Sarapiquí, Costa Rica, Central America (2015 Workshop)
takes risks, resolves problems, makes decisions, discerns, thinks critically, leads, analyzes, engages, is flexible, practices patience, adapts, works in groups, empathizes, persists, loves country, has a sense of belonging, learns from others, informs, communicates, observes, is empowered, asks good questions, asserts self, is responsible, shows righteousness without impacting the rights of others, listens, participates, follows others, creates, is confident, innovates, respects others, shows self-respect, is proactive, appreciates everyone’s talents, respects different perspectives, grows, practices digital citizenship, creates strategies
Source: Adapted from Project-Based Learning for Global Citizenship workshop.
These lists identify many of the same priorities for students and societies, and they hit on many of the goals of the new global competency component of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), being developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to begin in 2018 (OECD, 2016). As the OECD’s work demonstrates, regardless of the field they choose, our students will spend their work lives collaborating across borders, whether geographic, political, racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, religious, or cultural. They will communicate with a wide array of stakeholders, who have complex and often conflicting needs and priorities. OECD (2016) thought leaders put it this way:
The driving ideas are that global trends are complex and require careful investigation, that cross-cultural engagement should balance clear communication with sensitivity to multiple perspectives, and that global competence should equip young people not just to understand but to act. (p. 1)
Students who are successful in the new economy will be those who have global and intercultural competencies, and those are best developed by engaging directly with global issues and perspectives, whether inside or outside the classroom. As their teachers, we need the same global and intercultural competencies if we hope to be part of that journey. As Reimers (2009) cautions, “Those who are educated to understand those transformations and how to turn them into sources of comparative advantage are likely to benefit from globalization; but those who are not will face real and growing challenges” (p. 4).
Regardless of the field they choose, our students will spend their work lives collaborating across borders, whether geographic, political, racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, religious, or cultural.
Research suggests that global competencies are increasingly important alongside core knowledge, as technology and globalization have impacted almost every industry since the late 1960s (Zhao, 2012). Yong Zhao (2012) points out that global trends have changed the job market permanently:
Technology advancement, globalization, and abundance of unemployed youth are all building blocks of a new economy … globalization and digitization together have created a new platform that helps create new jobs. This platform delivers a global customer base, a global capital pool, and a global workforce—all easily accessible. (pp. 59–60)
This new economy and all it entails will require a different set of skills than the more nationally bound economies of the past. To communicate and collaborate with a global customer base, capital pool, and workforce, students will need global competencies on very practical levels. In her article for Harvard Business Review, Erin Meyer (2015) makes the following claim:
In today’s globalized economy you could be negotiating a joint venture in China, an outsourcing agreement in India, or a supplier contract in Sweden. If so, you might find yourself working with very different norms of communication. What gets you to “yes” in one culture gets you to “no” in another.… In my work and research, I find that when managers from different parts of the world negotiate, they frequently misread such signals, reach erroneous conclusions, and act … in ways that thwart their ultimate goals.
From the ability to speak to a client in his or her native language to the ability to leverage the varied talents of key stakeholders with cultural savvy, the survival skills of the globalized business world are exactly the skills global partnerships develop. It is important to balance these skills with deep cultural and historical knowledge about other countries, plus the capacity to make collaborative decisions in intercultural settings. While I tend to approach this work from a social justice and equity orientation, I recognize that economic forces can do more to legitimize this work in many school communities. I encourage teachers to use this more practical argument as they build buy-in for new programs, particularly in school contexts where tying global education to students’ futures in business might motivate change more effectively. Chapter 10 (page 177) provides more guidance about these kinds of efforts.
When we think about global skills in practice, whether in global business and economic entrepreneurship or in global development and social entrepreneurship, many of global education’s supposedly soft skills actually qualify as metacognitive skills. Soft skills are allegedly the opposite of hard skills, which include easily demonstrable abilities such as mathematical calculation or specific technical proficiencies. Soft skills include abilities that are more difficult to prove or measure, such as emotional intelligence, adaptability, and critical thinking. However, thinking critically about how to meet the varied needs of diverse stakeholders, for example, requires extraordinarily complex, high-level reasoning that interweaves knowledge with social-emotional understandings (Critical Thinking Community, 2015). Far from being a soft skill, critical thinking across cultures elevates global competency to the metacognitive level.
Fernando M. Reimers (2009) suggests that the “preparation to develop these understandings, knowledge and skills must begin early in order to develop high levels of competence as well as help youth recognize the relevance of their education to the world in which they live” (p. 4). This means that global competency development is not just the work of high schools and colleges when the world beyond school looms most closely for students, but that global competency programs should begin early and intentionally build that sense of global and local relevance. Try the global graduate for a VUCA world activity in figure 1.1 with your colleagues to help build a sense of the skills a student needs and to determine when you might best foster them, being sure the conversation stays grounded in the age groups you serve and the competencies most important to the student’s developmental needs.
Figure 1.1: Global graduate for a VUCA world activity.
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/21stcenturyskills for a free reproducible version of this figure.
Being intentional about identifying the global competencies you want to address will ensure that integrations are meaningful and educational.
As you plan strategies for finding, developing, and maintaining partnerships for your students, being intentional about identifying the global competencies you want to address will ensure that integrations are meaningful and educational. In the case of the kindergarten students in San Francisco, for example, one of the teacher’s explicit learning goals was empathy, so she developed her own rubrics to measure empathy’s presence in students’ discussions and classroom behavior. Given that global educators often feel isolated and need help creating buy-in across their communities, identifying specific, measurable global competencies and knowledge areas to intentionally teach, foster, and assess through those global partnerships can help legitimize efforts to potential naysayers. Some global competencies, such as research or negotiation skills, are easily measured; others, like empathy, humility, or resilience, are not as easily measured. We will explore how you might approach assessing such immeasurables in chapter 9 (page 155), but you may find it useful to review your academic standards alongside a global competency framework, such as those we’ll explore in this chapter, as you begin planning a new partnership.
Defining Global Competency