TABLE OF CONTENTS

NO. CONTENTS PAGE

1.0 INTRODUCTION 3

2.0 CONTENT

2.1 PART A – Environmental Issue: Air Pollution 4

2.2 PART B – Two Videos on GCED and Environment Issue

2.2.1 Conceptual Dimensions of GCED 5
2.2.2 Haze in Malaysia 6

2.3 PART C 7-8

3.0 CONCLUSION 9

4.0 SELF REFLECTION 10

5.0 REFRENCES 11-12

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1.0 INTRODUCTION

In the era of globalization, there are some disputes about the importance of skills and
knowledge that suitable for learners in the 21st century (Anagün, 2018). The global
challenges are now to facing in the 21st century aim to achieve a better development for all
through a new education. According to UNESCO (1998, as a citer in Leek, 2016), Global
Citizenship Education (GCED) is “educating children from early childhood to become clear-
thinking and enlightened citizens who participate in decisions concerning society and
understood in the special sense of a nation” (p. 4). There is no exact meaning for Global
Citizenship Education (GCED) for this assignment in resolving the environmental issues but
the education can teach the 21st century learner to appreciate the ecosystems with their
knowledge to explore, be more responsible and successful, express their own values and
increase their communication skills (https://sdsnyouth.org/blog-posts/2016/6/2/global-
citizenship-education-a-crucial-factor-to-achieve-the-sdgs). Global Citizenship Education is
important for the 21st century to help and supports all the learners to solve the complex
problems in this digital era with all the 21 st century skills such as learning and innovation
skills, metacognitive skills, digital literacy skills and career and life skills.

Therefore, the objectives of this assignment is to describe one environmental issue

and give suggestions on how to solve the environmental issues with the three main
conceptual dimensions of Global Citizenship Education (GCED).

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2.1 PART A – ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE: AIR POLLUTION

Environment provides natural essential for our life but our environment is now being
threatened by environmental issues such as air pollution, water pollution, deforestation etc.
These environmental issues are due to a large population of human. Any unwanted changes
to our environment are consider as environmental issues because they have an important role
that affects to our natural balance on earth. As mentioned by Mohd Nasir Hassan, Muhamad
Awang, and Abu Bakar Jaafar (2006), environmental issues can be occurred from a basic and
simple thing but it can affect many living things and non-living things in this world.
According to World Health Organization, seven million people died every year because of air
pollution https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution. In this assignment, I will choose air
pollution in Malaysia as my environmental issue because air pollution is most important to
focus on and need a solution and ideas from 21st century learner for a better environment.

Malaysia will become an industrialized nation by year 2020 but the air quality
becomes attentive to achieve that determination (Latiffah Rani, Azman Azid, Iskandar Khalit,
Hafizan Juahir and Saiful Samsudin, 2018: 801) Air pollution comes from various causes
such as the burning from the factory, motor vehicles, forest burning, smoking etc. All these
causes occur when air contents harmful amount of gases, fumes and smoke. When air is
polluted with foreign substances it will cause an air pollution (Nur Afiqah Zakaria and
Norazian Mohamed Noor, 2018: 159). In Malaysia, the highest API readings is 839 on 1997
happens in Kuching due to illegal forest and peat fires at Sumatra, Indonesia until they have
to declare haze emergency in Sarawak (Hanafi, Hassim and Noor, 2018: 821) and latest one
is happened in September 2019, Malaysia recorded a bad air pollution index of 150-270 that
considered as unhealthy according to the API readings caused by forest fires in Indonesia.

Air is very important to all living things on this earth because it gives us oxygen for
respiration process to survive and acts as insulation to control the temperature to protect us
from getting freeze or burned and control the humidity on earth. This is why all living things
like plants, animals and also humans need air to continue our live and get oxygen. Air
pollution is able to harm people and it has a devastating effect to our environment. It can
cause a difficulty in breathing that can cause death, rising of the world temperature that called
as global warming, release of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)
that can destroy earth’s ozone layer, acid rain that harms the ecosystems etc. In conclusion,
most of the environmental pollution has a bad effect on our health and ecosystem.
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2.2 PART B
2.2.1 Conceptual Dimensions of GCED by GCED Youth Network
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb6IfkMbYZU

Global Citizenship Education (GCED) is universal in education terms and it is

important for the 21st century learner to think, share and act in solving problems. Global
Citizenship Education is a guidance to help children and youth to succeed in their future life
and to promote a better future https://www.brookings.edu/research/measuring-global-
citizenship-education/. In Global Citizenship Education, there is three main conceptual
dimensions which are cognitive, socio-emotional and behavioural. Refer to the attached link,
I will discuss about three conceptual dimensions from the video that I have selected.

