Assoc. Prof. Gladys M.

Estrada, EdD
Colegio de San Juan de Letran, Manila
Teacher Certificate Program; First Semester; AY 2019-2020

III. On Becoming a Global Teacher

GLOBAL EDUCATION AND THE GLOBAL TEACHER

UNESCO defines global education as a goal to become aware of educational

conditions or lack of it, in developing countries worldwide and aim to
educate all people to a certain world standards. It is a curriculum that is
international in scope which prepares today’s youth around the world to
function in one world environment under teachers who are intellectually,
professionally and humanistically prepared. According to James Becker
(1982), global education is an effort to help individual learners to see the
world as a single and global system and to see themselves as a participant in
that system.

The United Nations entered into agreement to pursue six (6) goals to
achieve some standards of education in place by 2015 worldwide. To
achieve the global education goal, the UN sets the following goals:
1. Expand early childhood care education
2. Provide free and compulsory primary education for all
3. Promote learning and life skills for young and adult
4. Increase adult literacy by 50%
5. Achieve gender parity by 2005, gender equality by 2015
6. Improve quality education.
To meet the various global challenges of the future, the 21 st Century
Learning Goals have been established as bases of various curricula
worldwide. The learning goals include:
1. 21st century content: emerging content areas such as global awareness,
financial, economic, business and entrepreneurial literacy, civic literacy,
health and awareness
2. Learning and Thinking skills: critical thinking, problem solving,
communication, creativity, innovation, collaboration, contextual
learning, information and media literacy
3. ICT literacy: using technology in the context of learning
4. Life skills: leadership, ethics, accountability, personal responsibility, self-
direction
5. 21st century assessments: authentic assessments that measure the
areas of learning

A global teacher is a competent who is armed with enough skills, appropriate

attitude and universal values to teach students with both time testes as well as
modern technologies in education in any place in the world. He/she is someone
who thinks and acts both locally and globally with worldwide perspectives, right
in the communities where he/she is situated. More specifically, he/she should
possess the following qualities or characteristics:
1. Understands how this world is interconnected
2. Recognizes that the world has rich variety of ways of life
3. Has a vision of the future
4. Creative and innovative

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 5. Understands, respects and has tolerance for diversity of cultures
6. Believes and takes action for education that will sustain the future
7. Is able to facilitate digitally-mediated learning
8. Has depth of knowledge
9. Possesses good communication skills
10. Possesses competencies of a professional teacher as embodied in the NCBTS

A. Multicultural Education: A Challenge to Global Teachers

Multicultural education enables teachers and educators to

give value to the differences in prior knowledge, experiences of the
learners from diverse background and familiarity with student’s
histories of diverse cultures.

To understand multi-cultural learners, Fraser Abner (2001)

offered the following suggestions:

1. Learn as much about and become

sensitive to and aware of racial, ethnic,
cultural and gender groups other than your
own.
2. Never make assumptions about an
individual baser on your perception of his
race, ethnicity, culture or gender
3. Avoid stereotyping
4. Get to know each student as a unique
individual: Walk in the footsteps of all your
students
5. Look into your own conscious and
subconscious biases about the people
who are different from yourselves in race,
ethnicity, culture, gender, or
socioeconomic status
6. Plan your activities within a multicultural
framework while making your classroom a
safe and secure haven for the students
7. Infuse multicultural instructional materials
and strategies in your teaching
8. Foster collaboration and cooperation
among your learners, parents and
teachers

2. Broadening Teaching Perspectives Through teacher-Exchange

Programs

Opportunities for this endeavor can be achieved through teacher

exchange programs. Examples are:
a. VIF – Visiting International Faculty Program
b. Fulbright Teacher Exchange program
c. Inter-African Teacher Exchanges
d. Canadian Educators Exchange

3. Educational Technology and Innovative Teaching

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The use of technology in the classroom has never been
underscored than now. The roles of technology in achieving the
goal of learning for understanding can be enumerated as follows:
a. It provides support to the solution of meaning problems
b. It acts as cognitive support
c. It promotes collaboration as well as independent learning