Students do not develop global competence after they gain fundamental disciplinary knowledge and skills, but rather while they are gaining such knowledge and skills.

– Educating for Global Competence: Preparing Our Youth to Engage the World

 I can explain an alternative perspective on the same situation, event, issue or phenomenon.

– Performance Outcomes: I Can Statements Rubric for Students Aged 12-14, Centre for Global Education, Asia Society

A recent New York Times article talks about innovative, technology-based solutions to problems facing the trucking industry in the United States – not enough truckers and so goods cannot move out fast enough. The solutions ranged from driverless trucks to robots in warehouses and software installations in trucks aiming to incentivise truckers. The local story touches global themes.

Global organisations, such as the Directorate for Education and Skills of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), playing the role of understanding where the world is going and shaping education, such that students are prepared for the world of tomorrow, have highlighted that it is important for students now to understand and form perspectives on issues in some other part of the world, which would in some way affect them. They call for the development of what is termed Global Competence.

The word competence in education refers to knowledge, skills, attitudes and values (Transformative Competencies for 2030, OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030).

Global competence then, refers to students having the requisite knowledge, skills, attitudes and values to be able to first, critically examine issues such as poverty, trade, migration, inequality, environmental justice, conflict, cultural differences, and stereotypes and in so doing be able to understand and appreciate different perspectives and world views.

Students also need to be able to interact positively with people of different national, social, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, as well as those of different genders and in so doing act constructively to address issues of sustainability and well-being.

The foregoing understanding of global competence was jointly developed by the Asia Society’s Centre for Global Education and OECD and appears in the Asia Society publication, Teaching for Global Competence in a Rapidly Changing World.

The need for students to develop global competence is based on the following premises. First, the world is very interconnected and so what happens in one part of the world is not unlikely to impact another. Second, as a result of the complex nature of today’s pressing problems, solutions would require an understanding of situations in different parts of the world. The two taken together suggest that the world of work is likely to entail teams of people from different nationalities and backgrounds.

According to the Asia Society publication, students would need to be able investigate and examine what happens outside their environment. They would need to recognise, understand and appreciate various perspectives as well as communicate their perspectives and ideas to unfamiliar audiences and take action to do what they can to improve lives where they are and beyond.

This publication highlights three education systems which have created opportunities for students to develop global competence – Toronto in Canada, Washington in the United States and Singapore. Toronto’s system aims to create global citizens of their students who will contribute towards the achievement of the United Nation’s 2015 Sustainable Development Goals. Washington’s system focuses on language classes and the language curriculum ,,, stresses conversation by embedding in every unit opportunities to discuss global issues (Teaching for Global Competence in a Rapidly Changing World, 2018). Singapore’s framework for Twenty-first Century Competencies and Student Outcomes was highlighted for its role in developing students who are informed about their nation as well as the world (Teaching for Global Competence in a Rapidly Changing World, 2018).

Investigation and examination of issues would require language ability. Videos and texts are alternatives to experiencing life in another society. In the 2018, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), tested global competence. Students here showed a high degree of familiarity with global issues. They were very confident about their ability to explain climate change (Results from PISA 2018, Country Note, Singapore). One reason for this could be that Climate Change is a topic which frequently appears in English classes even in Primary school – oral conversations, comprehension cloze passages.

Recognising, understanding and appreciating as well as communicating perspectives would also require language ability. This underscores the potential in English classes to develop global competence.

The way curriculum materials are structured will make a difference. Texts selected to base comprehension and other activities on, could be taken from sources which cover situations in other societies. Questions based on these texts could focus on information retrieval and inference (reading between the lines) – this trains comprehension skills. Such texts could also be used to train the perspective analysis and critical thinking ability through more open-ended questions which require students to pause and think about different angles to a situation.

Consider for example, the New York Times article mentioned earlier. The story is centred on a global theme – the impact of robotics, automation, autonomous vehicles and other technology aimed to increase productivity, on the world of work.

The article highlights the perspectives of various stakeholders.

Truckers were said to feel placing cameras or other monitoring technology in their vehicles was intrusive. This is one perspective and one which does have some intuitive, emotional appeal. A company developed a software to monitor their (truckers) speed, the abruptness of their braking, their fuel efficiency — while rewarding those who perform better than their peers (Goodman, 2022) for sale to the owners of the trucking companies. Given the already mentioned trucker sentiment, one would think that this would make things worse.  The company though reframed the issue by offering a different perspective – truckers could now be recognised and rewarded for performance and that its app convey(s) a feeling of success every day. Someone with an open mind would be able to accept this view and this would change the tenor of discussions and the overall work experience positively.

Students could be guided in a language class to not just to appreciate both perspectives and to form their own take on these perspectives but to crucially, through this example, develop the understanding that a view on a matter, even if it has strong emotional or intuitive appeal is but one of other possible views. They could also be asked to develop their own counter perspectives so that they are in future able to reframe issues for productive and constructive outcomes.

A flat world requires a multi-dimensional perspective.

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