others' needs, difficulties and points of view as they worked side-by-side in each others' communities on environmental science action projects of mutual concern. The student exchanges have enabled us to work along side students and teachers in both countries as they investigated questions about the local environment, to begin to examine students' emerging ideas about what it means to 'think globally', and to reflect upon the importance of cross-cultural exchanges in the development of this kind of thinking.
Context of the Research
History of the global thinking project
The Global Thinking Project is a grassroots environmental science education project that was born in seminar rooms and classrooms in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Atlanta during the late 1980's (Hassard, 1990, Hassard 1997b). The project owes its existence to the efforts of a small group of American and Russian classroom teachers who were interested in working together. A series of unofficial visits of American educators and psychologists to the Soviet Union between 1983 and 1988, sponsored by the Association for Humanistic Psychology (AHP), laid the groundwork upon which the Global Thinking Project (GTP) was based (Hassard, 1990). These early exchanges led to official agreements between the USSR Academy of Pedagogical Science2, and the AHP. A series of international conferences involving American and Russian classroom teachers and university researchers was held in Atlanta, Moscow and St. Petersburg between 1988-1990. Acting out of common concerns for the well-being of the planet, and for improving relationships between the people of the USA and USSR, these educators agreed to work together to develop teaching materials and strategies that would:
1. empower students and teachers to get involved with important global problems and concerns;
2. introduce students to collaborative methods and strategies and inquiry
that could be used to solve problems locally, and provide the knowledge and
technological means needed to deal with problems globally; and
3. develop computer literacy in students that would allow them to use
microcomputers as a telecommunications tool to collaborate with
counterparts in other nations.
Telecommunications has been an integral part of the Global Thinking Project since its inception, this means of communication is supplemented by a teachers' resource guide (Hassard and Weisberg, 1993), and a web site.
However, we have always been cognizant of the importance of the development of face-to-face relationships in sustaining the electronic communication. Teacher exchanges and summer teacher institutes were instrumental in developing the interpersonal relationships upon which the first successful GTP collaborations were based. From the very beginning, the Global Thinking Project has been about bringing people together to solve problems, and to learn from each other. Thus, it was perhaps inevitable that the early teacher exchanges would lead eventually to work-large scale youth exchanges between the USA and Russia.
The GTP-Georgia/Russia exchange project
The research reported here is based on data gathered during the second and third years of the exchange, 1997-98. Although all of the participants were aware that the funding for the exchanges came from the United States government, every effort was made to ensure that the planning of the cultural and academic portions of the exchanges were conducted collaboratively. These efforts included extensive e-mail contacts between the participants during all phases of the planning, joint meetings of the American and Russian teachers to plan the exchanges.
Students and schools
In all, 50 Russian and 50 American students from Georgia (aged 14-16) and a team of three teachers per school participated in a one year program marked by two, three-week exchanges during each of the 1995-96, 1996-97, and 1997-98 school years. Georgia and Russian schools were selected which represented a variety of geographical sites in their respective territories. The Georgia schools represented Metropolitan Atlanta, rural Georgia, and the coastal plain. The Russian schools represented five distinct sites including the small town of Puschino-on-Oka, the Golden Ring town of Yaroslavl, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the industrial complex in Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountains. The exchange program was built on an ongoing program of collaborative environmental science study, Internet activity, and teacher enhancement. The exchange consisted of three phases of activity:
Phase I. The Teacher Leadership Institute. Each year the project began in October with a 'Teacher Leadership Institute' in Atlanta for the US and Russian teachers. The academic experience for educators focused on the content, philosophy, cooperative learning pedagogy, and intensive instruction on the Internet. Teams of Russian and American teachers developed 'mini-proposals' outlining elements of their collaboration prior to the exchanges, as well as specific environmental science topics that would be investigated during the Outbound (to Russia) and Inbound (to Georgia) phases of the exchange. Russian teachers also spent three days in their host schools meeting with school officials, parents and the students involved in the exchange.
