political and religious barriers in ways no other discipline can.
The following instructional strategies—project-based learning, problem-based learning, design thinking, understanding by design, and place-based education—are all appropriate for global partnerships. They are included here because they start from the premise that student-centered learning matters for student engagement and empowerment, and are a central ingredient for fostering students’ problemsolving skills. Consider your own context and classroom, and identify the strategies you feel might work for your students as you read about the following approaches.
Project-Based Learning
Project-based learning has students choose a real-world challenge or question and investigate an answer, learning significant content through the process of addressing the challenge. Employing many strategies connected to design thinking and understanding by design (defined in later sections), project-based learning emphasizes a challenging problem or question, sustained inquiry, authenticity, student voice and choice, reflection, critique and revision, and public product creation, all with an emphasis on students gaining key knowledge, understanding, and success skills throughout the process (Larmer, Mergendoller, & Boss, 2015). This pedagogical approach is well suited to all forms of partnerships, as it puts students in charge of their own experiences, with a focus on producing something tangible or presenting an idea that is shared during the experience. The Canada and Colombia pairing mentioned in the introduction (page 1) could be run as a project-based learning experience, for example, in which a driving question, like How might we collaborate to improve our communities?, would allow students to work together, learn from each other, and develop actions and products they decide on together. The project might include connecting the Colombian community with free-trade networks, and the product could be a presentation or paper describing the impetus, process, and results.
A driving question, like How might we collaborate to improve our communities?, would allow students to work together, learn from each other, and develop actions and products they decide on together.
Problem-Based Learning
Problem-based learning is incredibly similar to project-based learning in its student-centered design strategies and intentions. However, problem-based learning always includes engagement in solving a complex and authentic problem, whereas project-based learning can be problem focused but can also focus on inquiry explorations, creative productions, or design challenges that do not solve a core problem (Stanford University, Center for Teaching and Learning, 2001). This pedagogical approach is very well suited to engaging students in solving global issues, so it is particularly appropriate for partnerships in which two or more classrooms work together to build solutions—whether it’s a design for a better water filter or an argument about how to address climate change. For example, eighth-grade algebra classes at the Town School for Boys partnered with rural Sierra Leone to explore the prevention of Ebola; in this problem-based approach, students worked on the question, How might we use mathematics to understand and help end the Ebola crisis in West Africa? Students used exponential equations to understand the disease’s spread, explored and analyzed existing solutions through statistical analysis, and designed actions to educate their community about the problem.
Design Thinking
Design thinking focuses on the creation of a more tangible product, designed with the user’s needs in mind. Tim Brown, David Kelley, and the IDEO team (Thomas, 2016) originally developed design thinking as a mirror of the processes used by real engineers and designers to solve complex problems. Blogger Parker Thomas (2016) describes design thinking as “a vocabulary for describing the process of making and improving.” It includes unique facets such as specific empathy-building steps, in which students define users’ needs on an emotional level, which provides the opportunity to incorporate multiple perspectives. Like project-based learning, design thinking encourages multiple phases of ideation, prototyping, and testing to achieve high quality. This approach (described at www.ideo.org/approach) is ideal for any partnership that focuses on building something better—a cook stove, a solar energy system, a bridge, or a better means of transportation for rural communities, for example. Because it incorporates the use of empathy interviews, used to understand the feelings and motives of the person or group being designed for, design thinking also creates opportunities for humanizing and understanding others’ needs (Institute of Design at Stanford, n.d.). One of my favorite global partnerships using design thinking was the cook stove project, an eighth-grade science partnership that ran for several years between Brookwood School in Manchester, Massachusetts, the Forum for African Women Educationalists school in Kigali, Rwanda, and Colegio Bandeirantes in São Paulo, Brazil (Boss, 2013a). Each community worked with the materials most available to them locally, collaborating around their communities’ specific cooking and efficiency needs, as well as their designs’ environmental impacts.
Understanding by Design
Understanding by design, commonly known as UbD, is a planning structure and process intended to guide curriculum, assessment, and instruction with a focus on teaching and assessing deep, transferable knowledge and skills by focusing on long-term learning goals (McTighe & Wiggins, 2012). Understanding by design, a common concept in curricular planning, asks educators to begin with the end in mind and plan backwards (which is why understanding by design is also known as backward design). Understanding by design emphasizes authentic performance outcomes—tasks that require demonstrating learning beyond a multiple-choice test—and teachers serve as coaches in a largely student-centered experience, ensuring that learning occurs but refraining from directing it too overtly. For example, students in multiple locations might work together to co-create something to demonstrate their learning authentically—from a white paper on human trafficking to a Dream Flag Project (http://dreamflags.org) event that brings multiple cultures together. In many ways, the other strategies described here align with understanding by design because they begin with the end in mind, but the emphasis on authentic performance outcomes makes UbD particularly appropriate for global partnerships.
Place-Based Education
Place-based education focuses on deep explorations of heritage, culture, and challenges in students’ own local communities. You can adapt it for partnerships in which two classrooms do deep local explorations and then share their findings with each other. Place-based education provides learners with ways to become active citizens and stewards of their local environment, and it often includes service learning experiences and hands-on, real-world problem solving (Sobel, 2005). Chris Harth (2010) explores similar strategies in his work on glocal learning approaches, in which students explore global issues but apply their learning by exploring and solving those issues in their local context. Place-based education is particularly useful in elementary partnerships because it makes global issues more concrete for young learners when they can see how these issues manifest locally. This approach also has the advantage of allowing students to do something about the injustices or challenges they discover, encouraging deep understandings of and engagement with their local communities. An excellent example of a place-based global collaboration comes from This Is Ours, an initiative of e2 Education & Environment (www.e2education.org). In This Is Ours, students in different parts of the world photograph and write about their local environment, identifying the plant and animal species that make it unique, as well as sharing how their environment impacts their lives. Any classroom can use the books of photography and writing each school produces for a deep understanding of place as an element of culture and identity.
A Few Concluding Thoughts
Arguably the most important element of global competency originates in the sense of purpose that making an authentic connection can develop in students. Yong Zhao (2012) asserts that “the most desirable education, of course, is one that enhances human curiosity and creativity, encourages risk taking,
