AFS Intercultural Programs (AFS) and the European Federation for Intercultural Learning (EFIL) together with the University of Hull and four other universities are proud to launch an ebook with resources for teaching and learning about global competence. The eBook Global Competence in Teacher Education is aimed at teacher educators, trainee teachers and non-formal educators across the world to help them become more globally competent themselves and foster this in those they teach. The eBook also supports a range of other education professionals who are interested in global competence as the contents herein help one to recognise that each of us, in our own way has an important role in fostering global competence in our teaching.
In a shrinking, more connected world we all face increasing global challenges in economy, climate change, and polarization, as well as preparing our youth for life in a digitally interconnected global society where they face uncertain futures. Such challenges require people to become globally competent, developing dispositions, skills, knowledge and understandings that enable us to live and work effectively in diverse societies.
Although some work has been done in schools around global competence to date, global competence has not been effectively addressed within pre-service / initial teacher education programmes. This means that new teachers just entering the profession are often unaware of the need for global competence and are unskilled to integrate the teaching of such competence within the curricula.
The project that created the eBook on Global Competence in Teacher Education has directly addressed this challenge by working with teacher educators and trainee teachers across the world to develop future cohorts of teachers who are both globally competent themselves and have the skills to develop global competence in their students. The eBook has been developed during an EU-funded Erasmus+ project.
Using the OECD definition of global competence, the eBook outlines 12 practical and customisable learning designs that touch on essential global competence, grouped in the areas of teacher disposition, teacher knowledge and teacher skills. They have been designed so that teacher educators, trainee teachers and non-formal educators can integrate global competence into their practice whether they teach in the classrooms or in non-formal educational settings.
Learn more about what global competence means and why it is important to integrate it into teacher education through the viewpoints of teacher educators and trainee teachers from different parts of the world in this video.
Find out more by joining the editors and authors for the official eBook launch webinar on 5 October 2022 at 9 am Eastern Time (GMT-4). Click here to register.
About the Global Competence in Teacher Education
Global Competence in Teacher Education project was co-funded under Key Action 2 of the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union, and implemented by a consortium of seven partners, led by the University of Hull (UK), and including AFS Intercultural Programs (AFS), United States; European Federation for Intercultural Learning (EFIL), Belgium; HAMK University of Applied Sciences (HAMK), Finland; Hellenic Open University (HOU), Greece; University College Leuven-Limburg (UCLL), Belgium; and Università Degli Studi Di Genova, Italy.
