Studies on deeper learning and twenty-first-century skills emphasize the importance of building teacher capacity to translate twenty-first-century curriculum into effective instruction as a significant challenge as well as a priority. The National Research Council Report calls for significant changes in teacher preparation:
Current systems of teacher preparation and professional development will require major changes if they are to support teaching that encourages deeper learning and the development of transferable competencies. Changes will need to be made not only in conceptions of what constitutes effective professional practice but also in the purposes, structure, and organization of preservice and professional learning opportunities. (Pellegrino and Hilton 2012, p. 186)
Similarly, the US National Commission on social, emotional and academic development underscores the urgency of the professional development challenge, calling for the redesign of educator preparation programs, collaborative decision-making in schools and districts; the prioritization of social, emotional, and cognitive skills and competencies in recruitment, hiring, orientation, and professional learning; incentivizing innovation in teacher preparation programs; redesigning licensure and accreditation; ensuring that induction programs for new teachers support these domains; and restructured adult workforce systems (Aspen Institute 2019, pp. 50–53).
Teachers need to not only develop knowledge and skills in global education, but also develop shared understandings with colleagues within their schools to be able to collaborate in the design and implementation of a coherent and rigorous curriculum which extends across grades and subjects beyond a few lessons on global topics here and there. A study of teachers in a network of schools in Denmark which were committed to advancing global education found important variability in understandings of what global education was and in how it related to various subjects across teachers in these schools (Nilsson 2015). These various conceptualizations include education that is global, including understanding interconnectedness and interdependency, the process of globalization, and themes like climate change and migration. The second conceptualization of global education encompassed understanding and respecting other cultures and people and gaining competencies to live in a global world. Finally, a third conceptualization described global education as teacher and school work, emphasizing the need for a coordinated approach and sharing resources at the school, as well as the different challenges of integrating global education in various subjects (Nilsson 2015, p. 31).
In a study of curriculum reforms in Chile, China, India, Mexico, Singapore, and the United States, we found that as more ambitious goals were embraced by states and countries, the topic of teacher education and professional development received greater priority (Reimers and Chung 2016). A comparative study of programs of teacher professional development that focused on supporting teachers in developing the capacities to educate the whole child in Chile, China, Colombia, India, Mexico, Singapore, and the United States, identified that they shared the following characteristics:
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These professional development programs reflect a conception of adult learning that sees it as socially situated and responding to the current needs of teachers for learning.
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This form of professional development involves sustained and extensive opportunities for teachers to build capacities, often extending an entire school year, or spanning across multiple school years, that contrasts with the more prevalent opportunities of short courses out of the school.
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The modalities of professional development examined in this book are varied. They include independent study of new material, discussion with peers and others, individual or group coaching, demonstrations of new practices, independent research projects, and opportunities for reflection.
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The curriculum of the programs examined covers a blend of capacities, from a broad focus on helping students develop capacities to a highly granular identification of particular pedagogies and instructional practices that can help students gain those skills.
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The curriculum of these various programs reflects a view of learning which includes cognitive skills, in interaction with dispositions and socio-emotional skills.
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Professional development includes exposure to visible routines, protocols and instructional practices, where teachers see in practice new forms of instruction or assessment.
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These programs rely on a mix of opportunities for learning situated in the context of the schools where teachers work.
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To support the intensive and sustained activities of professional development that these various programs advance, the organizations in charge build a range of partnerships with institutions outside of schools that contribute various types of resources.
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These programs see teacher practice as situated in specific organizations and social contexts, and in general adopt a whole-school approach, rather than helping individual teachers increase their capacity.
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The question of measurement. These programs all develop capacities among teachers to advance pedagogies with the goal of developing competencies that are not formally assessed in the school or school system. In this sense, the programs challenge the notion that “What gets measured gets done,” and suggest that teachers can make decisions about what and how to teach that can transcend the formal accountability structures in the school.
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The organizations that support these various programs all model a learning orientation. They approach schools with an inquiry mindset, engage in dialogue with school staff about their learning goals, use various forms of feedback to assess whether their work is achieving the intended results, and implement measures to course correct and generate continuous improvement in their work (Reimers 2018).
