A global village is a small world.

It was a most diverting sight--12 mature Australian teenagers happily riding round in the teacups in the "Small World" area of Disneyland in Los Angeles, California. The holiday break was a treat during our return trip to Australia from the annual Future Problem Solving International (FPSPI) Conference at the University of Georgia, and these hard-working students were thoroughly enjoying their "time out." When the carousel music died away and, with some reluctance, they climbed over the teacup rims, Simon came over to where I stood, smiling a bit indulgently as I watched their return to childhood. We surveyed the next riders companionably until he turned to me. "You know," he said with some surprise, "it really is! Small, I mean. That's one thing I've learned through doing FPSP--that we're all part of one world. And it's not so big, either."

That remark has come back to me many times during my years of working with the Future Problem Solving Program (FPSP). The words are a testament that the program is one important way of encouraging students of all ages to think about the world they inhabit not just from a local or national perspective, but a global perspective, and helping them see themselves as part of a much larger context.

GIFTED STUDENTS NEED TO DEVELOP A GLOBAL OUTLOOK

For gifted students in particular, this is a critical part of their development as potential future leaders and contributors to world progress and harmony. It matches not only the needs of society but also their own personal needs and capacities.

In Clark's (1983) overview of the characteristics of gifted students, she noted the following attributes: (a) strongly motivated by self-actualization needs, (b) advanced cognitive and affective capacity for conceptualizing and solving social problems, (c) leadership, (d) solutions to social and environmental problems, and (e) involvement with the metaneeds of society (e.g., justice, beauty, truth).

WORRYING ABOUT WORLD PROBLEMS AND FEELING HELPLESS TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT THEM

Other scholars have commented on the gifted student's interest in world issues and concern for social problems and moral and ethical matters. On the basis of action research questionnaires, Schmitz and Galbraith (1985) recorded the eight great gripes of gifted students, one of which is significant in this discussion: "We worry about world problems and feel helpless to do anything about them" (p. 97). This has been endorsed by scholars such as Silverman (1993, 1994), who emphasized the heightened sensitivity of gifted students to global affairs and their deep concern for moral and social problems. She stressed the importance of understanding and nurturing the inner world of the gifted, especially the "inherent relationship between abstract reasoning, complexity, moral values, and the evolution of society" (Silverman, 1994, p.115).

Both Silverman (1994) and Pohl (1995) advocated programs to develop these interests of the gifted and to allay their anxieties. The sense of helplessness they identified was echoed by Cohen and Friedenberg (1993), who remarked on the burdens that gifted students often impose on themselves by their own unrealistic expectations--the feeling that they are somehow personally responsible for finding solutions to the world's problems.

More recently, Silverman (2007), as director of the Gifted Development Center (Denver, CO), listed 23 highlights of what has been learned so far from the Center's assessment of nearly 5,000 children from 1979 to 2007. Three of the findings are particularly relevant to the consideration of the exceptional sensitivity of gifted children as "burden or blessing." The first (#15) was the higher percentage (over 60%) of gifted children who are introverted compared with the general population (30%). The second (#9) was their asynchronous developmental pattern, and the third (#14) was their perfectionism, which allied with highly developed sensitivity and intensity. All three attributes make gifted children particularly vulnerable to awareness of the perils of the world, without necessarily having the emotional resources to deal with the problems they perceive or the moral issues that their cognitive awareness has heightened.