Phase II. Internet Activity. From October through February the ten schools in the exchange used the Internet to establish e-mail links among the students. Schools began with an investigation looking into five different environmental components of their classrooms by participating in the activity 'How green is your classroom?' (Hassard and Weisberg 1993). They used the Internet to send data using the Web, and retrieved and analyzed other schools' data posted on the Web site. Teachers and students reported that the Internet activity was very lively. A number of American and Russian students had access to the Internet from home, facilitating the communication among GTP participants.
Phase III. The Exchanges. During the Outbound and Inbound exchanges, students and teachers lived for 21 days in their counterparts' homes, participated in an academic program at their respective schools, conducted joint environmental research activities, and visited significant cultural sites in each other's cities. Using monitoring equipment provided by the Project , students collected and analyzed data on air and water quality, sent e-mail reports to the GTP discussion group, and participated in video-conferences. Each exchange culminated with an environmental 'Summit', during which each school pair was responsible for presenting its views on some aspect of an environmental problem or controversial issue. Some of these reports involved the presentation and interpretation of students' own experimental data, while others required the students to research different aspects of a pressing environmental public policy issue. For example, during the April, 1997 'Summit', held in Georgia students debated solutions to the problem of pollution of the Chattahoochee River in Atlanta from the perspective of homeowners, elected officials, land developers, scientists, and public policy experts. At the April, 1998 summit held at Experimental-Gymnasium 710 in Moscow, Russia, school pairs presented interdisciplinary interpretations of the ecological and historical significance of the Oka, Volga, Moscow and Neva Rivers in a variety of forms: poetry, singing, dramatic plays, and technical/scientific reports.
Theoretical underpinnings
In May 1946, in a fund-raising letter for the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, Albert Einstein wrote, 'The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe' (cited in Holt 1984). With the advent of war science and technology whose consequences could be as dire for the victor as for the vanquished, Einstein realized the increasing importance of thinking from a global, as well as a local perspective, and of considering the long-term consequences of political or military decisions on the fragile ecosystem of the Earth. With Holt (1984) we believe that what Einstein was calling for was a move toward 'systems thinking', that is, toward an ability to predict the consequences of altering any sub-part of a system on the functioning of the whole. This kind of thinking about complex issues implies an ability to view a problem from multiple perspectives and to predict the consequences of current and future actions.
Although the cold war has receeded, we are faced today with many other serious threats to global well being involving at least five significant global systems: ecological, cultural, economic, political and technological (Tye 1991). The solutions to problems such as global warming, overpopulation, and natural resource depletion will require policy-makers who can collect and analyze the significance of data from a variety of sources, reason from multiple perspectives, and work collaboratively with colleagues from other nations, and a public that understands this way of thinking and can participate in bringing it about. We have aimed our 'global thinking' project at enhancing and encouraging these attributes.
Botkin et al. (1979) explain that systems, or global thinking, is comprised of two critical elements: anticipation and participation. Anticipation is the ability to deal with the future, to predict coming events, and to understand the consequences of current and future actions. Anticipation also implies 'inventing' future scenarios, and developing the philosophy that humankind can influence future events. Participation is the complimentary side of anticipation. It involves the development of competence to deal constructively with problems and issues at both local and global levels. Botkin et al. (1979) express the hope that students will learn to participate not only at times of pressing danger, but also when motivated by a 'vision of the common good'.
Education for 'global thinking' is not unlike education for 'global citizenship' or education for a 'global perspective', two other constructs which have been widely written about during the last two decades. All three emphasize the importance of perspective taking, which might be viewed as 'learning to see problems and issues through the eyes and minds of others' (Ramler 1991). Perspective-taking incorporates elements of both empathy, being able to put oneself in another's shoes, and intercultural competence, and being able to function within the norms and expectations of another culture (Lambert 1994). Global citizenship also includes a recognition of the interdependence of global systems (Tye 1991, Merryfield 1997), and of the responsibility of individuals as well as nation-states to be actors on the world stage (cited by Anderson in Rasmussen, 1998: 3).
These elements have formed the basis of the contemporary global education movement. It seeks to prepare students to participate on the world stage by developing their knowledge about different parts of the world, increasing their empathy toward others, and teaching them skills for participating in the civic life of their communities.
