Local Community-Driven Action

This interdisciplinary research draws on sociology, critical geography, and comparative education to focus on cross-national investigations of global education policy trends, including educational reforms related to standardization in Canada, US, Germany, and Australia; education policy uses of international tests in Canada, the US, and Spain; Global Policy Mobilities in Federal Educational Systems, and reflections of cosmopolitanism and nationalism in education policy reforms.

GEL’s recent work aims to focus on interdisciplinary and cross-national research that help shape place-based, collaborative, and community-driven approaches. With a grant from the Local Sustainable Governance Policy Lab, GEL researchers completed a comparative study of global governance, education for sustainable development, and “greening” policies in city spaces. In 2026, with funding from a Spencer Vision Grant, we are working on a project “Enhancing system support for teacher well-being and retention in Sub-Saharan Africa: Towards a place-based, collaborative research agenda.”

These interdisciplinary projects focus on policies, initiatives, and programs related to global civic engagement, education, and community studies. We explore how youth are engaged in cultivating global competencies to promote stronger, more resilient societies (local, national, and global). Over the past decade, we have conducted annual studies of the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) Global Education Initiatives. GEL’s on-going mixed methods research focuses on experiences of students and educators in the DCPS global mobility program and its effects on students’ global civic engagement, activism, identity development, and cosmopolitan capital.

GEL’s previous projects include a National Geographic Society Explorers grant to initiate the K-12 Global Forum with partners in public schools and organizations in North Carolina, Illinois, and Washington, DC. From 2016-2020, we launched #60above60, a global and environmental education initiative developed as part of the National Science Foundation PIRE project, Promoting Urban Sustainability in the Arctic. In 2020-2022, GEL completed projects on the adoption of virtual exchange in K12 settings related to global competence and empathy, supported with funding from the Stevens Initiative, and completed a series of studies on education abroad and its effects on global engagement, intercultural competences, and the impacts of COVID-19 on global mobility of students, commissioned by the Fund for Education Abroad.