HOW TO NURTURE GLOBALLY COMPETENT STUDENTS?

1. Create a safe (and brave) in which students can freely express their ideas and
feelings, particularly around challenging areas such as diversity cultural
competence and oppression
2. Choose a suitable topic based on the following criteria:
(1) the topic should generate deep engagement from the students,
(2) it should have clear local-global connections,
(3) it should have visible global significance,
(4) it should have robust disciplinary and interdisciplinary grounding (=they
should talk about these topics by incorporating knowledge they have covered from
other subjects at school)
Some examples: Africa, ageing, AIDS, atomic energy, children, climate change,
decolonisation, democracy, ending poverty, food, gender equality, health, human
rights, international law and justice, migration, oceans and the Law of the Sea,
peace and security, population, water etc. (United Nations, n.d.) ((but you can
also get inspired by the 17 sustainable development goals; Google: The world’s
largest lesson → you can find lesson plans as well))
3. Use an engaging activity to deal with the topic (i.e., methods and techniques
promoting the active participation of students)
e.g., give them individual thinking time, pair work for discussion or
improvisation, group work for brainstorming and research, whole-class discussion
and data collection, surveys, interviews, games, poetry appreciation, writing
exercises, drama (role-plays, simulations), group-based tasks and project work,
organised discussions about thought-provoking texts, images or videos, songs about
current events, structured debates, web-collaboration projects, service learning
(this one links the classroom to the real world, very important)