partnerships help our students recognize that what they’re learning has broad implications beyond the classroom, and that every discipline offers potential solutions to our most serious challenges. While it may be easier to run a partnership outside of the academic classroom, such as through clubs, after-school activities, or elective courses, a well-developed global experience that’s grounded in significant content provides a rich opportunity to make that content relevant for students, just as the International Baccalaureate program has tried to do since 1968.
Global competency can be defined in various ways, and the criteria tend to depend on the particular educator’s philosophical views. Reimers (2009), for example, believes that global competencies include the “attitudinal and ethical dispositions that make it possible to interact peacefully, respectfully, and productively with fellow human beings from diverse geographies” (p. 3). This definition suggests that a meaningful global partnership might address how our various disciplines can help solve global challenges, singularly and in concert, and that the development of “attitudinal and ethical dispositions” should be at the heart of our global efforts (Reimers, 2009, p. 3). Gabriela Ramos of the OECD believes that the “development of social and emotional skills, as well as values like tolerance, self-confidence, and a sense of belonging, are of the utmost importance to create opportunities for all and advance a shared respect for human dignity” (OECD, 2016, p. i). Finally, educational consultant Tim Kubik notes a distinction between global competency (which he believes implies a singularity, as though there is just one worldview to cultivate) and what he calls being competently global, a more pluralistic way of framing our goals (T. Kubik, personal communication, May 21, 2016).
Global connections and partnerships help our students recognize that what they’re learning has broad implications beyond the classroom.
While this multiplicity of definition can get confusing, many organizations have developed and redeveloped definitions of global competency into frameworks intended to support the work of educators. Three of the most important for this work include those from (1) Oxfam, (2) World Savvy, and (3) the Center for Global Education at Asia Society. Each provides a framework that offers a valuable lens for defining what global competency might look like. As you explore the following frameworks, consider which global competencies resonate for you, particularly in connection to the age groups and disciplines you teach, so that you can use them as learning goals in your global partnership design. As your school gets more involved in global education, you may even want to craft your own global competency matrix, capturing those elements that best mirror your school’s guiding vision.
Oxfam
Organized around knowledge and understanding; skills; and values and attitudes, Oxfam’s (https://oxfam.org) framework for global citizenship exemplifies the values of equity and social justice, the organization’s core goals. See table 1.1 for a list of Oxfam’s global citizenship components.
Table 1.1: Oxfam’s Components of Global Citizenship
| Knowledge and Understanding | Skills | Values and Attitudes |
| • Social justice and equity • Identity and diversity • Globalization and interdependence • Sustainable development • Peace and conflict • Human rights • Power and governance | • Critical and creative thinking • Empathy • Self-awareness and reflection • Communication • Cooperation and conflict resolution • Ability to manage complexity and uncertainty • Informed and reflective action | • Sense of identify and self-esteem • Commitment to social justice and equity • Respect for people and human rights • Appreciation for diversity • Concern for the environment and commitment to sustainable development • Commitment to participation and inclusion • Belief that people can bring about change |
Source: Adapted from Oxfam, 2015.
The Oxfam framework emphasizes responsible global citizenship in particular, and the broader publication it comes from offers many useful classroom strategies for reaching these goals. While many learning objectives in the Oxfam framework, such as empathy or self-awareness, might seem challenging to teach and assess, this framework focuses on the kinds of immeasurables we most need students to develop. One aspect of the Oxfam framework worth spotlighting is the emphasis on conflict resolution, which is absent from the other two frameworks for global competency, as well as concern for the environment and commitment to sustainable development. Conflict resolution is a key element of building a more peaceful world, and many schools that use restorative justice practices find that such skills can be developed intentionally in teachers and students. (Visit go.SolutionTree.com/21stcenturyskills for a link to more information on restorative justice in schools.) Further, environmental stewardship and developmental sustainability, which are United Nations’ (n.d.) sustainable development goals, are essential to long-term survival across the planet.
World Savvy
Alongside academic content foundations in core concepts that include history and geography, World Savvy (www.worldsavvy.org) emphasizes several hard skills like doing research and forming opinions based on evidence. This framework, which defines global competence as “the disposition and capacity to understand and act on issues of global significance,” also emphasizes the importance of self-awareness when seeking to understand others (World Savvy, 2014).
World Savvy’s framework is the only one that emphasizes becoming comfortable with “ambiguity and uncomfortable situations,” exactly the sort of ambiguity VUCA identifies as a challenge of our times (World Savvy, 2014). I ask educators in professional development programs and diversity workshops to lean into discomfort so they can discover the power of confronting rather than avoiding the ambiguity and conflict that make us uncomfortable. To become comfortable with the uncomfortable, with the ambiguity that is constant in times of rapid change, we have to address what creates the discomfort. Many global cultures are nonconfrontational (Meyer, 2015), which means that they tend to avoid uncomfortable conversations about race, identity, and divergent perspectives—even though feeling discomfort signals the importance of such conversations. Globally competent young people who know how to lean into discomfort—and communicate effectively with those who lean away—are essential to success in any field impacted by globalization (Meyer, 2015). Also significant is World Savvy’s emphasis on behaviors, which asks students to take global thinking and turn it into publicly demonstrated action. While deeper shifts in student behavior may take years to see and would require longitudinal studies beyond any singular classroom experience to measure, global educators have an important opportunity to help students learn to act on their values. See table 1.2 for a list of the attributes World Savvy considers crucial to being a globally competent student and educator.
To become comfortable with the uncomfortable, with the ambiguity that is constant in times of rapid change, we have to address what creates the discomfort.
Center for Global Education at Asia Society
The Center for Global Education at Asia Society (http://asiasociety.org/education) commits to setting the standard for how to teach and assess global competency. Its framework blurs the lines between soft and hard skills by interweaving the social, emotional, and academic in powerful ways, making the four domains of global competency—(1)
