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Educating for Global Competence: Preparing Our Youth to Engage the World Read more about global competence below, or download the book. is a book intended for classroom teachers, administrators, informal educators, policymakers, community leaders, researchers, parents, students, and all other stakeholders interested in preparing our youth for the 21st century. Becoming better at educating for global competence involves rethinking practices and recognizing that there are no simple recipes for success. As such, this book is meant to be used flexibly-browse, make connections, and concentrate on the chapters that you find most pertinent to your work. Experiment with ideas, challenge concepts, and share with colleagues. Ultimately this book must work for you. It is meant to be read in the way that best meets your needs, inspires your curiosity, and proves fruitful in the classroom.
Global Competence: The What, The Why, and The How

By Anthony Jackson

In matters of national security, environmental sustainability, and economic development, what we do as a nation and in our everyday lives is inextricably intertwined with what governments, businesses, and individuals do beyond our borders.

This new reality helps us more clearly define the role that education must play in preparing all students for success in an interconnected world. The United States have invested unprecedented resources in education, betting that our outmoded, factory-age system can be fundamentally transformed to prepare students for the rigors of a global economy. They have challenged states and school districts to set clearer, higher standards and assess student progress in more creative ways, prepare more productive teachers, and provide effective intervention in failing schools.

These are necessary strategies for change, but insufficient to create the citizens, workers and leaders our nation needs in the 21st century. Missing in this formula for a world-class education is an urgent call for schools to produce students that actually know something about the world-its cultures, languages and how its economic, environmental and social systems work.

The concept of global competence articulates the knowledge and skills students need in the 21st century.

Globally competent students must have the knowledge and skills to:

Investigate the World. Global competence starts by being aware, curious, and interested in learning about the world and how it works. Globally competent students ask and explore critical questions and "researchable" problems-problems for which there may not be one right answer, but can be systematically engaged intellectually and emotionally. Their questions are globally significant, questions that address important phenomena and events that are relevant world wide-in their own community and in communities across the globe.

Globally competent students can articulate the significance of their questions and know how to respond to these questions by identifying, collecting, and analyzing credible information from a variety of local, national and international sources, including those in multiple languages. They can connect the local to the global, for example, by explaining how a local issue like their school recycling program exemplifies a global process far beyond their backyards.

From analysis to synthesis to evaluation, they can weigh and integrate evidence to create a coherent response that considers multiple perspectives and draws defensible conclusions-be it an essay, a problem or design solution, a scientific explanation or a work of art.

Weigh Perspectives. Globally competent students recognize that they have a particular perspective, and that others may or may not share it. They are able to articulate and explain the perspectives of other people, groups, or schools of thought and identify influences on these perspectives, including how differential access to knowledge, technology, and resources can affect people's views. Their understanding of others' perspectives is deeply informed by historical knowledge about other cultures as well as contemporary events. They can compare and contrast their perspective with others, and integrate their own and others' viewpoints to construct a new one, when needed.

Communicate Ideas. Globally competent students understand that audiences differ on the basis of culture, geography, faith, ideology, wealth, and other factors and that they may perceive different meanings from the same information. They can effectively communicate, verbally and non-verbally, with diverse audiences. Because it is increasingly the world's common language for commerce and communication, globally competent students in the US and elsewhere are proficient in English as well as in at least one other world language.

Communicating ideas occurs in a variety of culturally diverse settings, and especially within collaborative teams. Globally competent students are able to situate themselves in a variety of cultural contexts, organize and participate in diverse groups, and work effectively toward a common goal.

Globally competent students are media and artistically savvy; they know how to choose and effectively use appropriate technology and media to communicate with diverse audiences, including through respectful online social networking. In short, they are technology and media literate within a global communications environment.

Take Action. What skills and knowledge will it take to go from learning about the world to making a difference in the world? First, it takes seeing oneself as capable of making a difference. Globally competent students see themselves as players, not bystanders. They're keenly able to recognize opportunities from targeted human rights advocacy to creating the next out-of-the-box, must-have business product we didn't know we needed. Alone or with others, ethically and creatively, globally competent students can envision and weigh options for action based on evidence and insight; they can assess their potential impact, taking into account varied perspectives and potential consequences for others; and they show courage to act and reflect on their actions.

Apply Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Expertise. Is global competence all skills and no knowledge? Hardly. As true now as at any other time, learning content matters. Global competence requires that the capacities described above be both applied within academic disciplines and contextualized within each discipline's methods of inquiry and production of knowledge. Globally competent students learn to think like historians and scientists and artists by using the tools and methods of inquiry of the disciplines.

