An exciting partnership is forming between the Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE) and the Georgia Afterschool Investment Council (GAIC) to build a long term coalition of state and local leaders in education, afterschool, and business around the growing importance of Georgia’s students being equipped to succeed in a global economy.
We view global learning to encompass the critical competencies that are now required for today's youth to achieve success in work and citizenship including 21st century skills such as problem identification, analysis, synthesis, interpretation, and critical thinking, all embedded within rigorous disciplinary study. In order to develop high-quality global learning opportunities, educators need to come to a collective understanding of what global competence entails. Every young person should be able to: 1) Investigate their world, including their immediate environment and beyond; 2) Recognize their own and others' perspectives; 3) Communicate and collaborate with diverse audiences; and 4) Translate their ideas and findings into appropriate actions to improve conditions. In other words, globally competent students possess the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to understand issues of global significance and act creatively to address them.
For schools, this may mean reframing subjects to provide young people with not only basic skills but also global competence. Students can use math, for example, to learn about the world—and use the world to learn about math. Global learning can also begin at the school level more simply through the addition of foreign language instruction, multi-cultural arts instruction, global focused service learning projects, or cultural exchange programs through methods such as pen pals and Skype.
Dedicating just ten minutes towards completing this survey will help our partnership to better understand the global learning opportunities that are currently available to Georgia's students. This information will also help us target our global learning efforts in school and in out-of-school time programs over the next three years. Thank you in advance for your participation!
If you would like to learn more about global learning, please visit the Asia Society at asiasociety.org.
