This article addresses the present gap in empirical research on the possibilities and challenges of global citizenship education in U.S. public schools by presenting findings from a five-year, ethnographic case study. The setting for this study is Olympus High School, a small, suburban public high school in Pennsylvania. Beginning in the 2009–2010 school year, Olympus undertook a reform initiative to integrate teaching about the world into its curricular offerings. Although Olympus is just one case, the story of Olympus’s reform process reveals the inherent tension between preparing students to be knowledge workers in the global economy and preparing them to be active participants in global civil society. It also illustrates how test-based accountability and alignment to standards can impede efforts to broaden the curriculum in the interest of developing knowledgeable, responsible, and critically minded global citizens.
Citing the need to choose a broader vision than that provided by the plethora of citizenship education models currently in circulation, Pike challenges the fundament of GCE with a view to exposing some tensions and difficulties inherent in its implementation within schools. Following an exploration of six such tensions and difficulties, many of which are central to GCE, Pike suggests possible dimensions of an ethos of global citizenship – a set of moral principles and codes of conduct – that is global in scope all the while recognizing that citizenship will continue, for the foreseeable future, to be national in practice.
Evaluation of ventricular performance is essential in the diagnosis and long-term management of patients with heart disease. This can be most easily performed clinically using simple tools. When more definitive objective assessment of cardiac function is indicated, the equilibrium gated blood pool study provides reliable angiographic evaluation of the heart. It will continue as a mainstay in the armamentarium of cardiology.