What 'global thinking' adds to these ideas is the notion of the citizen-scientist. A citizen-scientist is one who combines the processes and habits of mind of science (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1989) with public decision-making. A citizen-scientist, as a scientist, the student learns to monitor the environment, search for and collect data and information, and analyze and draw conclusions, as a citizen the student learns the importance of individual responsibility and acquire skills for democratic action taking (Dunkerly-Kolb and Hassard 1997). Some reports (Bybee 1984, Mullis and Jenkins 1988) indicate that schools are not preparing students to make informed decisions related to global problems such as global warming, overpopulation, acid rain, air and water pollution, and destruction of the ozone layer. Not only have these reports shown that students possess misconceptions about global problems, they also indicate that students do not feel empowered to apply knowledge to solve global problems. It appears that very little time is spent in classrooms in America on the application of knowledge to the solution of global problems. Bybee (1984) reported that students thought they could help solve problems, and that they were willing to try, but that, in reality, very few acted or helped to reduce global problems. The National Assessment of Educational Progress has consistently depicted students as wanting to deal with global problems, but not having the opportunity to do so. Mullis and Jenkins (1988) encourage us to develop systems of education in which students have an opportunity to apply knowledge to solve pressing global problems, rather than the usual fare of simply learning basic facts.
Education for global citizenship therefore addresses the development of scientific understandings of global problems, enlargement of students' perspectives to include other nations and cultures, and the enhancement of student's sense of efficacy with respect to the environment. The GTP has been based on the notion that learning experiences that promote the development of scientific habits of mind, and involve students in real world collaboration with others to address environmental problems of local concern will promote the growth of global perspectives in students.
Research Questions
In calling for an education that promotes a global perspective, Hanvey (1982) identified five elements which together constitute such a perspective: perspective consciousness, state of the planet awareness, cross-cultural awareness, knowledge of global dynamics, and awareness of human choices. The goal of global education is to socialize groups of people so that while each individual in the group might not possess all of these characteristics, they would be represented overall within the group. Thus, the concept of global perspective is not so much a characteristic of individuals as it is of groups or societies. Our research objective is to investigate the extent to which students' experiences during the exchanges would promote an emergent global perspective based on Hanvey's model.
We examined the elements of the American and Russian students' emerging global perspectives as expressed in written responses to open-ended questions as part of the evaluation of the exchange and compared these perceptions with the five elements of a global perspective proposed by Hanvey (1982). The research questions were:
1. What was the effect of the Exchange on students' perspective consciousness? 2. What was the effect of the Exchange on students' state of the planet
awareness?
3. What was the effect of the Exchange on students' cross-cultural awareness?
4. What was the effect of the Exchange on students' knowledge of global
dynamics?
5. What was the effect of the Exchange on students' awareness of human choices?
6. What were students' understandings of the term citizen-scientist?
Methodology
To uncover students' global perspectives we administered questionnaires at the end of each of the exchange phases each year, read students' journals, interviewed some of the students, and observed and interacted with the students at different points in the exchange program (Patton 1990). The questionnaires were administered in the students' own language. We also collected logs that students kept as a group during their exchange visits, and collected other artifacts including written reports of each student's work, recommendations for social action projects, and declarations made at the 'Summits' that were held in each country each year. To analyze the students' perceptions, we transcribed each student's responses to questions pertaining to this study. Using the student's responses, we developed rubrics for each the questions to help us make assertions about the students' emerging global perspectives.
Findings: Elements of students' emerging global perspectives
Assertion 1: Perspective consciousness: Cross-cultural experiences increased students' awareness that different perspectives exist and that problems and issues can have multiple solutions.
