International Skills Inventory and Training Programme for Global Citizens Erasmus Project

Project Title

International Skills Inventory and Training Programme for Global Citizens

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 school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal); EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Context/background of the project
This project was set up in an acknowledgement backed up by literature (Facer, 2011; Picardo, 2012) that the acquisition of international skills and transversal competencies (ISTC) are crucial in a shrinking, more connected world where we all face common challenges, such as those posed by globalisation of markets, economic recessions, health epidemics or climate change. It also acknowledged that schools find the integration of ISTC into their curricula, problematic. Reimers, (2009) suggests that this is not just in determining which activities best foster ISTC, but in how these activities can be integrated into school curricula, assessments and teacher professional development. This project set out to address these challenges through the objectives listed below.

Objectives
This project set out to develop and create a freely available Global Competency Inventory consisting of a framework and survey (self-assessment) tool, associated Student Coursesand Teacher Toolkit. In so doing, this project targeted a number of horizontal and field specific European priorities including most importantly the development of competencies and skills, with particular regard to their relevance for the labour market and their contribution to a cohesive society.

Until this project, current frameworks only looked at certain aspects of Global Competency (e.g. communication) or were locally contextual, (e.g. understanding what it is to be a European). Moreover, none of them had associated assessment tools, deemed by an OECD publication (Reimer, 2013) as important. Moreover, until this project, there were few case studies for prospective teachers to follow to make the integration of Global Competency into the curricula a reality and of those that did exist, they tended to suggest that ‘activities’ could be carried out in a particular subject area, rather than providing exemplars of how this happens in practice. Therefore collecting case studies was another important objective within this project.

In summary, the three key objectives of this project were to design, create and disseminate a freely available:

1. Global Competency Inventory, including a Framework, Online Sruvey Tool and Certificate
2. Global Competency Course for students
3. Teacher Toolkit

In addition to these key objectives a final objective was to distil the learning from this project and present this through a series of conference presentations and academic papers.

Number and profile of participating organisations
We were 8 partners which included 7 schools (Germany, Norway, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands) and one 1 university (UK). The partners were chosen for their individual connections, expertise, locations and potential in relation to dissemination as they are all part of different networks of schools, companies, universities and other organisations, locally, nationally and internationally. The strength of creating this specific partnership, was to share and build upon the varied experiences of what it means to teach Global Competency in different EU contexts and utilize networks with other schools across the EU and beyond.

Description of undertaken main activities, including the results and impact attained
During the project we developed a range of resources and carried out three learning, teaching and training events. Three key activities carried out are categorized under the headings of Intellectual Outputs (IO). The first IO was the development and creation of both a Global Competency Framework and an Online Survey (self-assessment) Tool, primarily aimed at secondary school education students. It included various activities such as a systematic review of current frameworks and models. Concurrent to this, the team created a common set of questions used to interview key staff and students in colleges, universities, companies, businesses, consultancies and other organisations. Analysis of the answers and the systematic research led to the design and creation of a Global Competency Framework and Online Survey Tool. Over several iterations this was trialled with various stakeholder groups to refine it to the current format.

During the second IO, partners worked collaboratively to design, develop and create a set of student courses that dovetailed with the Framework and Online Survey Tool. In addition, the project team created a third IO, a Teacher Toolkit which exemplifies and illustrates best practice in using the Global Competency Framework, Online Survey Tool and Student Courses. The Teacher Toolkit includes case studies, resources and a digital book. During the fourth IO the project team disseminated the 3 former IO through the development of written reports, academic papers, conference presentations and other events.

The full details of these results are discussed in Section 3 and the impact of these results are discussed in Section 6.1 on Impact.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 348320 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITY OF HULL & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Institut du Sacré-Coeur
• Widukind-Gymnasium Enger
• Hermann-Tempel-Gesamtschule Ihlow
• Ås videregående skole
• Kopernikusschule Freigericht
• Liceo Scientifico Statale “C. De Giorgi”
• Sophianum Sg,