The Alberta Teachers’ Association

The following article is reprinted from Schools Reaching Out to a Global World—What Competences do Global Citizens Need? published by the Finnish National Board of Education, 2011.

Schools should cooperate with different interest groups to help children and young people to find their ways to global citizenship. Local schools can gather resources and existing educational experience together to draw up a global citizenship strategy. Reflecting on the competences that future global citizens will need can be used as the starting point for drafting a structure for the strategy. The starting point can be to identify discrepancies between ideals, objectives and everyday reality. The desired competences are needed to use education as a tool to bridge the gap between isolated islands of opposing opinions.

In Finland, we are good at carefully formulating well-balanced objectives for schools and education, but reality and objectives do not always meet. Reality is full of poverty, famine, wars, catastrophes, inequality, dictatorships, pressure to change and development needs… Which competences do our young people need to meet the challenges presented by reality and to reach their targets? What challenges are schools facing in trying to bridge the gap and what kinds of strategies could help us to make the leap?

These issues can be illustrated with certain imminent factors of global citizenship. They can be described as contradictions or tensions that can essentially be alleviated by schools:

1. Active citizenship has been implemented, for example, by the EU theme for the year 2012—European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion—through promoting participation as a solution to exclusion. Passivity caused by the welfare state can probably best be cured by systematic education that starts at an early age and social communities, such as schools. According to an old saying, democracy is not learned, it must be practised.
2. A sustainable lifestyle engages children and young people on many levels. From a global perspective, the most prominent tension lies between continuous economic growth and dwindling resources. Educational institutions need to make conscious efforts to tackle the conflicting interests between increasingly aggressively marketed products aimed at children and young people and educational institutions’ engagement in local, national and international environmental projects.
3. Intercultural competence begins with small, local steps: the KiVa Koulu anti-bullying programme in Finnish schools has successfully united and further developed the best properties of earlier programmes dealing with the same issue. Its materials are ideal for further expansion of the contents towards promoting understanding, embracing differences and intensifying cooperation. Actively exercising conflict management and campaigning for peace in one’s own environment improves the ability to deal with more extensive contexts.
4. As for ethics, global citizens are probably no different from any others, but schools should focus on certain issues, such as basic human needs and rights, respect for individuals and cultures as well as conservation of natural and cultural diversity. In everyday life, it is also possible to see contrasts in attitudes: open versus closed, diversity versus similarity, authenticity versus pretence and, above all, concrete actions instead of ostensible quasi-work. In the words of a Swedish saying: less talk and more action.

The Concept of Democracy Needs to be Expanded

Unfounded opinions and me-centred culture are spreading like a disease in contemporary society. This can at worst lead to the concept of democracy shrinking to result in only freedom of speech and self-determination: I may say what I want and do whatever I want to do. This is where school needs to defend wider views and increased consciousness about everyone having equal rights to information and possibilities to participate in decision-making in the spirit of democracy. School is an ideal place not only for learning about democracy but also for practising its rules—from thoughts to words and deeds.

In 2010, Finland’s Svenska Skolungdomsförbund, the Swedish-speaking upper secondary school and folk high school students’ union in Finland, implemented a development project that was described as follows: The School Democracy Project comprised four areas: values, decision-making and cooperation, teaching and assessment, as well as physical and psychological working environment. The different levels of education at Vaasa Teacher Training School—primary school, lower secondary school and general upper secondary school—participated in the project for three years. When the school participates in various development projects, it integrates the new elements into its activities thus advancing the targets set. Permanent results of the project include establishing an active association for comprehensive school pupils, participation of pupils and students in workgroups and meetings, systematic homeroom teacher and group counsellor activities to promote participation in school.

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Need for Cooperation On a Local Level

Already Confucius showed us the way: I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand. When we are drafting a strategy for global citizenship, it is worth remembering the good example of public enlightenment from the last century, which had strong ties with workers’ movements, temperance movements and the Free Church. Naturally, the idea needs to be upgraded to modern times, but the effort needs to be founded on our own experiences and needs and the target needs to be to combine knowledge, skills and attitudes in a balanced manner. This could probably be best described according to the division of knowledge by Aristotle into three categories: episteme [knowledge or science], techne [craftsmanship, craft, or art] and Phronēsis [wisdom or intelligence; also spelled as Fronesis].

For some people, the task is primarily about knowledge, that is, the curricular contents, teaching and methods of action concerning different subjects. However, it is also about teachers’ consciousness and their abilities to include in their teaching elements that support education and not just transfer of factual information. The focus needs to be on investing in reflecting and internalising instead of just memorising facts. Every school subject can include elements that make a difference, although they are most readily evident in subjects dealing with natural sciences and cultural competences, such as languages. Naturally, school shall support cooperation between teachers and possibilities to continue education internally using the abundance of support material provided by different organizations. Part of this material can be used without much editing in teaching!

A well-known pedagogic idea is that learning is easy when it is fun. We also know that informal learning in everyday settings outside educational institutions is pleasant throughout life, whereas formal learning at school with a system of external rewards can suffocate inner motivation and at worst result in making school just plain tedious. Therefore, the strategy should bring formal learning at school closer to informal learning in everyday environments by using meetings and discussions, real actions and genuine targets. At a general upper secondary school level, the guiding star should be a sense of coherence—the concept coined by Aaron Antonovsky emphasises comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness as important elements to bring about a sense of coherence and well-being.

At Vaasa Teacher Training School, international cooperation is an important part of activities at all levels. The focus of activities has been on Europe, but contacts include African, Asian and American countries as well. A key idea is that exchanges shall involve everyone at school, not only the chosen few who participate in the actual exchanges.

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As a teacher training school, the school has the possibility every year to offer teaching practise opportunities for teacher students from 10 European universities that have an agreement with Åbo Akademi, the Swedish-speaking university of Finland. A popular recurring event at the comprehensive school is Culture Days, where teacher students lead pupils in song and play and also organize various practical exercises relating to the heritage of their home countries. There is also more formal cooperation with a teacher training institution in Osaka, Japan. Language barriers have hindered implementation of deeper practical cooperation, and focus has therefore been on cultural knowledge and creative planning of lessons that go beyond language problems. The Japanese institution has regularly employed European language assistants for long-term assignments. The assistants are often teacher students in the final stages of their studies.

Every year, a theme is assigned for the school. The idea is to take a curricular theme and combine it with an actual theme from the EU, the UN, UNICEF or some other national, European or international organization. For some years, health and security have been natural choices for themes at Finnish schools. … Each teacher or subject group describes in the school curriculum how the theme will be dealt with during the year. The theme will also be promoted with theme days and events.

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In a new cooperation project with a high school in Alberta, Canada, students of a few general upper secondary schools discuss, among other things, the umbrella theme student well-being and what can be done to make school enjoyable for all.

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With 114 nationalities making up 5.4 per cent of the population, Vaasa is one of the most multicultural cities in Finland. Speakers of Russian, Arabic and Somali are the largest groups, but among other languages heard in Vaasa are Yoruba, Amhara and Tagalog.

The key role that school plays in raising global citizens can be described with a quote from Henry Ford: “Coming together is beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is success.” We need to meet in order to be able to agree what we want. To get things going requires commitment to the task at hand. When sharing our knowledge, experience, tips and ideas, we are concretely promoting global citizenship in Finland.

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Gun Jakobsson is the executive head teacher of the Vaasa Teacher Training School, in Vaasa, Finland.