21st century skills: Global competence

Another in the series of NSBA conference sessions relating to "21st century skills" spoke to the issue of global awareness. "Global competence" was defined as including the following: 1) knowledge of international issues; 2) the ability to work in other cultural environments; and 3) language skills other than English.

What makes global competence important is the significant share of future economic growth that will come from overseas markets, and the fact that 20% of future jobs will be tied to international trade. In addition, most of the big issues that will demand the next generation's attention have obvious global implications; solutions will require global knowledge and the ability to work cross-culturally.

So how do we go about teaching global competence? Typically, the most efficient way to help students develop these skills will be to imbed it in the curriculum that is already there. The access to global resources that technology has made possible obviously makes that another important component.

Consider the implications for world language instruction, not only of online courses - not many schools can afford to hire a Mandarin language instructor - but also of classroom-to-classroom video conferencing with sister schools in other countries. As we heard numerous times throughout the conference, we'll need to find ways to implement foreign language instruction in the elementary grades.

(Here’s a modest, but interesting idea that came out of the Teacher Inquiry Conference. Kyle Bentley used the time of the “daily opening” to teach his 2nd graders one word of Spanish per week. While that’s obviously not enough to develop fluency, it does expose the students to another language while it begins to lay a foundation for future study, without cutting into curricular time.)

Clearly, global skills would become an increasingly important component of professional development and a potential criteria in faculty hiring decisions.

Another useful free resource developed by Apple: the Learning Interchange (ali.apple.com). "Ali" is a social network for K-12 educators that has content ranging from lesson ideas to in-depth curriculum units.