Global competence also requires the ability to understand prevailing world conditions, issues, and trends through an interdisciplinary lens as well, in order to understand the interconnectedness of the issue and its broad themes as well as subtle nuances. A competitive advantage will go to those students in San Francisco or São Paulo who know what's going on in the world, can comprehend the interconnectedness of environmental, financial, social, and other systems, and understand how the relative balance of power between societies and cultures has significant short-and long-term consequences. Educating students for global competence requires substantive, developmentally appropriate engagement over time with the world's complexities.

Learning about and with the world occurs within and outside of school, and it is the work of a lifetime. Globally competent students are life long learners. They are able to adapt and contribute knowledge and understanding to a world that is constantly, rapidly evolving.

Global competence is a crucial shift in our understanding of the purpose of education in a changing world. Students everywhere deserve the opportunity to succeed in the global economy and contribute as global citizens. We must fashion a more creative and visionary educational response to the interconnected world of the 21st century, starting now.
Anthony Jackson is Asia Society's Vice President of Education and the Director of the Center for Global Education at Asia Society.
Download Educating for Global Competence (4 MB PDF)

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Educating for Global Competence: Preparing Our Youth to Engage the World Read more about global competence below, or download the book. is a book intended for classroom teachers, administrators, informal educators, policymakers, community leaders, researchers, parents, students, and all other stakeholders interested in preparing our youth for the 21st century.

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Natalie Belli uses the 321Bridge routine to help her 5th grade students better understand character.

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Choose a thinking routine and make a plan to use it this week or next

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Choose a thinking routine and make a plan to use it this week or next

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Look at the image quietly for 30 seconds

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Look at the image quietly for 30 seconds

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Let your eyes wonder.

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List 10 words or phrases about any aspect of the picture.

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List 10 words or phrases about any aspect of the picture.

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Look at the image again and try to add 10 new words or phrases to your list.

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"This new reality helps us more clearly define the role that education must play in preparing all students for success in an interconnected world"

Comment: This is literally IB. We are teaching the content but we are focusing on what type of learners they are and building those learning skills for the future.

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I want to hold onto the section: "Investigate the World". I think as IB students and teachers, we need to be able to communicate inquire about other things in the world we may not understand or agree with. I feel like being open-minded will create a more balanced and caring learning environment.

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How to help teachers see that when they teach "soft skills", ATL, LP this is crucial and in my opinion more important than content.  If they can't access or utilize the content, what's the point?

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How to help teachers see that when they teach "soft skills", ATL, LP this is crucial and in my opinion more important than content.  If they can't access or utilize the content, what's the point?

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What do we need to assess?  Should our behaviors on report cards or our academic scores include these skills?

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What do we need to assess?  Should our behaviors on report cards or our academic scores include these skills?

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I want to hold on to Global Competence and how it is explored and intertwined in all that we do at SMS.

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I want to hold on to Global Competence and how it is explored and intertwined in all that we do at SMS.

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SAIL training includes some of these global competencies as well.  It is the teaching of the future.

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SAIL training includes some of these global competencies as well.  It is the teaching of the future.

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I think it's all about investigating the world.  It may start small then should expand through the years until students are truly global thinkers.

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I think it's all about investigating the world.  It may start small then should expand through the years until students are truly global thinkers.

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"Learning about and with the world occurs within and outside of school, and it is the work of a lifetime"

The hardest part this year was family involvement and parental comments about the Community Projects. Some parents would ask why they need to do the project or since pathways "doesn't matter" then why do the kids have to do it? I think we need to communicate as a school the importance of the Community Project and tie it in/drive it home as a building to remind parents that learning happens in AND outside of the classroom. That in order to create balanced, caring, and reflective students, it is nice to have parent support.

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Students don't seem willing or ready to consider multiple sources, giving coherent responses, with defensible conclusions.  Maybe at the high school level???

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Students don't seem willing or ready to consider multiple sources, giving coherent responses, with defensible conclusions.  Maybe at the high school level???

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I think it's possible through IB to actually help students develop the drive  to want to educate themselves.

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I think it's possible through IB to actually help students develop the drive  to want to educate themselves.

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It's worth doing!  We have to help students become independent thinkers with a real passion for knowing more about the world in order to be a contributing part of it.

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It's worth doing!  We have to help students become independent thinkers with a real passion for knowing more about the world in order to be a contributing part of it.

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Global competence starts by being aware, curious, and interested in learning about the world and how it works

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Global competence starts by being aware, curious, and interested in learning about the world and how it works

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- Why do our students get the free dinner at the end of the day and then throw it in the garbage? What do they need to learn about the world in order to act more responsibly?