Including Global Citizenship in Our Planning Framework

At our sixth meeting, we analysed Oxfam’s Global Citizenship Guides in order to determine how the key elements described in the guides fit into our planning framework based on TBLL and CLIL principles.

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We read two of these free guides. In the first one, Education for Global Citizenship: A Guide for Schools, the Oxfam’s Curriculum for Global Citizenship is outlined in terms of three key elements: the knowledge and understanding, the skills, and the values and attitudes which are believed to be needed in order for young people to develop as global citizens.

The guide suggests several participatory activities (e.g. discussion and debate, role-play, ranking exercises, and communities of enquiry) applying a global perspective to help students learn “how decisions made by people in other parts of the world affect our lives, just as our decisions affect the lives of others” (Oxfam Development Education Programme, 2006: 2). It also shows how the global citizenship syllabus can be implemented at different levels within the British education system in a progressive and cross-curricular fashion (ibid.: 4-7).

Next, we analysed what, what for and why can be borrowed from Getting Started with Global Citizenship (England). This guide is actually meant to be used by teachers working in England. So bearing in mind our particular teaching context(s), we suggested some relevant ways to adapt the materials. Then we thought of some possible activities to help our students foster intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in order to develop global citizenship (GC) as described in this previous post.

In a nutshell, the knowledge and understand element of the Oxfam’s Curriculum for Global Citizenship (OCGC) roughly matches the knowledge (savoirs) component in Byram’s ICC model (Byram et al., 2002: 11-13). The skills element in the OCGC roughly matches the skills of interpreting and relating (savoir comprendré) and discovery and interaction (savoir aprendre/faire) components in Byram’s ICC model (Ibid.). The values and attitudes element in the OCGC roughly matches the intercultural attitudes (savoir être) and cultural awareness (savoir s’engager) components in Byram’s ICC model (Ibid.).

It’s easy to notice that despite some overlapping, all these components have especially to do with the 4^th C, Culture, in the 4 C’s Framework put forward by Coyle, Hood and Marsh (2010: 41-42, 53-55) as discussed in this previous post. That is, when planning a project along the lines discussed in this course, especially if you’re applying this framework for project planning, we should analyse contents and resources in terms of both Byram’s ICC components and the GC elements.

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To so doing, Baker (2008: 6) puts forward a framework for global learning that involves five elements in which students play an active role asking questions, making connections, exploring viewpoints and values, responding as active global citizens and assessing learning. Do you see how Baker’s framework can be integrated into the Culture component of the 4 C’s Framework? If you don’t, you can read more about this framework here.

Besides, Baker states that the only real difference between the global dimension (GD) and GC is that GD usually refers to a set of key concepts in education (e.g. social justice, human rights, conflict, diversity, values and perceptions, sustainable development and global citizenship), whereas GC is about the outcomes in the individual (Ibid.: 2).

Going back to the mindmap on this previous post, now I can expand on what I tried to say there. In the mindmap, GD is thought to be a means to an end. That is, in order to develop GC at the individual level, we should include the GD in our teaching practice at a social level.

Finally, I’d like to share the resources I got via Prof. Rubén Mazzei. Click on the links below. These resources are meant to help students (who are living in Buenos Aires Province) develop their ICC and eventually become global citizens.

English Language Workbook for year 1 of Secondary Education.

Intercultural Studies Workbook for years 5 and 6 of Secondary Education with specialism in Foreign Languages.

You can find resources for year 4 of Primary Education here and here.

More resources (years 5 & 6 of PE, and years 2 to 6 of SE) might be published soon on cuadernos de trabajo.

References

Baker, R. (2008). Getting Started with Global Citizenship (England). Oxfam’s Education and Youth Programme. GB: Oxfam House. Available at http://www.oxfam.org.uk/~/media/Files/Education/Global%20Citizenship/GCNewTeacherENGLAND.ashx retrieved 18.05.2013

Byram, M., B. Gribkova and H. Starkey. (2002). Developing the Intercultural Dimension in Language Teaching. A Practical Introduction for Teachers. Language Policy Division, Directorate of School, Out-of-School and Higher Education, DGIV. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Available at http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/source/guide_dimintercult_en.pdf retrieved 21.04.2013

Coyle, D., P. Hood and D. Marsh. (2010). CLIL. Content and language Integrated Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Oxfam Development Education Programme. (2006). Education for Global Citizenship: A Guide for Schools. GB: Oxfam House. Available at http://www.oxfam.org.uk/~/media/Files/Education/Global%20Citizenship/education_for_global_citizenship_a_guide_for_schools.ashx retrieved 18.05.2013

Connecting Global Dimension with Global Citizenship, Culture and Interculturality

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In my previous post, I drafted an inaccurate definition of global dimension. Actually, that definition was construed by talking about the concept with Natalia Iglesias and Sabina Bora in the first meeting. It’s interesting to notice that so far I haven’t found any relevant result in Spanish by googling La Dimensión Global. You can find more information about this concept on Prof. David Hicks’ Teaching For A Better World website, however.

