The Future of Education

Edition 14

Accepted Abstracts

Teaching for a Globally Connected but Diverse Human Community: A Challenge for 21st Century Education

Joy Garfield, University of Worcester (United Kingdom)

Paul Nzacahayo, The Queen’s Foundation (United Kingdom)

Abstract

Our world is better connected than it has ever been.  Transport by road, sea and air has never been better and faster [1]. The time to fly from one end of the planet to the other continues to shrink; internet, skype, and social media have made it so easy for people to be connected in a way that has never been experienced before. At the same time in many parts of the world, linguistic barriers, national boundaries, cultural diversities and indeed nationalistic interests are increasingly becoming more and more important. Some of this has been exacerbated by the movement of migration. The last few years have seen mass migration particularly from the Global South to the West. These two factors seem to stand in opposition to each other. The connectivity which has accompanied the process of globalisation pulls the global community together while nationalistic interests, unprecedented competition for resources and the widening gap between rich and poor are pulling the world’s community apart. Within the context of the challenges of wars, climate change, and natural disasters we want to ask the question of whether the education system which was put in place centuries ago is still fit for purpose for the kind of connected and interdependent but diverse global community we have become. Do our ways of teaching match our current globalised reality? Do they inspire confidence and hopes for the kind of society we would want to leave to future generations? This paper argues that the education system we have was conceived for a different global society; a society of colonial masters and colonised, a society where western powers competed for global resources with little attention to the implications.  It contends that one of the reasons why the global community continues to fragment and fall apart is that graduates coming out of universities are ill-equipped to deal with the kind of issues our global community faces [2]. We will conclude by calling for a fully integrated educational system where global citizenship is not an extra part of a course or module, but one where all students understand that the survival of the planet and of humanity depends mostly on an educational system that fully integrates global citizenship into every single course and module that is taught [3]. This will require a new methodology, one which takes global contexts seriously and is flexible and adjustable.

Keywords: globalisation, global citizenship, education, diversity;

References:
[1] Stiglitz, J.  (2002) Globalization and Its Discontents, London: Penguin.
[2] Flores, K.L., Matkin, G.S., Burbach, M.E., Quinn, C.E. & Harding, H.(2012) Deficient Critical Thinking Skills among College Graduates: Implications for Leadership. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 44(22), pp. 212‐230.
[3] Academic Impact (2018) Global Citizenship, Available from: 
https://academicimpact.un.org/content/global-citizenship

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