By perspective consciousness we mean recognition that one's own view of the world may not be universally shared. Perspective is deeper than opinion; it represents a world-view that unconsciously influences how individuals respond to issues or situations. Perspective consciousness allows us to 'mine the deeper layers', (Hanvey 1982:163); that is, to uncover and begin to question the hidden assumptions underlying our opinions. Through examination of these hidden assumptions, new solutions to old problems may emerge. By far, the most significant aspect of the exchange for both the American and Russian students was the opportunity to experience another cultures. When we asked students to tell us the main value of the exchange, nearly 70% of the students who participated in the 1996-97 exchange cited the opportunity to understand and experience another culture (Hassard 1997a,b). But more than simply experiencing another culture, students came to realize that different people have their own unique ways of looking at things. For example, one student said: 'I think that by visiting another country we are able to realize that we are not the only people on this planet...' These students not only expressed an awareness of and an appreciation for multiple perspectives, but also came to recognize the value of taking into account a variety of points of view as they examined global environmental problems. When we asked the 1997-98 participants to tell us how their ideas about global thinking had changed, one Russian student said: 'Global thinking is a way of solving problems with the point of views of different people.'
Students also began to see differences in each other, and for some students this was a remarkable revelation. An American student, reporting in a group journal had this to say about differences in American and Russian cultures:
Today was the second day of school (in Russia) S, we started out with talking to an English class of younger students, maybe fourth or fifth grade. I was amazed as how much English these small kids knew. It probably rivaled that of American kids of the same age. It makes me feel that we live in a backward country when the rest of the civilized world is so far ahead of us intellectually.
Assertion 2: State of awareness of the planet: Direct experience beyond the local community and through interactive media expanded students' state of planetary awareness.
This means knowing about the conditions outside one's own community. Since many people in the world never move out of their own communities, Hanvey (1982) believes that much of this awareness is indirect, obtained primarily from the mass media. This awareness is likely to be distorted since the media, political ideology, and excessively technical data tends to put up barriers between people and reality. The availability of interactive media such as electronic mail, tele-conferencing, and even long-distance telephoning, have increased the extent to which some students can now learn directly about what is going on in other parts of the world. These media were enhanced by the face-to-face meetings of students during the exchange, and promoted students' direct construction of understandings about the state of the planet. We observed that the electronic communication was highly motivating for students, and it appeared to promote their learning about other cultures, the environment, and ultimately the development of a global ecological awareness. Students used interactive media including e-mail, posting and retrieving of environmental data on the GTP web site, and video-conferencing. Even before students met each other, they were able to ask questions about each other, and the environments in which they lived. Furthermore, most of the exchange schools used the Internet to find information about the city that they were about to visit. Most importantly here, it was the students' initiative that led to construction of opinions and knowledge about the other country.
Students were thus involved in direct environmental experiences within and outside their local community. The project design called for students to compare environmental conditions in their local communities with the communities in which they were hosted. Students in the exchange constructed their own understandings about the state of the ecosystem as they monitored their local environments and compared and contrasted data with their counterparts in other parts of the globe. The comparative environmental science projects had a direct impact on students' awareness of planetary conditions. One student, when asked if these projects had an impact said: 'This project was really eye opening. It allowed me to know more about the problems facing our environment.' Another student responded by saying: 'In the long run, projects like this will have a positive effect on the environment and prevent (global warming)' Or, as another student put it: 'Global thinking is trying to get everyone involved in thinking about various issues (that) affect the whole world.'
We found that students made comparative statements about the environment, which signaled increased environmental awareness, such as 'Atlanta is less polluted than Moscow', and 'we have common problems but the ecological situation in (each country is different)'. By studying similar controversies and problems in two environments, students were helped to see that environmental problems were problems for all of humankind, and it helped them to experience a global view. Pollution was not just a Russian or an American problem, but problem for all countries.
Assertion 3: Cross-cultural awareness: The exchange experience deepened students' understanding and empathy for people from a different culture.
Cross-cultural awareness is an awareness of the diversity of ideas and practices that exists in the world. It implies both empathy, being able to see another's point of view, and at least a limited recognition of how one's own society might look to others. Hanvey (1982) suggests that attaining this element may one of the more difficult of the five that defines the global perspective. The goal of this element is to help people see that they are all members of the same species, even though fascinating differences in customs exist among different groups of people, and to help students appreciate differneces. In the GTP exchange, this element may have been attained to a greater degree than some of the other elements that are being discussed. Each student had the opportunity to live in the home of distant strangers for a period of three weeks, and then return the experience to the student who was the host. This experience had a profound affect on modifying the strangeness that American and Russian students felt about each other and their respective cultures. Students cited the opportunity to cross cultures, living and working with students in another country, as one of the major values of their GTP experience. Students cited learning many new things, interacting with other people, learning about 'their' values and environment as indicators of this new found appreciation, as witnessed by student remarks such as:
Global thinking means learning new things about different cultures... Making communications and interacting with cultures and people.
