Global Competence in Teacher Education Erasmus Project

Project Title

Global Competence in Teacher Education

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Reaching the policy level/dialogue with decision makers; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

At this current time in the history of our peoples, we are facing a global crisis of culture and identity (Appiah, 2016) as evidenced through, for example, the rise in nationalism across Europe, the pathway to BREXIT and the impending ‘wall building’ between the USA and Mexico. An acknowledgement of this trajectory has led to the notion of Global Competence which is fast rising to the forefront of the European and International agenda with the hope that the development of such a competence will enable us to ‘live harmoniously in multicultural communities’ (OECD, 2018) going forward. Indeed, the acquisition of Global Competence has become increasingly important (OECD, 2018 & 2009; EU, 2018; Picardo, 2012; Facer, 2011; Clifford and Montgomery, 2011) as countries across Europe face increasing challenges, e.g. the integration of newly arrived peoples through the migration crisis, preparing our youth for life in a digitally interconnected global society, where they face uncertain futures as we enter what some argue is the 4th Industrial Revolution (Schwab, 2016). Such challenges require people to develop skills, knowledge, values, attitudes and understandings that enable us to live and work effectively in diverse societies. However Reimers (2009) suggests that the teaching of Global Competence is hindered from becoming a reality through what he terms as ‘an obsolete mind-set’ where the compartmentalization of curricula prevents teachers from approaching their subject from an interdisciplinary perspective. Moreover if educators themselves are not Globally Competent, it is unlikely that they will be able to develop this in their students (Gaudelli, 2016).

Although there has been some work done in schools around Global Competence this has not been effectively addressed within Higher Education programmes (Gaudelli, 2016; West, 2012; Zhao, 2010; Longview Foundation, 2009) so that new teachers leaving university are often unaware of the need for Global Competence and are unskilled to integrate the teaching of such competencies within the curricula. This project directly addresses this challenge by working with teacher educators and trainee teachers (defined as anyone who is training to teach at any level, whether they are doing this in university or school or other settings) across the EU to achieve a key objective: to develop future cohorts of teachers who are both Globally Competent themselves but also have the skills to develop Global Competence in their students.

This objective will be addressed through the development of five activities which can be summarised thus:
1. Scoping Exercise and Curriculum Mapping activity that will generate a series of reports aimed at teacher educators, policy-makers and school leaders.
2. The development of Globally Competent Teacher Educators through interactive resources that will provide a platform where Global Competence can be learned about and explored within ITE programmes.
3. An Awareness Raising Campaign directed at School Leaders that will present compelling evidence in multiple formats, so that Global Competence will be strategically embedded within schools.
4. A Flexible Training Programme for Trainee Teachers that will support trainee teachers as they learn to both become Globally Competent themselves and learn how to develop Global Competence in their students once they become qualified teachers in schools.
5. Academic Outputs to highlight the outcomes and impact of the project and to support the dissemination of intellectual outputs amongst academics, policy-makers and other stakeholders.

In addition to these activities, we will establish a transnational Global Competence Network of Educators to share, explore and validate Global Competence training within respective national teacher education programmes.

The project will draw upon a Design Based Research Methodology which will guide all phases of the project including the collection of evidence to measure impact on participants, participating organisations and their stakeholders. DBR is fundamentally participatory, employing inclusive, cooperative evaluation methods to involve learners and key stakeholders. Throughout the project, we aim to involve a wide variety of stakeholders which will include academic staff, teacher educators, trainee teachers, non-formal and informal education providers, school leaders, teachers, education authorities, policy makers, leaders of multinationals and NGO executives.

We anticipate that stakeholder organisations and associations which have been involved in the creation of the project outputs will endorse and recommend these resources and that the academic outputs from the respective countries are recognised as nationally outstanding reference materials to validate the effective teaching of Global Competence and are widely cited by other academics, peers and organisations.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 414015 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITY OF HULL & Country: UK

Project Partners

• AFS INTERCULTURAL PROGRAMS
• UC LEUVEN
• HAMEEN AMMATTIKORKEAKOULU OY
• HELLENIC OPEN UNIVERSITY
• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI GENOVA
• EUROPEAN FEDERATION FOR INTERCULTURAL LEARNING