Internationalising Higher Education

When most people think of international education, they think of college or university and rarely think of what UNESCO identifies as the various stages or levels in pre-college or pre-university: Level 0 (pre-primary education) through Level 3 (upper secondary). Yet the development of truly global citizens begins when students first encounter their national education systems. This poster will outline research and development of the Achievement Standards Network framework for the machine description of national curricula. This framework enables mapping of curricula to educational resources in support of (a) the professional development and instructional resource needs of teachers, and (b) the learning needs of students in discovering educational resources. It provides for the cross-mapping of curricula, thus achieving inter-jurisdictional and cross-cultural learning resource access. The framework also assists in cross-jurisdictional assessment of student achievement, which is not possible without such a framework. Development of the framework was initially funded by the US National Science Foundation. All US state achievement standards have been described and work is currently underway to provide a framework description of the emerging Australian National Curriculum.