These features of high-quality professional development programs can be replicated in programs to increase the level of expertise of teachers for global education. Some of these principles were reflected in a book I wrote, with my graduate students, to help disseminate the approach to global education curriculum we had followed in developing the World Course. When the book Empowering Global Citizens was published in 2016 I began to receive feedback that underscored the need to support the development of teacher capacities to design and teach this kind of curriculum, aligned with an ambitious framework of competencies, in turn, aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
To address this need I developed, in collaboration with 36 of my graduate students, a resource book which included a protocol to establish a school-wide process of global education, that explained how to develop curriculum aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and that illustrated with a small number of lessons what this curriculum could look like in practice (Reimers et al. 2017). The proposed thirteen-step process recognized the importance of creating a process specific to the school which would help teams of teachers collaborate in developing a shared vision for global education, develop a curriculum prototype, and learn from experience. The protocol also suggested that schools sought to join networks with other schools following a similar process, as a way to accelerate the learning opportunities resulting from their shared experience in attempting similar goals. The steps proposed in this process were:
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Establish a leadership team. This team will form the guiding coalition that will design and manage the implementation of the whole-school global citizenship education strategy.
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Develop a long-term vision. What are the long-term outcomes for students, for the school and for the communities that these graduates will influence that inspire this effort?
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Develop a framework of knowledge, skills, and dispositions for graduates of the school that is aligned with the long-term vision.
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Audit existing curriculum in the school in light of the proposed long-term vision and global competencies framework.
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Design a prototype to better align the existing curriculum to the global competencies framework in step 3 (the sixty lessons presented in this book can serve as an initial prototype, or as a sacrificial proposal that leads to the prototype a particular school adopts).
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Communicate vision, framework and prototype to the extended community in the school, seek feedback, and iterate.
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Decide on a revised prototype to be implemented and develop an implementation plan to execute the global education prototype.
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Identify resources necessary and available to implement the global education prototype.
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Develop a framework to monitor implementation of the prototype and obtain formative feedback.
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Develop a communication strategy to build and maintain support from key stakeholders.
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Develop a professional development strategy.
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Execute the prototype with oversight and support of the leadership team.
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Evaluate the execution of the prototype, adjust as necessary, and go back to step 4.
This process sees the task of creating a global education curriculum as an opportunity for professional development, based in the school, and the collaboration among teachers in developing, teaching and evaluating this curriculum as a means to build their own expertise in doing so, as a result of experimentation. In effect, the process is designed to build the capacities of teachers to advance global education as they embark on designing and implementing a school-wide program of global education. The approach is built on the premise that all learning requires an opportunity to practice, and that it is the reflection on that practice that helps develop new knowledge and skills. Essentially, teaching any curriculum is based on two hypotheses: If we teach A students will learn B, and if students learn B outcomes C, D, and E will be achieved for them and for their communities. Most teachers do not formally test their hypotheses, much less do so publicly. The process I devised is one that allows teachers to work within a transparent framework that helps them make the hypotheses they are testing visible and to learn from that process. As teachers do this work in collaboration with their colleagues in a school-wide process, this helps build shared knowledge about what works well, in other words, it builds shared professional expertise.
As schools join others in improvement networks, these networks of schools become a means to augment the collective capacity of the participating schools and also their access to expertise resident in the network. This, in turn, augments the capacity to test the hypotheses underlying any curriculum. This is what Tony Bryk and his colleagues have called “improvement networks,” adapting to the field of education well-established principles of the field of improvement science (Bryk et al. 2015).
I have found that engaging teachers in collaborative work discussing the relationship between curriculum, pedagogy and big global challenges such as how to build a world that is inclusive and sustainable resonates with deep values for many teachers. Many teachers joined the profession in order to make a contribution to society and have a lasting impact on their students’ development. This is shown by Table 5.1 which presents data from an OECD survey administered to teachers which asked what were the reasons teachers joined the profession. Most teachers across the world reply that their motives included influencing the development of children, benefit the disadvantaged and contributing to society. Engaging teachers in the design of curriculum to “improve the world” taps into this powerful intrinsic motivation of many teachers.
Table 5.1 Motivation to join the profession, by teachers’ teaching experience. Results based on responses of lower secondary teachers