These observations are not new. Roeper (1988) quoted the findings of Clark and Hankins' (1985) comparative study that showed the greater concern of gifted students for world news items, and particularly war, compared to their nongifted peers. Their acute sense of justice, she noted, leads them to:

   [F]eel helpless and powerless to make an impact, and they suffer
   deeply from this. They worry about the injustices of the world.
   They worry about peace, about the bomb, about their futures, about
   the environment, about all the problems that they encounter. (p.
   12)

In Galbraith's (1985) survey of more than 400 gifted children, who were asked to self-report their concerns, she recorded higher levels of worry about world problems than was demonstrated by their peers. They showed particular concern about problems such as world hunger, nuclear war, pollution, and international relations. This awareness begins at a young age. Von Karolyi's (2006) comparison of highly gifted, primary-school children with typical children demonstrated a greater recognition of complex global issues by the gifted population. An earlier analysis by Landau (1976) of the changing patterns of concern as age advances showed children aged 9-12 asking more general questions--Will there be peace? Is there life on other planets?--compared with the more personal, lifeconnected problems listed by older students (aged 12-15), such as the future role of the family or the sufficiency of natural resources to sustain life.

IMPLICATIONS OF GIFTED STUDENTS' CONCERNS ABOUT THEIR WORLD

What are the dangers if these concerns are ignored? Roeper (1988) warned of the possibility of a subculture of personal gain (that might is right) developing among the gifted. Both the ends that gifted students might seek and the means to achieve these ends have been explored in Yong's (1992) analysis of Machiavellianism, an outlook where "an individual holds a cynical view of human nature and has internalized manipulative traits" (p. 192). Roeper's analysis indicated that this tendency is negatively associated with positive self-concept and internal locus of control among gifted students.

Other writers have suggested ways of addressing the recorded concerns. Passow (1988) agreed that gifted children have the potential for greater and more profound social, moral, and ethical concerns and made these a basis for the curriculum he advocated. Tannenbaum (1983) emphasized that all gifted children, regardless of their types of special talents, should concentrate as seriously on the affective domain as they do on the cognitive domain; specifically, that they should develop an alertness to human values and judgments, an acceptance of responsibility for others, and a personal code of conduct based on the examination of values.

The literature on the social and affective needs of the gifted has addressed many relevant aspects. VanTassel-Baska (1989) listed the challenges required by gifted students; one of these was the opportunity of applying their abilities to real problems in the world of production, a world that might well include the creation of solutions to global and social problems. More recently, practical ways of implementing this have been explored through service learning (Terry & Bohnenberger, 2007).

Other scholars have seen this need as linked to the world of leadership in both the societal and moral spheres. Tannenbaum (1983) argued for values education, lest we create a race of supertechnocrats, with no conscience or commitment to values, and stressed the need to teach gifted children the social and affective consequences of becoming a high-level producer or performer, so that they might contemplate human values and develop personal codes. But he added the caution, "All of this soul-searching should be combined with a commitment to action, for just as creative work without a regulating conscience leads to recklessness, contemplation without creative work leads to impotence" (p. 439).

Passow (1988) also was concerned with the potential leadership skills of the gifted, noting that many countries talk of preparing the gifted to be tomorrow's leaders, but pointing out the need to attend to another dimension of giftedness--"the development of caring, concerned, compassionate individuals who develop and use their giftedness for society's benefit as well as for self-fulfillment" (p. 15).

These two aspects--an attitude of service and a greater awareness of the global world rather than a focus on the national or local context--have seen close attention in recent years, especially in much of the last decade's writing on internationalism in schooling and the impact of globalization in educational affairs. In a specific way, the development of the International Baccalaureate (IB) has been seen as a move toward pan-nationalism. The IB uses McKenzie's (2001) preferred interpretation of the word international, with its twin aims of world-mindedness (the promotion of global consciousness) and open-mindedness (the development of a conscience appropriate to this).

While many scholars have seen globalization as a key factor in motivating reforms in diverse spheres of action (e.g., Cohen & Rai, 2000; Della Porta, Andretta, Mosca, & Reiter, 2006; Gaventa, 2001; Goodman, 2002; McDonald, 2006; Pieterse, 2001; Rotberg, 2004), others have been quick to note that the concept has not yet been properly translated into action. As Edwards (2001) commented, "We may dream of a global community, but we don't yet live in one" (p. 1). In the educational world this is particularly true, leading to discrepancies between words and practice, such as that pointed out by Eisenchlas and Trevaskes (2003) between the "centrality of international education in academic policy statements and the lack of concrete examples of how educators actually go about internationalizing the curriculum in a tangible and easily replicable way" (p. 87).

