Global Skills

7/27/2019 Global Skills

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Global Skills- Framing the Issues

Dr. Douglas BournDevelopment Education Research

Centre, IOE


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Aims of Presentation

Impact of globalisation on learning and practices in higher

education

Ways in which institutions can and are responding

Global Perspectives and Global Skills

Framework for Global Skills


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Context

Globalisation

Pressures on universities to compete in

global market place

Needs and agendas of key stakeholders on

society


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Globalisation

Interdependent World (Giddens,1991)

Flat World (Freidman,2005)

More than just new technology and instant

communications (Castells, 2000)

Social, cultural and economic dimensions(Harvey,2003)


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Examples

Dislocation from our traditional moorings

I am from nowhere

When do we turn the lights out

Everyone needs to learn Mandarin


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Globalisation and Global Skills

Context of globalisation and rapidly

changing world

Equipping learners to make sense of, and

have the skills, to engage in a global society

Skills needs for a global economy

Making connections between the local and

the global


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Global Perspectives and Global

Dimension Understand our situation in a wider context

Make connections between local and global events and scales

Develop skills and knowledge to interpret events affecting our lives

Learn from experiences elsewhere in the world

Identify common interests and explore wider horizons

(Bourn,MacKenzie, Shiel, 2006)


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Skills for Global Perspectives

Self Reliantwhereglobal awareness heightens self-awareness,confidence, the ability to respond positively and pro-actively to

personal and professional change in today's globalised world.

Connected- global citizens work well as part of a team, recognisingthe value and role of each member, inspiring others and developingcross-cultural capability and sensitivity to others.

Well-rounded- a graduate's range of skills can only be considered aswell-rounded when they reflect the global environment in which we alloperate.

Critical reflectors

a global perspective requires a student tochallenge knowledge, reflect on the economic, social and politicalcontexts that shape experience and adopt a critical perspective inanalysis and decision-making, reflecting on self and others. (Shiel,Williams and Mann (2005


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Complexity and Uncertainty

We ourselves argue that the challenge forlearning in relation to sustainable

development is to confront learners withcompeting accounts of human andenvironmental reality wherever complexityand uncertainty mean that it is possible for

competing rationalities to yield competingversions of the truth. (Scott andGough,2005)


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Changing Perspectives

Equipping Learners to Participate in a globalised world requires:

Moving from fixed content and skills to conform to a predetermined idea of society toconcepts and strategies to address complexity, difference and uncertainty

Moving from absorbing information, to reproduce received knowledge, to accept andadapt to existing structures and models of thinking, knowing and being to assess,interrogate and connect information, to generate knowledge, to live with difference andconflict, to shift positions and perspectives according to contexts

Moving from structured, ordered and stable, predictable, comprehensible as a whole,

universal meanings and interpretations to complex and changing, uncertain,multifaceted and interconnected, different meanings and interpretation


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Global Skills

Key message is demonstrate skills for aglobal economy need to recognise global

and culturally diverse nature of society andthat the skills needs for today and tomorrowneed to recognise complexity anduncertainty.

www.lsis.org.uk/Libraries/Documents/GlobalSkills%20Nov08_WEB.sflb
http://www.lsis.org.uk/Libraries/Documents/GlobalSkills%20Nov08_WEB.sflbhttp://www.lsis.org.uk/Libraries/Documents/GlobalSkills%20Nov08_WEB.sflb


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Features of Global Skills

An ability to communicate with people from a range of socialand cultural backgrounds

An ability to work within teams of people from a range of

backgrounds and other countries Openness to a range of voices and perspectives from around

the world

Willingness to resolve problems and seek solutions

Recognition and understanding of the impact of global forces on

peoples lives Willingness to play an active role in society at local, natural and

international level.


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GLOBAL ENGINEER

Why global issues are critical to

engineering educationWhat global skills look like and

the alignment between different

initiatives

How the global dimension can beembedded: looking at examples of current

practice


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Global Health

We aim to enable medical students to

Challenge attitudes towards patients, individuals,communities and health care delivery systems.

Recognise factors contributing to global healthinequalities.

Identify the role of governments, internationalcompanies, international organisations and NGOs.

Recognise the factors underpinning global inequality

and access to health care services. Acknowledge the interdependence within a global

health system.

(www.skillshare.org/buildingawareness_health.htm)


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Thoughts for the Day

A global institution does not impose one view, one way oflife, or form of knowledge on the rest of the world. It creates aspace in which the rest of the world can examine what wehold to be important and true in a safe, enjoyable and

productive relationship of equals. Only once we have createdsuch spaces will we be able to claim that we are becomingglobal.(Tormey, 2006).

Educations main contribution should be to familiarise learners

with perspectives other than their own (Professor Bill Scott,Centre for Environmental Education Research, University ofBath


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Thanks

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