At our second meeting, we were asked to relate global dimension, global citizenship (more about this concept on Oxfam Education website and in Global Citizenship – What Are We Talking About and Why Does It Matter?), culture (more definitions of this concept on Texas A&M University) and interculturality by drawing a mindmap. Here’s my first draft:

Notice that though global citizenship is thought to be one of the eight elements through which the global dimension is understood, I suggest that global citizenship is developed through global dimension since the latter is an approach to education.

Then, following Prof. Michael Byram‘s ideas (Byram et al., 2002: 11-13), we explored the concept of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) as a set of attitudes, knowledge and skills which are complemented by the set of values one holds.

To be more precise, ICC consists of…

a) Attitudes (savoir être) that involve

- curiosity

- openness

- readiness to suspend disbelief about other cultures and belief about one’s culture

- willingness to relativise one’s own values, beliefs and behaviours;

b) Knowledge (savoirs) of

- social groups (including their identities, practices and products) and

- illustrations of those groups (including their identities, practices and products);

c) Skills of

(savoir comprendre)
- comparing new knowledge from another culture

- interpreting new knowledge from another culture

- relating new knowledge from another culture to one’s own

(savoir apprendre/faire)
- finding out and integrating new knowledge from another culture, and

- interacting appropriately in real-time communication; and

d) Critical cultural awareness (savoir s’engager) or the ability to evaluate, critically and on the basis of explicit criteria, perspectives, practices and products in one’s own and other cultures.

To develop ICC in our classrooms, we should move from the traditional communicative language teaching approaches in which the native speaker’s language variety is the target language towards a conception of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in which interlanguage or the learner language is now accepted as a valid language.

We should choose appropriate materials and resources and plan activities in which students are given the opportunity to explore cultural issues from different perspectives. The materials and resources should be chosen taking account of the pros and cons involved when dealing with the target culture vs. the source culture vs. the international culture.

That is, we should ask ourselves:

• Up to what extent are the materials and resources relevant to students?
• Up to what extent are the materials and resources interesting to students?
• Up to what extent may the materials and resources cause cultural conflict?
• Up to what extent will the materials and resources help students learn more about their own culture? Do the materials and resources have any potential for fostering interculturality?
• Up to what extent are cultural references explicit in the materials and resources?
• Up to what extent are diverse contexts illustrated in the materials and resources?
• If the materials and resources are somehow biased, to what extent do the activities help student to identify different points of view, stereotypes and prejudices?

By the way, why is it that Compfight keeps on turning out photos of Mardi Gras parades or people wearing traditional outfits when I type cultural diversity in the search box? Is that the only way cultural diversity can be shown by this searching tool? (See the screenshot below or click on the links above)

References

Byram, M., B. Gribkova and H. Starkey. (2002). Developing the Intercultural Dimension in Language Teaching. A Practical Introduction for Teachers. Language Policy Division, Directorate of School, Out-of-School and Higher Education, DGIV. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Available at http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/source/guide_dimintercult_en.pdf [retrieved 21.04.2013]

Byram, M. (2009). Plurilingual and intercultural competences; two elements of a single European language policy. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMoesr2Oz-s [retrieved 20.04.2013]

How are social networks like carbon?

Among other things, the following video featuring Nicholas Christakis (Professor of Sociology, Medical Sociology and Medicine) in a presentation at Harvard University inspired me to write a cross-curricular yearly project about social networking.

Actually, I was supposed to plan a teaching sequence for an in-service teacher training course, but little by little the teaching sequence became four teaching sequences and so the whole thing had to be redesigned as a yearly project - just a bunch of short teaching sequences.

I implemented this project in two classes at a technical secondary school by the second week in May in 2012. In one class, the project was successfully completed with just few adjustments here and there. In the other class, the project had to be extensively adapted and I'm still wondering up to what extent students were able to learn something at all...

Well, what’s the video about?

I won’t tell you:-D

Let's watch the video and as you watch, think over these questions:

How many kinds of social networks are there? How do social networks form? How do they work? What do they look like?

When and where are social networks set?

What purposes do social networks serve? Why do people get involved in social networking services?

How do social network sevices affect our daily lives? Which aspects of our lives are affected? How?

What is the relationship between reciprocity/collaboration and social networks? What about social networking services?

What is the point of a ‘connected’ life? Is there any possible advantages/disadvantages? If so, which one(s)?

What is the relationship between social networks and social capital? what role(s) do social networking services play? 

What do you think about the way Prof. Christakis introduces the concept of capitalism and describes it? Which political stance underlies this part of the presentation? Do you agree with his point of view?

How does he connect education, social networks and human capital? Do you agree with his ideas and point of view? Is he speaking about social networks or social networking services? Is it important to know the difference? If so, why?

Prof. Christakis puts forwards a given specific use for social networks. Which one? Now, what other potential uses could social networking have?

Taking account of the fact that social networks are made up of people connecting to other people, do you think the analogy he uses (graphite vs diamond) to illustrate his ideas is appropriate/felicitous? Think about the properties of each material and try to match these properties to different social groups. Which social group is the diamond? Which one is the graphite?

Just before ending the presentation (10:07), Prof. Christakis goes back to the main idea of the whole talk and makes it explicit. What do you think? Do you agree with him? Why?

I hope you find this video as interesting, relevant and thought-provoking as I’ve found it. Enjoy!