Empowering Global Citizens

and in the development goals advanced by the United Nations. We also drew
from our knowledge of the history of the prevailing approaches in the field
that are reviewed in this chapter. We then engaged in a survey of existing

global education curricula, as discussed in the literature above.

We found that the existing global education curricula were approached in
one of two ways: they were either infused into other curricula—that is, cur—
rent curricular content was examined for opportunities to include global
content and revised accordingly—~or viewed as separate curricula. Current
approaches in national civic education have fallen into these same categories,
and there are cross—national differences regarding whether civic education is
infused into the curriculum or taught separately as a subject (see Schulz,
Ainley, Fraillon, Kerr, 8C Losito, 2009, p. 43—46). It is our position that
both infusion and a separate curriculum are necessary to achieve complex
and deep global competence. Infusion is necessary because the competence
developed within disciplines should include global content. Without global
content, disciplines are simply incomplete and cannot prepare students to
be successful in globalizing societies. We are not arguing against infusion,
and we consider it necessary for this reason. However, we argue here that
developing a separate curriculum is also necessary. This is because there are
certain competencies that are not included in traditional school curricula,
such as demography, and topics that are not organized or sustained, such
as the study of global poverty. The complex nature of these competencies
requires that time be devoted to them in a sustained way. The World Course
is therefore presented here as a complete curriculum for kindergarteners
through twelfth graders that should be taught separately but alongside the
revision of disciplinary curricula to include global issues. These two ap—

proaches are mutually reinforcing.

We developed our curriculum from this review of existing curricula and
from the definition of a globally competent graduate. Once we had agreed
on the graduate profile presented earlier, we set out to identify curriculum

content that would support the development of those competencies.

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