Cognitive dimensions are one of the three main conceptual dimensions of GCED that
defined as process of our mental to memorize, making a judgement, find reasons and action
or process to know and understand something widely. Cognitive dimensions are also to
develop and apply critical thinking in making decisions, solving problems etc. For examples
in environmental issue, they are able to identify the problems, causes of the problems and
able to solve the problems with their critical thinking.

Next is socio-emotional dimensions. Socio-emotional is also important as the

cognitive dimensions to our 21st learner. As we know that emotion can be express through our
body movement, facial expressions and eye contact. This socio-emotional conceptual
dimension is to develop learner’s attitude of empathy to others, appreciate and respect to
different identities and anything surround them. In environmental issue, this conceptual
dimension can be seen when they able to express feelings or emotions to anything happens
around them even when they feel happy, sad or frustrated about the environmental issues.

Behaviour dimensions is the last of three main conceptual dimensions of GCED. It

means actions of someone to participate and change something that happens to the positive
ways. Behaviour dimension enable learners to collaborate with others in solving problems
and act responsibly rather than showing a simple share feeling and understand to others. In
environmental issue, behaviour is important to really understand the situation with a clear
message and use creativity to think flexibly, find solutions and succeed to solve the complex
problems such as air pollution. These three conceptual dimensions is important to the 21st
century learner to make sure the complex problem solved with the complex knowledge.
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2.2.2 Haze in Malaysia: Nearly 1,500 schools ordered to close, more than 1 million students
affected by CNA Insider published on September 18,2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py2ce7sxbZw

Air pollution can cause by foreign substances that emitted into the atmosphere such as
smoke, dust and gases and change the natural balance of the air quality. Based on the video
that I have selected, bad haze that happens in Malaysia on September 2019 is because of
illegal forest fires at Sumatra and Kalimantan, Indonesia. This case affects to 1 million
students in Malaysia when almost 1,500 schools are ordered to close. Prime minister of
Malaysia, Mahathir bin Mohamad were briefed about the haze situation that Indonesia
authorities refuse to admit their full responsibility on the choking haze that affected Malaysia
and Singapore. Prime Minister also mention that satellite images of hotspots in Indonesia will
be published to show that haze is originated from Sumatra and Kalimantan, Indonesia.

According to the video, more than 40 places are registered as unhealthy to very
unhealthy according to the air pollution index API. Most of the schools in seven states have
been close like Sarawak, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya, Perak and
Penang but some of schools are still open as usual and parents are worried about their
children’s health when they still need to go to school because the government have not decide
if school should be continue or not. Some of the parents also mentioned about government
need to provide proper facemask for their children but some of them also ask about schools
need to close until the haze blows over. In this bad situation, Malaysia and any other
countries still offers a technical assistance including manpower to help Indonesia but they
refuse to accept any help from any other countries including Malaysia.

Malaysian people are very unhappy with how the haze situation is dragged on. Most
of them are depressed with this situation until it affected their moods because they are
worried about their children, studies, health and others. Parents also complained about the
last-minute school closure also the proper mask like N95 that always out of stock in many
places. But there are some places that are not affected like Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan and
Terengganu. As mentioned by Prime Minister, Malaysia should publicize the actual effect
more through government statements to show where the hotspots are and take action against
this situation. He also mentioned that any companies that linked and contribute to the haze
problems they will take them to the court or Malaysia will charge them in Malaysia’s court.