Experience of living with Americans, learning of their values.
Learning about a different culture and the environment in Russia.
They also learned to see their own culture through another's eyes. One student commented that 'exposing someone to an entirely new culture that I had come to take for granted' it therefore provided new insights into cultural differences.
Assertion 4: Knowledge of global dynamics: Students emerged with a holistic sense of the Earth, consisting of interconnected systems.
Global dynamics stresses an understanding of the planet as comprised of interconnected systems, a change in any one of which affects them all. It means being able to grasp an understanding of change in socio-political as well as natural systems. We believe that students can come to understand the complex interactions of the ecosystem with other global systems best through their own experiences. The students who participated in the GTP exchanges studied local aspects of global problems such as air and water pollution in their respective cities. As students monitored various aspects of air (temperature, ground-level ozone, cloud cover and wind) and water (dissolved oxygen, temperature, pH and macroinvertebrates) quality, they built data bases that could be used to make inferences about changes in these systems.
Through these experiences, they began to understand that what happens in one part of the world can often affect what happens in another. Students, when asked what is global thinking, indicated that it is 'thinking about the Earth as whole', or as another student put it, it is 'the realization that the Earth is one big community.'
Yet, students' understanding of the socio-political and environmental issues affecting the world as a whole appeared to be different. In examining students' email on the issues differences between American and Russian students emerged. The differences are quite evident when one compares the following sent to the GTP E-mail list:
Hello from St. Petersburg, Russia. What is global thinking? There are many global problems all over the world. For example environmental problems, problems of human rights, questions of war and peace and so on. In recent years there have been many changes on our planet. People discuss different problems and try to solve them to widen the horizon of an outlook and their perception of the surrounding reality. We believe that global problems will concern all people because the life of this planet is in our hands.
From an American school, this email was received on the same question:
Hello, we are students from Chattanooga Valley Middle School in Flintstone, Georgia. There are five students in our group. The worst environmental problems that we have are air pollution, which affects our water, which affects the land. We think we do not have many bad problems but we may find out differently.
Table 1 identifies the results of a survey among American and Russian students when asked to identify what they considered to be the major environmental problems. Only the Russian students mentioned the extinction of living species and the threat of nuclear arms and testing weapons.
Table 1. Rank order of the most serious environmental problems identified by American and Russian students.
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|
|
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Pollution Ozone depletion Air pollution Rainforest destruction Greenhouse effect and global warming Landfills and waste disposal Littering |
Air pollution Global warming Water pollution Ozone layer Extinction of living species Nuclear arms and testing of weapons Solid waste disposal |
When we asked students what they learned about the Earth's environment, they described a process of learning about the environment, rather than identifying specific facts that they learned. When we coded their written responses, the following categories emerged: an awareness of environmental problems, observation and description, comparison of one environment to another, identification of cause/effect relationships, action taking; and evaluative statements.
The students defined environmental learnings as being able to observe and compare systems, and the use their data to make conclusions about the state of the environment. Students began to 'talk' in comparative terms as evidenced by a Russian student who said: 'We have common problems but the ecological situation in the U.S. is much better than the ecological situation in Russia.'
Assertion 5: Awareness of human choices: Students sensed the impact of choice making on long term consequences.
