Global competence and sustainability are becoming the talk of schools right across the country. Here, Alex Southern introduces a new international project designed to support the development of key 21st Century skills required for a constantly-changing world…
Back in November last year, staff from the Athrofa were lucky enough to travel to Brussels and visit Atheneum Unesco Koekelberg secondary school for the Flemish Community.
The school visit was part of a two-day kick-off meeting for an exciting new Erasmus project called Think Global. The project brings together seven organisations, including schools, local authorities and universities, from Catalonia, Belgium, and Wales.
The aim is to explore pedagogies and activities to support the skills, knowledge and dispositions of global competence in the classroom, that draw on the PISA Global Competence framework, and the OECD Sustainable Development Goals.
Throughout the two years of the project, the Think Global team will pilot and develop classroom resources, models of best practice, and build a theoretical framework around global competence.
The two-day kick-off meeting was a wonderful opportunity to meet the project partners, and share ideas and knowledge with European colleagues. The project team will be meeting again in February for a five-day training event in Barcelona, where we will learn more about Global Competence and how we can ensure students develop sustainable skills for the future.
We will be updating via this blog as the project develops as a means of sharing our findings and insight into what works.
In the meantime, for more information about the project and the partners, please read the Think Global Newsletter.
- Dr Alex Southern is a Research Associate at Yr Athrofa, University of Wales Trinity Saint David