Introduction

Now that we’ve got an idea about what everyone in the group thinks global education is, in the next activity we’ll look at the variety of perspectives on this from both educational practice and policy.

There are lots of diverse interpretations of global education from around the world, as well as a range of terms that are commonly used to describe this work. Each of these concepts has its own important history in practice and research (please see the key readings in step 1.8 if you are interested in learning more about this). However, in this course we use global education as a broad umbrella term which also incorporates other commonly used concepts such as global learning, global citizenship education, development education, human rights education, intercultural education and many others. This is because these areas of practice share a common vision of preparing pupils to critically engage with the world around them. Through the course, we will explore some of the commonalities across these terms and examples of practice.

So, let’s begin by looking at some short videos of educators from around the world talking about their own views of the field. These illustrate that although there are common underpinning principles and approaches, there isn’t one set meaning or understanding of global education or its related terms.