Many international covenants and declarations prepared and enacted by these institutions over time contain suggestions, recommendations and lines of action for both the design and the implementation of professional global education programs, seen as relevant educational responses to the challenges of the contemporary world. Educators should be aware that such values and principles must constantly be reinvented, changed and asserted through learning processes. Decision makers and educators should also be highly sensitive to the fact that these values and principles cannot be taken for granted to be universal: this is a major challenge. Empathizing and valuing different cultural perspectives in the context of other values system is a demanding requirement of global education.

Reference to such international documentation reveals intellectual and political perspective changes across the world in recent decades, and illustrates the fact that various phrases advanced by the specific action of international organizations (e.g. environmental education, human rights education, peace education, holistic education, preventive education, etc.) convey in different ways a common awareness of educational priorities which are in line with changes in the world we live in.

Global education, as a style of learning and way of thinking, encourages people to identify links between the local, the regional and the world-wide level and to address inequality. Advancing new opportunities for education, global education is promoted as giving an insight into globalization phenomena, allowing the acquisition and development of skills and competencies required by individuals to adjust to the challenges of a changing society. Global education, more than just a strategy of enabling people to understand the world we live in, is also a specific way of action for reshaping the world, for helping human beings to achieve personal and community empowerment.

Global learning is defined as comprehensive, anticipatory, participative, person-centered, situational, based on the stimulation of thinking apt to cope with interdependencies. It is a kind of learning focused on issues, based on self-motivation and independent effort. As a learning process, global education facilitates development of the abilities to feel, to think, to judge and to act so that young people may cope with the intellectual and emotional challenges of a global existence.

• How can school succeed in creating closeness to events, causes and effects which are geographically far away and how can it foster awareness and attitudes which do not yet generally exist at the level of decision makers, nor in most of our media?
• How can global education design meaningful school projects which focus on local-global interaction but are not exclusively community-oriented?
• How can balance be achieved between the recourse to “conventional” methods of traditional pedagogy and the new methodologies advanced by modern educational sciences, such as interactive strategies, partnership or project work, collaboration, exchanges and direct interpersonal contacts between schools and countries, and modern communication systems (fax, email, Internet)?
• How can school and out-of-school activities be interrelated to allow mutually beneficial interactions which prevent school from fully and artificially being severed from family, community and other socio-political influences with potential educational benefits?
• What time can global education be allocated in school programs? These challenges have to be considered with respect to everything that is linked with school activities, including teaching materials, consulting and training.

Today as never before, meeting our society’s challenges demands educational excellence. Reinvigorating the economy, achieving energy independence with alternative technologies and green jobs, and strengthening our health care system require a skilled populace that is ready for the critical challenges we face.

What do educators need to know & do?

If we commit to a vision of 21st century knowledge and skills for all students, it is critical that we support educators in mastering the competencies that ensure positive learning outcomes for students. These include:

1. Successfully aligning technologies with content and pedagogy and developing the ability to creatively use technologies to meet specific learning needs.
2. Aligning instruction with standards, particularly those standards that embody 21st century knowledge and skills.
3. Balancing direct instruction strategically with project-oriented teaching methods.
4. Applying child and adolescent development knowledge to educator preparation and education policy.
5. Using a range of assessment strategies to evaluate student performance and differentiate instruction (including but not limited to formative, portfolio-based, curriculum-embedded and summative).
6. Participating actively in learning communities; tapping the expertise within a school or school district through coaching, mentoring, knowledge-sharing, and team teaching.
7. Acting as mentors and peer coaches with fellow educators.
8. Using a range of strategies (such as formative assessments) to reach diverse students and to create environments that support differentiated teaching and learning.
9. Pursuing continuous learning opportunities and embracing career-long learning as a professional ethic.