| Giddens (1990: 139) identifies globalization as a "runaway engine of enormous power," one that "threatens to rush out of control." Paul Ricoeur (1992) believes that solicitude is the needed orientation. Nobel Prize Laureate Amartya Sen (1999: xii) says that human agency and social arrangements must work together to globally create individual freedom. Meanwhile, education has been accused of following rather than leading the way toward equity and freedom for all world citizens. This dissertation presents a trans-national model of education partnership that places educators as leaders within development and education contexts. This trans-national model explores two distinctly different countries: the United States and Cambodia. In identifying a model of participation and partnership---individual, state, and global needs are explored and implications for education and development is discussed.;The conceptual framework for this dissertation is critical hermeneutics. The action of the researcher, therefore, is oriented so that the text is "unfolded, no longer toward its author, but towards its immanent sense and towards the world which it opens up and discloses" (Ricoeur 1981: 53). The ontological approach creates legitimate meaning for all who enter the discourse of research. This methodology moves beyond ethnographic data to shared agreements and understanding, an appropriate theoretical framework for discovering a trans-national model of education.;The praxis necessities of the trans-national model of education center around the need for relationships grounded in Jurgen Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action. The model necessities include: recognizing universal values; imagining; mediating and sustaining narrative identity; creating on-going dialogue; linking cultural needs, goals, and services; sustaining two-way commitment; modeling honesty and integrity; linking development and support service providers; integrating education and resources; focusing on solicitude; maintaining a hermeneutic orientation with self and other.;At the heart of sustainable education development is the connection with others through reciprocal dialogue, and it is within genuine, trans-national partnerships that education development will be sustained. Educating future generations to take on the responsibilities demanded of caring world citizens must become a new focus for social discourse, including educational discourse. This model may ultimately frame on-going, directed development that embraces these responsibilities. |