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2.3 PART C

Global Citizenship Education (GCED) is transformative education that gain 21 st

century learner’s knowledge, skills and attitude to be wise in solving complex problems to
promote a better future. There are 17 global goals for sustainable development to be achieve
by 2030 with 21st century skills and efforts. As we can see, 17 global goals already mention
about the importance of Global Citizenship Education (GCED) for children and youth in this
generation to be more educated and creative about how to solve the global issues in future.
This transformative education can be related to air pollution one of the environmental issues
that I have choose because the good education can transform learners to become creative in
solving complex problems. Global Citizenship Education (GCED) has three conceptual
dimensions that can bring benefit to the society to solve the air pollution which is consists of
cognitive dimensions, socio-emotional dimensions and behavioural dimensions.

First, cognitive dimensions. According to Sami Oluk and Tansel Sakaci (2009),
cognitive is when someone is tending to see and believe that something worst will happen.
That’s mean cognitive is when they were able to receive the real message and transform it to
understand the situation, think of why it happens and also think creatively about how to
solved the issue. Cognitive dimensions enable learners to investigate the air pollution
problems and find the solutions with collaboration with other learners because air pollution
cannot be solved by only one person.

Socio-emotional dimensions is also important to this generation because of their

emotion, humanity, responsibilities and respect to all things surround them. Socio-emotional
can be seen when someone express positive or negative feelings like happy, excited, sad,
worried and frustrated with the air pollution issue. This is because of their humanity and
responsibility towards something. They show their love to the environment but when
pollution is happens, they become frustrated and sad. With their love to the environment, they
will also take a good care and respect to the environment.

Behavioural dimensions is a responsive global citizen that act effectively to solve

problems. Behavioural also enable learners to be responsible with the environmental issue
because they will rethink and question themselves back about their aims of life and find
solutions and answers to their questions. Then, they will be participating in and collaborate
with others to solve global issue because they realize about their responsibility.
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 Air is important to our daily lives but when the air pollution happens, our daily
activities will be disrupted and impacted to our ecosystems. This is why Global Citizenship
Education (GCED) is important to 21st century learners to encourage them to be independent
because they are not only deal with environmental issues but the other problems as well.
According to all the three main conceptual dimensions, there is many ways to find the
solutions to solve the air pollution.

Firstly, learners will collaborate with others to investigate and collects all the
observations and opinions about the air pollution that is known as cognitive dimension. This
will help them to think widely about the issues and they will have a brainstorming session to
share their opinions. Then, they will gather all the data and compared with other learner’s
data. After they observe about the air pollution, they will have a negative feeling about the air
pollution that is known as socio-emotional. These negative feelings will change to positive
when they think about how to solve the air pollution issue. Followed by behavioural
dimensions that encourage learners to take action, invest their times and be responsible to
solve the air pollution.

In behavioural dimensions process, learners will start to act effectively and find
solutions to solve the air pollution issues. Air pollution can be solved by different kind of
ways. As mentioned by Mohd Nasir Hassan, Muhamad Awang, and Abu Bakar Jaafar
(2006) to reduce the air pollution, a more comprehensive way is through prevention by
attacking sources of pollution at each product level that includes raw material extraction,
transportation, manufacturing, product use, recycling and disposal. In my opinion, air
pollution can be solved if individuals, industrials and organizations be more responsible and
stop using a chemical substance that can cause air pollution. Other than that, we can practice
to share the transportation, walk or only use public transportation to reduce release of foreign
substances. We also need to avoid an open burning to prevent toxic chemicals released to the
air.

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3.0 CONCLUSION

Global Citizenship Education (GCED) is universal education for 21st century learner
and it is important because it’s not only deal with knowledge and skills about world but also
the environmental issues that we are facing today. Being a learner in this 21 st century is very
interesting because I learn a lot about environmental issue around the world with 21 st century
skills that is also increase my awareness on the importance of critical thinking to solve
problems, creativity to innovate something new, collaborate with other people to achieve
something and communicate to share ideas. These skills are known as 4Cs of 21 st century
learner’s skills and it is needed to be an effective Global Citizen and able to analyze the
global issue with critical thinking and understand the real situations.

In environmental issue, Global Citizenship Education (GCED) plays an important role

to acts, think and share on how to solve problems, factors of the problems and impact of the
global issue according to the three main conceptual dimensions of GCED. However, Global
Citizenship Education (GCED) is not only for 21 st century learner but for all to prevent
violence and bullying with sense of humanity, responsibility and respects towards each other
around us including our environment.

