In this paper, the author focuses on how globalization and education are addressed in research. More precisely, he concentrates on only one dominant approach to analyzing globalization and its effects on education and also the educational role within globalization. His thesis is that, with the background of Max Weber's Protestant ethic thesis, sociological neo-institutionalism interprets globalization as a more or less linear process, and the analysis becomes thus a part of the grand narrative of Protestantism itself. He demonstrates his thesis in four steps. First, he depicts sociological neo-institutionalism and its contribution to the analysis of globalization. In the second part, he discusses the problems of analyzing historical processes. In the third part, he shows how linear constructions of a global history frame one's view of the institutions of education, and finally he discusses how to deal with the problem of analyzing globalization without construing it at the same time. (Contains 10 notes.)