ABSTRACT
The World Council for Curriculum and Instruction (WCCI) came into existence on August 1, 1971. On that date, sufficient ballots of the eligible voters were received in the offices of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) accepting the initial constitution of the organization and authorizing the naming of officers until the first election could be held. However, the history of its germination goes back many years before that date. It is rooted in the activities of a dedicated group of internationalists who worked through the commissions and councils of ASCD for over 20 years to gain the attention and support of a generally unconcerned, or even reluctant, national membership for programming about international educational issues.
As was noted in the “Introduction” of a short history of WCCI (Berman, Miel, & Overly, 1982), “Organizations ordinarily come into being as a result of the creative thinking of a small group of persons who are sensitive to a problem” (p. 5). From the beginning of ASCD in the late 1940s, there was a small, but insistent, group of educators who were intent on keeping before the curriculum leaders and supervisors in American schools the global significance of the issues and problems they were addressing at the local community level. For 14 years, ASCD appointed a committee on international understanding. For reasons not immediately clear, the practice was discontinued in 1964 and 1965. However, Louise Berman, then Associate Secretary of ASCD, formed an ad hoc committee to develop recommendations for ways in which international understanding and related issues could be addressed by ASCD in the future.