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4.0 SELF-REFLECTION

In this self-reflection essay, I will share about my experience while preparing this
assignment including the problems and solutions that I found throughout the assignment. The
objective for this assignment is to evaluate the ability in solving problems with 21 st century
skills. This assignment also gained my knowledge about the importance of Global
Citizenship Education but it was difficult and takes time for me to understand by reading
more journal, websites etc. Besides that, I found that this assignment is a bit difficult for a
new learner that doing part time studies because I have spent more time to understand about
the Global Citizenship Education (GCED), 21st century learning skills, environmental issues
and APA style by myself because I do not have enough briefing about these matters.

In preparing my assignments, I learned about time management because this is my

first semester and because of my status as a part time student. As a part time student that are
working also affects the process of completing my task. This is because I have a great
responsibility to ensure my job and my assignments can be completed in a timely manner.
The limited time management teach me on how to control my emotions to avoid the
unnecessary stress. I also need to have my own initiative to make sure I can complete all my
task on time. Besides that, I read many journals to complete my assignment but I still confuse
because there is so many sources with different kind of explanation. I also learned how to use
a digital skill to find a resource for my assignment to supports my ideas. Lastly, this
assignment has brought benefit to me as a 21st century learner as it provides many lessons for
my future in preparing an assignment.

(2718 words)

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 APPENDIX

REFERENCES

Air pollution. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1

Anagün, Ş. S. (2018). Teachers’ Perceptions about the Relationship between 21st Century
Skills and Managing Constructivist Learning Environments. International Journal of
Instruction, 11(4), 825–840

Anderson, K., & Bhattacharya, J. (2017, May 4). Measuring global citizenship education.
Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/research/measuring-global-citizenship-
education/

Hanafi, N. H., Hassim, M. H., & Noor, Z. Z. (2018). Overview of Health Impacts due to
Haze Pollution in Johor, Malaysia. Journal of Engineering and Technological
Sciences, 50(6), 818. doi: 10.5614/j.eng.technol.sci.2018.50.6.5

Hassan, M. N., Awang, M., & Jaafar, A. B. (2006). Challenges of global environmental
issues on ecosystem management in Malaysia. Aquatic Ecosystem Health &
Management, 9(2), 269–283. doi: 10.1080/14634980600728800

Leek, J. (2016). Global citizenship education in school curricula. A Polish

perspective. Journal of Social Studies Education Research, 7(2), 51–74.

Oluk, S., & Sakaci, T. (2009). Dimensions of learning process over global environmental
problems: An evaluation of roger conceptual learning method regarding Turkish
undergraduate students. Ecology, 6, 35–44.

Rani, N. L. A., Azid, A., Khalit, S. I., Juahir, H., & Samsudin, M. S. (2018). Air Pollution
Index Trend Analysis in Malaysia, 2010-15. Polish Journal of Environmental
Studies, 27(2), 801–807

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SDSN Youth. (2016, June 2). Global Citizenship Education: A Crucial Factor to Achieve the
SDGs. Retrieved from https://sdsnyouth.org/blog-posts/2016/6/2/global-citizenship-
education-a-crucial-factor-to-achieve-the-sdgs

Zakaria, N. A., & Noor, N. M. (2018). Imputation Methods for Filling Missing Data in Urban
Air Pollution Data for Malaysia. Imputation Methods for Filling Missing Data in
Urban Air Pollution Data for Malaysia, 9, 159–166.

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INSTRUCTIONS
 Do not copy the assignment question and instructions to your answer.
 Prepare your assignment answer following the layout of the ASSESSMENT
CRITERIA shown in the RUBRICS provided for the course. Where RUBRICS are
not provided, follow the instructions/guidelines specified by the Open University
Malaysia (OUM) for the assignment concerned.
 Your assignment should be written according to the number of words outlined in
the assignment instruction EXCLUDING references.
 Type your answer using 12 point Times New Roman font and 1.5 line spacing.
 Show the number of words at the end of your assignment.
 Tables and figures where provided, should be appropriately titled.
 List your references separately in the APPENDIX page.

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