The difficulties will not be easily solved, because either the traditional answers to social and economic questions have become redundant or the questions have become more complex and the answers more uncertain (Edwards, 2001). Yet the general agreement on the importance of global thinking is clear, and its ethical goals well summed up by Florini (2001): "It matters whether this problem is solved, because transnational civil society can serve humanity well" (p. 39).

THE FUTURE WORLD IS IN THEIR HANDS

The solution will lie in the hands of youth; it is clear that "we all, and especially the young, know that things cannot go on as they are" (Jenkins, 2001, p. 92). Yet the young must be helped to find their own answers to the development of a sense of membership in the global community, for as educators we agree with Campbell, Baikaloff, and Power (2006) that there is a sense of "discomfort with the notion of one generation, however knowledgeable, foisting upon future generations its view of desirable future worlds" (p. 3), an approach that he condemns as an affront to personal autonomy and an infringement of the basic principles of democratic living.

With these ideas, thinking is moved from the present to the future, a future that Jenkins (2001) saw as being insufficiently addressed in schools that too often fail to address the context of the years 2010-2050, years in which today's school pupils will be living and working. This is not a new issue. For decades the seminal figures in the field of gifted education have made this context their concern in writings that emphasize a close link between future education and development of a global outlook.

Tannenbaum (1983) advocated futurism as an area of school study, suggesting that students should learn to analyze the laws of nature and to consider how these would impact on future development. Even problem-solving as a skill needs to be re-thought in the light of this emphasis. As taught today it is essentially a reactive process, dealing with the identification of, and solutions to, problems that currently exist, often restricted to a limited local or national context. But future studies lead to a more complex process, and may encourage "the more difficult aspect of problem-solving, that of prediction, or the ability to foresee problems that might occur in the future and then to implement strategies to prevent those problems from occurring in the first place" (Casinader, 1995, p. 57).

E. Paul Torrance was the educator and researcher who focused most specifically on the importance of future studies, with a clear policy that "schools must devote a considerable part of the curriculum to helping students (especially gifted and talented ones) to enlarge, enrich, and make more accurate their images of the future" (1978, p. 1). His argument was based on his observation that

   Gifted children across the grades are frontier minded. Their
   interests focus on the limits of personal and societal knowledge
   and at the borders of man's present environment....
   They are more interested in confronting new
   frontiers than in consolidating old ones. (Torrance, p. 4)

Students who have experienced a program that meets these needs of the gifted are in a favorable position to fulfill Passow's (1988) aim of the creation of caring and committed citizens of a future world and to be the leaders he envisaged for that world. They will benefit also from Campbell et al.'s (2006) plea for autonomy in futures education, where the futures studied "are preferred, rather than forecasted, ones, and the preparation is primarily concerned with ensuring that the young people develop the attributes needed to create for themselves worlds in which they want to live" (p. 3). This autonomy may be provided through activities such as future problem-solving.

E. Paul Torrance (1976) established FPSP in 1974 to meet pressing needs he had identified. Through explicit training of students in a six-step problem-solving methodology (based on the Parnes-Osborne strategies that underlie the parallel Creative Problem Solving program), FPSP gives students a new sense of self-efficacy in their approach to problems and challenges of many diverse types.

Problem-solving training, however, is not left as an abstract and hypothetical endeavor. In the central Booklet program, teams of four members research key issues of importance in today's world, which have been selected by international vote before being studied by students in all the countries engaged in the program. One major topic is set for each term of the school year. After their research, teams are presented with a Future Scene, which is set in a world from 20 to 40 or 50 years ahead and which focuses on the topic they have been studying. The problem-solving strategies they have learned must be applied to this Future Scene, leading to the writing of an 11-page booklet that utilizes the six steps with an Action Plan as the final stage.

