Empowering Global Citizens

while the study of globalization indeed offers a uniquely valuable context
in which to develop twenty—first—century skills, there are particular compe—
tencies necessary for understanding and functioning efficaciously in global
contexts. So global competency encompasses, for example, a particular ca—
pacity for empathy with people from different cultural backgrounds as well
as the intercultural competency needed to collaborate with colleagues from
different national, religious, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. It similarly
includes a deep understanding of and an interest in topics that are global in
nature, including, for instance, shared natural—resource challenges, concern
for global conflicts and peace, an understanding of the historical sources of
such conflicts, and knowledge of international institutions. Global compe-
tency equally requires an understanding of the global risks outlined earlier,
the skills needed to educate oneself on those risks, and the capacity to live in
ways that contribute to the mitigation of those risks.

GLOBAL EDUCATION: CURRICULUM AND PEDAGOGY

Following our definition of global competency as distinct from knowledge
or dispositions that can be developed only from education infused in an
existing curriculum and also building on Dewey’s notion that how we teach
is what we teach, we conceive of global education as encompassing both dis—
tinct curricula and distinctive pedagogies. These curricula and pedagogies
are intertwined and mutually reinforcing, and neither can achieve the goal
of global competency without the other. For these reasons, the curriculum
we present in this book provides suggested activities that in effect provide
examples of a pedagogy of global education.

5. Designing the World Course

In the years 2011 and 2012, we designed a global citizenship education
curriculum to be taught in a distinct course that would require six to
eight hours a week from kindergarten to high school. Our proposal was
to create a new subject that would serve as an organizing core framework
around which all other subjects in the curriculum would be integrated. We

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