The Bloomsbury Handbook of Global Education and Learning

Douglas Bourn, Douglas Bourn

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350108752
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation comparative

2021 PROSE Award Finalist - 'Reference Works' Learning about global issues and themes has become an increasingly recognised element of education in many countries around the world. Terms such as global learning, global citizenship and global education can be seen within national education policies and international initiatives led by the UN, UNESCO, European Commission and OECD. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Global Education and Learning brings together the main elements of the debates, provides analysis of policies, and suggests new directions for research in these areas. Written by internationally renowned scholars from Brazil, Canada, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Pakistan, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, UK and the USA, the handbook offers a much needed resource for academics, researchers, policy-makers and practitioners who need a clear picture of global learning.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Douglas Bourn

Introduction

The contribution of education to understanding the forces of globalization and the impact of global issues on peoples’ lives has become an increasingly important component of debates concerning policies and programmes for schools, colleges, universities and informal learning around the world. Terms such as ‘learning to live and work in a global economy’, ‘being active global citizens’, ‘understanding issues such as climate change, human rights, gender equality and global poverty’ can be seen in the curriculum of many countries and institutions around the world. International bodies such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), World Bank and the United Nations make reference to these themes in numerous policies that have been introduced since 2015. The launch of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 and their reference to these themes has given added impetus to these agendas.

However, to date there has been no major academic publication that has aimed to bring together current issues and debates concerning global education (GE). In 2017, Academic Network on Global Education and Learning (ANGEL), a new network of academics and researchers in the field of GE, was launched with the support of Global Education Network Europe (GENE) and administered by the Development Education Research Centre (DERC) at University College London in the UK. GENE is the network of national policy-makers across Europe who are supportive of GE. These are usually ministries covering aid and development budgets, education and in some cases environment.

ANGEL was formed in response to the need to establish and reinforce existing relationships among scholars and academic institutions working in GE and related areas. It aims

to form a pool of experts which can become a resource for policymakers in search of strong research grounding for policy development, and to establish a network among early stage researchers, Doctoral students and Post-Doctoral researchers, who are currently engaged in research in fields related to Global Education.¹

Most of the contributions in this volume have come from members of this network.

This handbook aims to demonstrate the differing ways GE is being interpreted and implemented around the world. GE and learning is here seen as relevant to all forms of education and in all regions of the world. Wherever learning is taking place, there is a need for learners to make sense of and understand the wider world and their contribution to it.

Distinctiveness of this handbook

Themes related to the field of GE have been the subject of similar handbooks in recent years, including those on citizenship (Arthur, Davies and Hahn, 2008), sustainable development (Barth et al., 2016), global citizenship education (Davies et al., 2018) and critical education (Apple, Au and Gandin, 2009). Many of these handbooks aim to provide summaries of current policies, practices and research themes as a way of providing an introduction to the field. There is also The Handbook of Global Education Policy (Mundy et al., 2016), but this interprets the term as education around the world with a focus on education policies developed by international institutions.

What this handbook aims to do is to demonstrate the different ways themes such as learning about global issues, being a global citizen and bringing global perspectives into schools, communities and universities can contribute to a distinctive educational field of GE and learning. Many of the chapters are based on empirical research or posing new and innovatory ideas to GE and learning. They are therefore more substantial chapters than one might see in similar publications with the average word length being between 6,000 and 7,000 words.

A second distinctive feature of this volume is the space it has given to younger and newer researchers. Several of the chapters in this volume are related to recently completed or ongoing doctoral research. GE and learning is a growing field as the annual Global Education Digest produced since 2016 by DERC for ANGEL and GENE has shown. Over 400 articles, books or reports have been published in this field in the English language alone.²

A third distinctive feature of this handbook is to show the relevance and contribution of debates and research from all over the world. While it could be argued that twenty years ago, GE was seen predominantly as a field of education for and led by people from the Global North, this is clearly no longer the case. As can be seen from the contributions from the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa and Asia, the themes underpinning GE have relevance throughout the world.

Finally, this handbook does not aim through its chapters to follow similar structures or approaches. An important feature of GE and learning is its range of pedagogical approaches, voices and methodologies. As can be seen in this volume, there are a range of approaches, including a chapter on the work of Paulo Freire that uses a feature of his discourse in the form of letters. Another is the way in which several chapters consciously give space for the voices of people from the Global South through evidence from interviews. Several chapters also combine theoretical debates alongside empirical research and reviews of practice. This praxis-based approach is a key element of global education.

Scope and terminology of global education and learning

As the chapters in this volume will demonstrate, GE as an educational field is open to different interpretations from education around the world to a specific pedagogical approach influenced by themes such as social justice.