The setting of these topics in a future world meets many of the needs of gifted students, which were identified earlier in this article. The projection of topics into a hypothetical world, gives them the opportunities for creativity and originality, encouraging thinking outside the box in a way that few school programs allow. By requiting the final step of development of an action plan to alleviate the problem situation, the program encourages students' sense of responsibility for the world they will be leading, and for the issues they will face.

This world of the future is not a world limited to individual countries and cultures. Increasingly, FPSP addresses the need for a global outlook by gifted students and has developed this emphasis in its setting of topics, its expansion of the program into new regions of the world, and its formal administrative structures. The establishment in 2005 of a Global Awareness Committee, now one of the central Working Committees of the program, and the formal name change in 2006 to Future Problem Solving Program International (FPSPI) are tangible evidence of the global emphasis that the program alms to foster. Recent extensions of mentoring programs into Singapore, Malaysia, Russia, Japan, Switzerland, Romania, Hong Kong, and South Africa are further examples of a more international perspective.

The topics set for study elicit a similar global approach rather than a narrowly national one. Topics in recent years, such as Terrorism/Security, Freedom of Speech, Healthcare Access, Alternative Energy, Environmental Law, Nanotechnology, Prejudice, and Word Population are typical of the issues that students have studied on a global level between 2001 and 2006.

The action branch of the program, Community Problem Solving (CmPS), gives students further practical ways of working on and identifying with world problems and situations. In this activity, students (either in teams or individually) are offered the chance to explore topics and issues of their own choice--an aspect that leads them to a keen and critical look at communities that may be local and regional but also may be international in scope. Many students take this option and work their way through the six steps of problem-solving to reach a solution to the issue that they have identified and researched.

Through this process, students have brought a new dimension to the concept of service learning, for they have moved to the level that Terry and Bohnenberger (2007) identified as community action. They have been given the desired "opportunity to find out how they fit into the larger world outside of school as well as the opportunity to express themselves positively in real-world situations" (Terry & Bohnenberger, 2007, p. 8). But they also have gone far beyond just supplying a service, as valuable as this may be. These students have analyzed a situation, generated new ideas, and implemented a difference-making plan of action, a process that leads to their greater empowerment.

In this branch of the program, the transformation of the best solution to a developed and structured Action Plan is not left as a formal written and theoretical exercise. In CmPS the students must themselves carry out their Action Plans and implement them to bring about the desired result. They have reached what Treffinger, Jackson, Jensen, and Bohnenberger (1997) called the final and most crucial step in the thinking process--application.

In recent years, we have seen projects that have brought educational assistance to underprivileged schools in Africa; an Illinois team organizing textbook translation into Farsi and providing school resources to Afghanistan; a Texas group of junior students (grades 4-6) becoming involved in the lives and backgrounds of the Lost Boys of Sudan and facilitating their assimilation into their new American community; middle-school students assisting a children's library in Fiji; and many others that have crossed national boundaries and placed students in the global world. A New York team of high-school students brought international cooperation to the fore as they worked, via computer connection, with a class in Israel on the problems faced by the Russian emigres in Israel.

Students who have been involved in these activities have moved beyond the limitations of their immediate environments and confined national issues; they now see themselves as citizens of a global world. Such a claim is easy to assert. Can we demonstrate that this approach has the desired impact on the students who participate in FPSP? Research conducted in both Australia (Volk, 2001a, 2001b, 2003) and the United States (Woythal, 2002) supported a student sense of growth in international awareness and global thinking. As one subject commented,

   I think I've just become more globally minded. Before
   FPSP I guess I wasn't aware of much outside of that which
   affected me. But FPSP forced me to take notice of real
   issues that do or will face our globe. (unpublished quote
   from Woythal 2002 study)

