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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.sflb7/27/2019 Global Skills
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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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