Empowering Global Citizens

and identify the best global practices and to transfer those across geographic,
disciplinary, and professional contexts.” Whereas innovation and creativ—
ity are “general” twenty-first—century skills, the ability to identify solutions
in a global context and to adequately transfer solutions across geographic
contexts involves the analytic ability to recognize similarities and differences

across cross—cultural contexts.

In creating the World Course curriculum, we sought to create something dif—
ferent from the prevailing approaches to global education reviewed in preced-
ing sections of this chapter. We endeavored to create a curriculum that would
embody specific principles and frameworks. In our View, global education is
not only about informing students of global issues but also about supporting
them in embracing and taking responsibility for the principles of common
humanity and shared global risks. As such, our curriculum focuses not only
on knowledge and ideas but also on developing the skills needed to put that
knowledge to use and the attitudes necessary to inspire meaningful action
in the pursuit of global stability and peace. This combination of knowledge,
skills, and attitudes is summarized by our use of the term “global competency”
throughout this discussion. Furthermore, in consideration of the history of
global education as well as of the state of global education today, we made the
decision to attach global education to the ethical framework reflected in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to the specific goal of being able
to contribute to solving pressing current world risks, such as those defined by
the SDGs. When we developed the World Course, the development compact
of the time was reflected in the Millennium Development Goals, and the
Sustainable Development Goals had not yet been approved by the UN. In
this book we have updated the references to MDGS with references to SDGs.

Anchoring our curriculum design in these frameworks was crucial for
three reasons. First, a shared humanity, which is exemplified by a shared
commitment to universal human rights, binds people together across bor—
ders and boundaries. The ability to recognize oneself as human and de-
serving of inalienable rights—-—and others as human and also deserving

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