Global Education

Global Education Guidelines

Global education is a process of individual and collective growth which allows for transformation and self-transformation. It is a social practice, a permanent preparation for life, in which the acquisition of operative and emotional competences for analysing and thinking critically about reality, empowers educators and learners to become active social agents.

Global education is education that opens people’s eyes and minds to the realities of the globalised world and awakens them to bring about a world of greater justice, equity and Human Rights for all.

At both local and global level, global education consistently articulates different agendas of education:

• Development education;

• Human Rights education;

• Education for Sustainability;

• Education for Peace and Conflict Prevention;

• Citizenship education;

• Gender & Children’s Rights education;

• Intercultural & Interfaith education;

• Disarmament education;

• Social and Economic Education;

• Environmental education, etc.

Global Education is a transformative learning process

Transformative learning through global education, involves a deep structural shift in the basic premises of thought, feelings and actions. It is an education for the mind as well as for the heart. This implies a radical change towards interconnectedness and a real sense of the possibilities and opportunities for creating equality, social justice, understanding and cooperation amongst nations and peoples.

Four main stages of transformative learning are strongly linked to this process:

• An analysis and critique of the present world situation;

• A vision of what alternatives to dominant models might look like;

• The development of a set of competences fostering democratic culture;

• A process of change towards responsible global citizenship.

Global education, as transformative learning implies problem analysis and participatory decision-making processes at all these stages. The educator and the learner need to be able to critically examine the present reality and facts and explore how to move beyond it. The goal of this kind of learning is to develop connections between people in order to foster mutual knowledge and understanding and a collective self-awareness. It challenges greed, inequality and individualism by creating these connections in circles of co-operation and solidarity instead of dividing people through competition, conflict, fear and hatred. It stimulates self-consciousness about the learner’s responsibility as an agent of change within its political, economic, social and cultural environment, and makes the learner, as well as the educator, aware of the impact and the interconnectedness between its local actions and global challenges. This mindfulness offers a way to make changes at local levels to influence the global levels and builds citizenship, with a global perspective, through participatory strategies and methodologies - so people learn by taking responsibilities that cannot be left only to governments and other decision makers.

PRINCIPLES OF GLOBAL EDUCATION METHODOLOGY:

• comprehensive and holistic

• values based

• carefully designed — according to the needs of the context and related evaluation

• practiced within a learner-centred pedagogy

• designed to develop critical thinking and understanding of diversity

• problem-oriented

• participatory in the process and in the goals

• intentionally directed towards transformative learning

GLOBAL EDUCATION AND GLOBAL COMPETENCE

Global Competence

OECD defines global competence as the capacity to examine local, global and intercultural issues, understand and appreciate the perspectives and worldviews of others, to engage in open, appropriate and effective interactions with people from different cultures, and to act for collective well-being and sustainable development.

Knowledge to understand and appreciate the world views of others Skills to examine local, global and intercultural issues Values to engage in open, appropriate and effective interactions across cultures Attitudes to take actions for collective well-being and sustainable development;

Educating for global competence allows learners to care about global issues and to critically understand the local consequences of such issues; it also enables learners to actively address local issues that have global impacts.

GLOBAL EDUCATION CALLS FOR:

• Integration of formal, non-formal and informal education. Policy-making in education is oftentimes directed only to the formal education system. In global education it is argued that formal education needs to be synchronised with informal and non-formal education and practices, as socialisation and learning happen at all three levels at the same time.

• Equal educational opportunity. The principle of equal educational opportunity is basic to social mobility. Social mobility implies a fair chance for all learners regardless of gender, cultural affiliations, religion, social class, ethnicity and community in order to develop competences enabling them to pursue the chosen professional career.

• Praxis as a fundamental condition of education. To learn and to know is a process that relates theory and practices in a dialogical interaction that creates knowledge and critical understanding. The notion of praxis as the recommended methodology for constructing knowledge is supported by global education8 .

• Education as a dialogical act. Global education supports the idea that the communicative action is part of the search for knowledge and part of the way to share knowledge with others. Therefore, dialogue is not only an act of human understanding of the other but also a method for learning.

• Education as a process of individual, collective and social transformation. Global education intentionally calls for transformative learning, intending to dismantle the culture of violence and injustice and replacing it by human action and practices learnt in an education process.

• Education creating critical and participatory thinking. Global education promotes learners’ ability to build autonomous thinking and to participate in decision-making processes that play an active role in parallel to learning.

• Education as a lifelong-training on democracy and participation. Civic responsibility can be fostered when learners have a role in improving society, supporting social justice, and working to solve collective problems.

Education as a practice of freedom. Global education supports the idea of the social and political nature of knowledge and education as a process of awareness of the reality. Hence the field of education cannot be reduced to an ivory tower but finds its identity also in praxis involving reflection and action activities by learners and educators alike. The learning process in global education has to be a practice of freedom for both parts.