For the purposes of this handbook, the dominant approach of the contributions locates their discussions on GE within a values base of social justice, equity and human rights. This means that while there are differing views expressed in this volume as to what are the key elements of GE, most of the chapters reflect a critical approach to the dominant neoliberal orthodoxies within much of education today.

The theme of learning for global citizenship is also present in many of the chapters, and this reflects one of the major changes taking place towards GE around the world and that is a closer relationship to the discourses around citizenship and active social engagement.

Another influential approach reflected in several chapters is that outlined by the Council of Europe and GENE who have seen GE as

education that opens people’s eyes and minds to the realities of the world, and awakens them to bring about a world of greater justice, equity and human rights for all. GE is understood to encompass Development Education, Human Rights Education, Education for Sustainability, Education for Peace and Conflict Prevention and Intercultural Education; being the global dimensions of Education for Citizenship.³

This usage of the term as encompassing a range of educational fields and traditions but with a central theme of social justice has enabled authors from their own perspectives to bring in specific issues and approaches that might be particularly dominant in certain countries.

In this handbook, different terms will be used that could be said to cover GE. The deliberate inclusion of ‘learning’ in the title of this handbook is one example of this. The term ‘learning’ implies a sense of process, of engagement in understanding issues. It also implies a focus on pedagogy. As I have written elsewhere,

Global learning is a process of learning that recognises different approaches and different ways of understanding the world, and engages with them through different lenses. (Bourn, 2015:6)

Other terms such as ‘global citizenship’ and ‘development education’ are also referred to in this volume. They cover the same area of learning about global issues and themes, but there may be variations in their focus and emphasis depending on the theoretical positioning of the author or the specific national context. Chapters in this volume have retained the terminology used by the authors rather than having some common language and terms. This is deliberate because this handbook does not aim to present some uniform approach to GE but to reflect the differing ways in which terms and concepts are interpreted.

Contribution of practitioners

GE as an educational field has been part of the landscape of learning in Europe, North America and Australia for the past fifty years. Its main protagonists were, and in many countries remain, educational practitioners who are recognizing the need for learners to have the knowledge and skills to understand wider world issues. The results of this interest can be seen in the wealth of educational resources that have been produced covering themes such as ‘In the Global Classroom’, ‘Thinking Globally’ or ‘The School as a Foundation for a Fair World’.

While this wealth of educational material has equipped many educationalists, particularly teachers, around the world, the field of global education has remained an area of interest primarily for enthusiastic teachers.

Influence of policy-makers

What has helped GE grow and remain a theme within educational provision has been the influence and support of policy-makers, particularly in Europe and to a lesser extent in Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and some areas within the United States.

Ministries of foreign affairs and in some cases education have been champions of GE in many European countries for more than twenty years. While the terminology may vary in some countries from global learning to development education (DE) or global citizenship education (GCE), there is evidence from countries such as Norway, Portugal, Slovakia, Cyprus, Finland, Belgium and Ireland of strategies that aim to put GE as part of mainstream provision.

Elsewhere in the world while GE may not be so overt in policy statements, many of the themes that underpin this field can be seen in initiatives in countries such as Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria, Pakistan, India, China and Japan. The influences and drivers for the interest in GE may come from bodies concerned with citizenship, sustainable development or even more broadly political and moral education. But as will be shown in this volume, there is a richness today to the differing approaches and perspectives on GE that was perhaps not there a decade ago.

Need for research in global education

While there have been well-known academics involved in the field of GE for many years including in North America Robert Hanvey, Merry Merryfield, Toni Kirkwood-Tucker and Graham and in Europe David Selby and David Hicks, it is an area that has had few major empirically based research studies compared to say environmental education. The growth in interest in this field in Europe led particularly by Annette Scheunpflug in Germany, Rauni Räsänen in Finland and Manuela Mesa has over the past decade helped to change this culture (see Bourn, 2015). Vanessa Andreotti (2011) originally from Brazil, but now located in Canada, has also been a major influence through her work on GCE. In the UK, the work of the DERC has also helped to put research on the agenda of policy-makers and practitioners.

The field has also benefited from the emergence of numerous academic journals that focus exclusively on GE and related areas such as development and GCE.

As several of the chapters in this volume will demonstrate, the need for research and evidence to demonstrate its effectiveness, importance and impact remains central to progressing GE. It is an area, because of the themes it addresses, of being susceptible to changes in political priorities. GE, because it is an educational field that challenges many of the neoliberal priorities within education, can be open to ideological and political attacks. A consequence of this has been the constant changes in funding opportunities depending upon who was in political power at the time.

Main themes and structure

This handbook is divided into six themes with each theme having a number of chapters covering different approaches and evidence from a range of countries around the world.

The first theme is Challenges for Today and Tomorrow. This theme covers chapters by Douglas Bourn that outline the evolution of GE and suggest the need to move from consensus of approaches to dissensus...