New perspectives on Global Learning for 21st century skills

Beschreibung

In the face of new challenges of the beginning 21st century like fear of globalization, tendencies for nationalism and protection, new geopolitical power plays, migration flows, climate change to name only a few, some concepts and ideas of global learning seem no longer appropriate for preparing the young generation appropriately.

The aim of the project is not to define global learning but to look at practices, ideas and materialization of global learning aspects in both the school context and at the university level in teacher education. The assumption that there is a strong persistence of global learning in the tradition of development cooperation and its normative and action oriented approach, will be tested.

This strongly normative approach has been criticized since the 1990s as being overhauled and not targeted (Asbrand 2002). Criticism refers above all to the normative action-guiding approach, whose aim is to change the consciousness of subjects by means of normative actions. This results in teaching in which simple solutions to complex problems are offered in a one-dimensional manner (ibid.). The aim of pedagogy, however, is not, according to the critics, to solve problems, but to prepare the future generation for a complex and connected world. The focus would be on what children and young people need in their respective contexts to live in the globalized world of tomorrow (ibid. 18).

Some of the project questions will be:

• How are the terms «global learning» and «globalisation» reflected, practiced and materialized both in school and at university level?
• Which terms need to be questioned (for example, «Education for the World Citizen» (VENRO Yearbook of Global Learning 2010) or «World Society», and what theoretical considerations can be used to this effect (for example, Beck's «Contextual Universalism»)?
• What kinds of new forms of learning are needed to meet 21st century skills (networked learning, community learning, school networks, situational learning, social-spatial learning, etc.)?

New methodological approaches contribute to analyse the questions: Actor-Network-Theory looks at aspects of materialization; Assemblage Theory focuses on relational and experience driven analysis.