Abstract
Global competence development is part of the process of internationalization of the curriculum and pedagogical tools, like virtual exchange (VE), to create internationalization opportunities. This chapter focuses on an interdisciplinary VE project between two higher education institutions of the Global North. After the semester-long collaboration, students enrolled in a teacher training program and students from a foreign language classroom evaluated the importance of certain global competence skills and reflected on their own development thereof. The authors present the organizational setup and analyze the self-assessment in light of global citizenship skills and their relevance in teacher training or foreign language learning.
TopBackground: Global Competence And Virtual Exchange
Usually seen as part of a strategy towards the internationalization of higher education (IHE) or the internationalization of the curriculum (IoC), universities around the globe have been trying to follow society’s call to engage in a process that prepares students to become future global citizens, i.e., to become “graduates, professionals, and citizens of the world to live and work effectively in a rapidly changing and increasingly connected global society” (Leask, 2015, p. 17). They have taken various measures to emphasize and include global competence training into their curricula, all siding with slightly different definitions about what constitutes a global citizen or what makes up a connected global society. The inevitable discussions concerning the global skill repertoire, that is, the global, or transcultural competences that students are expected to have obtained by the end of their undergraduate training, are countless and continuously developing (see O’Dowd, 2023 for a thorough overview of current frameworks and literature marrying the terms democratic citizenship, global citizenship education, global competence, and the like).
Key Terms in this Chapter
INCA: The Intercultural Competence Assessment (INCA) project is a framework for the assessment of intercultural competence linked to language and subject knowledge competence.
Second: and Foreign Language Learning: Second language learning happens in the region where the learner lives, while foreign language learning is the learning of a language from a region outside of where it is learned. For the purpose of this chapter, the distinction is not necessary.
Teacher Training: Higher-education programs for future teachers.
Virtual Exchange: Purposeful, planned, educational online interactions and collaborations between groups of learners from different geographical regions, facilitated by teaching faculty.
Internationalization: Internationalization refers to any efforts carried out or implemented by universities in order to meet the global demands and visions of an institution. In the teaching context, the internationalization of the curriculum includes designing syllabi and classroom activities that take into consideration global perspectives and international exposure.
Miro: An online tool ( RealtimeBoard Inc., 2022 ) to create password-protected digital whiteboards, so that students and other participants can work together on collaborative projects.
Global Competence: An umbrella term that refers to a specific set of skills and attributes often used within the context of internationalization in higher education.