This attitude is supported by the findings of investigations (Volk, 2001a, 2001b, 2003; Woythal, 2002) conducted among students in both Australia and the United States, who reported a greater capacity to deal confidently with the world problems they encountered. In the 10-year retrospective studies of the students who had taken part in FPSP during their schooldays, over 75% of the 137 respondents from four Australian states (Volk, 2003) and 91 Americans from Iowa (Woythal, 2002) agreed or strongly agreed that their participation had developed their ability to deal with the complex social issues facing the world. Former students from Iowa talked in interviews about the impact of the program. One said, "I am more aware of global and national future issues because of FPSP research, and I feel confident in my ability to confront the future" (unpublished quote from Woythal, 2002, study). Another commented, "I have become more global. I understand my impact on the world and its impact on me" (unpublished quote from Woythal, 2002, study).

Some Australian students gave clear indications of the way in which this enhanced capacity had been achieved. They have acquired strategies to apply: "To solve these global problems, they will first need to be broken down into a smaller subset of problems, which could be solved more easily. FPSP has given me ... reassurance that there is a way these problems can be solved" (Volk, 2003, p. 209).

The students who emerge from the FPSP program have made it clear that they feel that their perspectives have altered. Not only was their interest in, or knowledge about the future expanded, but their attitudes also were perceived as having been deeply affected.

Whether it is in a Queensland student's sense that FPSP "contributed to my feeling that I must do something worthwhile to change the way we're heading as a global society," or in a Victorian girl's recognition that "problem solving skills are essential to the survival of humanity today and in the future" (Volk, 2003, p. 209), there is a realization that it is possible for problems to be addressed with a conviction of success.

This sense of efficacy in the words of former FPSP participants certainly offsets the feeling of helplessness so often mentioned as a characteristic of the gifted. These students are less likely to feel helpless to do anything about problems they encounter because they have learned and applied the skills of creative problem-solving while studying complex issues of the present and future in depth and thus have a knowledge base from which to begin their problem-solving. One Iowan student's feeling that "FPSP provides a feeling of efficacy and awareness ... FPSP offers a limitless sense that there is no problem that cannot be solved" (unpublished quote from Woythal, 2002, study) was echoed in another' s analysis of the personal impact the program had made:

   I feel more optimistic about the future both on a social and
   global level because of the in depth research FPSP required.
   Students involved in FPSP do become the leaders of the
   future. On a personal level, FPSP has motivated my continuous
   involvement in community and my awareness of the
   problems of the world--and potential problems and possible
   solutions related to these issues. (unpublished quote
   from Woythal, 2002, study)

Australian students similarly saw being involved in FPSP as an empowering experience. "I found that with each new topic I did, I felt that developing a greater understanding of the area was directly correlated with my level of confidence to make a difference in that area" (Volk, 2003, p. 209).

For these young adults and thousands of current students, involvement in FPSP has been a significant factor in shaping their perceptions of their existence in a global context and their belief that they are able to make an impact on its future directions. They have achieved that sense of optimism that E. Paul Torrance set out to foster. FPSP coaches have provided the nurturing environment in which their students have been able to develop as confident and effective problem solvers, collaborative team members, and knowledgeable and globally aware citizens of the world.

When Simon emerged from the Disneyland teacup to comment to me, soberly, that FPSP had changed his awareness of the world, he was not alone. The 250,000 students who participate each year in FPSPI no longer have only a limited national perspective to bring to the future problems of our world. They see it globally. It has become for them a small world and one they can face with greater confidence.

Sincere thanks are given to program officials for their suggestions and comments on the article, in particular Deb Woythal for her valuable input.

Received 19 December 2006; accepted 25 March 2007.

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Address correspondence to Valerie Volk, 3 Bartlett Drive, Novar Gardens 5040, South Australia, Australia. E-mail: [e-mail]

Valerie Volk is one of the Australian Affiliate Directors of the Future Problem Solving Program International, a program established over 30 years ago by the late E. Paul Torrance. The author, a former secondary school teacher and tertiary lecturer is a member of the International Board of Trustees, and is closely involved in coach training for the program in many Australian states, Hong Kong, and Singapore. E-mail: [e-mail]