Ongoing Project

Global Competence in Teacher Education

Achieving a shared global vision of humanity – global competence – through education.

Project summary

The Challenge

The rise in nationalism in Europe, BREXIT and the ‘wall building’ between the USA and Mexico, we are facing a global crisis of culture and identity.

The Approach

Design-based methodology to develop future teachers who are globally competent and have the skills to develop global competence in their students.

The Outcome

Global competence hasn’t yet been effectively addressed within Higher Education programmes. We are at the beginning stages of this innovative project.

Lead academics

Funded by

Project partners

The Challenge

We are currently facing a global crisis of culture and identity (Appiah, 2016).

Recent examples includes the rise in nationalism across Europe, the pathway to BREXIT and the ‘wall building’ between the USA and Mexico. The focus appears to revolve around our differences – rather than our similarities.

An acknowledgement of this trajectory has led to the notion of ‘global competence’. This concept is increasingly rising to the forefront of European and international agendas. The hope is that developing global competence will enable us to ‘live harmoniously in multicultural communities’ (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2018).

“In 2015, 193 countries committed to achieving the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, a shared vision of humanity that provides the missing piece of the globalisation puzzle. The extent to which that vision becomes a reality will depend on today’s classrooms.”

Andreas Schleicher

Director, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Directorate for Education and Skills, and Special Advisor on Education

In a shrinking, more connected world, we all face common challenges. Economic recessions, conflicts or climate change for example. Global competence has therefore become increasingly important. Particularly in preparing our youth for life in a digitally interconnected global society – where they face uncertain futures.

The Approach

The project is based upon a design-based research methodology (Brown, 1992; Collins, 1992) and associated concepts such as infrastructuring (Penuel, 2015 and 2019) and conjecture mapping (Sandoval, 2014).

Although some work has been delivered in schools around global competence, this has not yet been effectively addressed within Higher Education programmes (Gaudelli, 2016; West, 2012; Zhao, 2010; Longview Foundation 2009). New teachers leaving university are both unaware of the need for global competence and unskilled to integrate the teaching of such competencies within curricula.

Global competence, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2018)

We are directly addressing this challenge by working with teacher educators and trainee teachers across the European Union. Our key is to develop future cohorts of teachers who are globally competent and have the skills to develop global competence in their students.

Key activities include

scoping study and curriculum mapping
development of globally competent educators
raising awareness of global competence among school leaders
flexible training programme for trainee teachers
academic outputs

The Key Objective of this 3 year Erasmus+ funded project (2019-2022) is to develop future cohorts of educators who are both Globally Competent themselves, but also have the skills to develop Global Competence in their students.

Dr Sarah Jones

Programme Director for the Online Masters in Education

The Impact

We are at the beginning of this innovative project. Results and impacts will be revealed.

Associated project publications/outputs

Website:

https://www.globalcompetence4educators.org/

Papers:

Jones, S.L., Van Helleputte, G., Murray, M., Kunnair, I., Korkealehto, K. & Spanjers, L. (2021). Teaching Global Competence in Initial Teacher Training Programmes: a Systematic Literature Review. (Submitted and under review)

Parmigiani, D. Jones, S.L., Kunnari, I. & Nicchia^,E. (2020). Are teacher education programmes globally competent? A study across Europe and USA. (Submitted and under review)

Jones, S. (2018). International Skills and Competencies: Tools for Teaching in Secondary Education. INTED2018 Proceedings, pp. 4862-4866.