This dimension of global perspective includes both an awareness of the ability to make choices, and the recognition that different choices may have different long-term consequences. Hanvey (1982: 166) views society as in a transition from pre-global cognition, in which the consideration of consequences tends to be limited to the 'near in time and the social identity', to global cognition, in which long term consequences come to be considered more significant and the interests of groups is seen as more interconnected. This is systems thinking. Or in student terms it might be represented by the view: 'We should help to solve not only our local problems but problems of the whole world.' Although we felt it was critically important to involve students in local environmental study, and then provide them with opportunities for comparisons, we also engaged students in 'global problems' and asked them to think of the consequences of predicted changes in one or more systems. One case that we used was the issue of global warming. We set up the problem in which teams of American and Russian students, working with their teachers, investigated the predicted effect of global warming on human health, food supply, water resources, natural ecosystems, and politics. (Table 2)
Table 2. Assignments for American and Russian school pairs on the problem of global warming
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What is the effect of global warming on: |
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Human health? Food supply? Water resources? Natural ecosystems? Politics? |
Chamblee High/St. Petersburg School 157 Chattanooga Valley/St. Petersburg 91 Dunwoody High/Moscow School 710 Lafayette High/Puschino School 2 Salem High/Yaroslavl School 1 |
During the visit to Georgia in 1998, we presented the problem to all of the students and the teachers by presenting to them the information shown on this page from the GTP Website: http://www.gsu.edu/~wwwgtp/gw.htm.
There were 20 students working on each problem, and they had about two weeks to use the Internet, local resources and interview experts to gather their findings, and organize a presentation which was held at Georgia State University on February 14, 1998.
They reported on their respective subsystem, e.g. human health, and food supply, based on these reports students devised public policy recommendations aimed at the prevention of these predicted effects of global warming.
Assertion 6: The 'citizen scientist': Students defined the 'citizen scientist' as a person who not only knows and studies, but as one who cares and takes action on environmental issues.
When we asked students to define a 'citizen scientist' after the exchanges, students characterised them as individuals who study the environment ('a person who conducts different experiments'), knows about the environment ('a person who knows a lot about the environment'), cares about the environment ('a person who cares about the environment'), and takes action to improve the environment ('a person who uses their environmental knowledge in order make decisions which will have positive effects').
These students recognized that not only must citizens have knowledge and skills, but they must also have the disposition to care about and care for the environment. Thus, 'citizen scientists' are also activists who are motivated to apply their knowledge and skills to concrete efforts to improve their local environments (Kolb and Hassard 1997). This attitude is reflected in the following declaration made by studentsfrom both countries:
We … will devote ourselves to protecting and preserving a healthy living environment. We hope to increase the world's knowledge on circumstances that plague our planet.
The addition of these two dispositions, caring, and a willingness to take care (act on behalf of the environment), represent the addition of a distinct values component to Hanvey's (1982) original construct. As Reardon (1988: 27) points out, it is not enough to be neutral (without concern for an issue) or unbiased (willing to consider all data as being of equal value), the values of teachers and students must be exposed and explored. Students, starting at the secondary level, can also examine their own social and political values, students can come to understand their own place in global structures, and can explore their own behaviors and values, deciding whether they wish to act for change. Care, concern and commitment are human capacities, which are central to the development of planetary stewardship, global citizenship, and humane relationships. A 'citizen scientist', then, is a person who combines knowledge and skills with care, concern, and commitment.
Conclusion
Scientific inquiry, because it is conducted by human beings, is naturally situated within cultural context. Development of a global perspective involves examining the cultural assumptions underlying whose and what data count, for whom. Through collaborative collection and analysis of environmental science data in each others' communities, the students not only experienced another's culture, but began to see their own surroundings through another's eyes. These students looked at the consequences of science-related policy decisions not in the abstract, but in the neighborhoods in which they lived. They realized that a 'citizen scientist' must not only know about environmental problems, but also must also care and take action in the local community. Thus, education for public understanding requires more than the acquisition of knowledge about other cultures, the state of the planet, and the acquisition of data collection and social action skills. To be truly effective, such education must develop the capacities of caring, concern and commitment. One of the useful vehicles for developing these capacities among school students seems to be living and participating together in the direct exploration of each other's communities. Students need to develop cross-cultural appreciation and democratic participation skills, and participate in experiences that enable them to construct their understanding of the nature and interconnectedness of global environmental problems.
While the cost of large-scale physical exchanges such as the one described here is prohibitive, Internet technologies provides new ways for exploring ideas together with people from a many of the more affluent cultures.
Notes
1. The project was supported by a grant from the United States Information Agency, Project IA-PSMA-G5190197, from 1995-1998. The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors.
2. Now called the Russian Academy of Education.
3. The web site is at <www.gtp.org>.
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