Empowering Global Citizens

Some approaches emphasize the role of experience in learning over intellectu—
al engagement with cosmopolitan knowledge exclusively. Study abroad and
exchanges, for instance, reflect this emphasis on embedding students in a
cultural setting different from the one they are most familiar with in order to
expose them to interactions with people of different cultural backgrounds,
which can be a path to developing cross—cultural understanding. Rooted in
this view on the importance of social experience with cultural differences are
a range of programs that focus on the structure of the social context that stu—
dents will experience in their schools and classrooms or in particular activi—
ties designed to expose them to culturally diverse contexts. These programs
and activities are based on the assumption that exchanges among culturally
diverse learners and teachers will enable them to discover the common hu—
manity they share with others across lines of difference. This view is central
to the approach reflected in the student— and teacher—exchange programs of,
for instance, the Institute for International Education, the United World
Colleges, the Fulbright Exchange Programs, the Peace Corps, the myriad
programs of study abroad supported by higher education institutions, and
other programs that deliberately bring together students or teachers from
diverse backgrounds. One of the areas of current experimentation involves
using technology to facilitate remote collaboration among students in dif—
ferent countries, an area pioneered by iEarn, an organization operating in
over 140 countries and connecting over thirty thousand schools in projects
in which students and teachers can collaborate. Such collaborations have
been found to be beneficial to the development of global competency. For
example, an intervention that used virtual collaboration among students
from China and the United States on international business papers resulted
in gains in global competence by both groups of students (Li, 2013). Virtual
learning exchanges have been used to promote collaboration among primary
through secondary school students with peers around the world, allowing
them to share information on their local cultures, histories, religions, and
geographies; discuss US civil rights issues, climate change, poetry, chemistry,
and mathematics; play chess matches; and debate contemporary global is—
sues (Roemer, 2015).

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