Flexible Teacher CPD Programme Vision & Next Steps
Based on our history of designing and implementing courses related to Global Competence for diverse groups of teachers, the Flanders-based University College Leuven-Limburg (UCLL) team was delighted to lead Intellectual Output #4 of the GCTE project: developing a new Flexible Teacher CPD Programme to help Teacher Educators (TEs) and their Trainees be more Globally Competent and foster this competence in their students.
A PAINFUL TIME FOR LEARNERS & TEACHERS
Approximately 19 months following the Global Competence in Teacher Education (GCTE) project launch in September 2019, global events have made it indisputably evident that we need to better prepare learners and teachers to embrace flexibility and innovation. We must urgently help them (and ourselves) learn to work across differences in order to find the sustainable solutions that are needed in times of great uncertainty. Indeed, the COVID19 crisis has shown that our education systems worldwide are under-prepared and predictable in our coping mechanisms. Teachers have had significant growing pains adapting to the new learning and teaching models of the pandemic times. Many teachers and students alike are overwhelmed with COVID19-related changes. The pandemic has amplified the importance of our Global Competence in Teacher Education project and its aims.
BUT ALSO AN OPPORTUNITY FOR A NEW APPROACH
In this context, we propose that during times of change, instead of trying to teach many little things, this is an opportunity to focus, so that we instead teach the most important things, deeply and richly. Such times can be a chance to be creative and adapt to the different skill levels and life circumstances of learners and teachers. To do this, the key issue is not lowering standards for teaching. Rather it is teaching for and from a different standard, one that focuses on the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values that can enhance Global Competence. Preparing future teachers to be more Globally Competent and foster this competence in their students does not require a completely new curriculum. Instead, it requires combining instructional strategies for active learning with global issues and then weaving these into the existing curriculum. We believe that in order to scale Global Competence, we need professional development that will help Teacher Educators do this — and thereby transform themselves, their teaching, their classroom, their schools, and, ultimately, their students — this is crucial.
The challenge, however, is how to provide access to this type of professional development to all teachers to use. The GCTE project has done this through a Flexible Teacher CPD Programme that is now complete and is published in our Digital Book, that was launched in October 2022, and is freely available from this website, (scroll to the bottom of this page).
ACTIVE LEARNING & CRITICAL PEDAGOGY AS OUR BASIS
Seven building blocks form the core center and heart of what we emphasize in our Flexible Teacher Training Programme. Each of these is related to learning beyond the classroom through exploring, combining and experimenting. They are:
After investigating the current situation of teaching and learning through our Scoping Studies, we were able to identify several push and pull factors that play important roles in what is being taught, how it is being taught and why it’s being taught. The scale of this is spread across the macro, meso, and micro levels. All in all the most tangible factor at hand is what the initial teacher training curriculum looks like and what is being expected from the teacher trainees.
Educators and education systems worldwide are reassessing the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values students need to succeed in this rapidly changing world. Despite this, many if not most education systems — including in some of the partner countries involved in this project (the UK, Italy, Belgium, Greece) — are built around the traditional economic system. Our goal with the Flexible Teacher Training Programme is to go beyond “teaching to the test” and instead use critical pedagogy and the inquiry stance of teachers as the literature and stakeholder testimony indicates is necessary to develop Global Competence. Beyond the immediate environment of teaching and assessing, the Programme provides Teacher Educators and their teacher trainees space for understanding and appreciating, communicating across cultures, and keeping in mind the collective well-being of the learners and the teachers in the Global Competence development process.
A PLATFORM FOR NEW & EXISTING CONTENT, SELF-ASSESSMENTS
To achieve this, we have developed the GCTE Teacher CPD Programme on a web-based training platform that features an inspirational data bank enriched with hands-on, actionable materials and examples in a set of 12 Learning Designs plus a self-assessment tool for Teacher Educators and teacher trainees to use to gauge progress against their self-selected goals.
The platform hosts newly created and specially curated existing content. Concerning the former, there are five different level-based versions (nascent, beginner, progressed, proficient and advanced) of 12 learning design. Concerning the latter, although a number of Teacher Educator endorsed, effective, and openly-available resources for developing global competence at scale already exist, they are dispersed. Our opportunity is to bring these together on one platform that provides access to professional learning for all Teacher Educators, trainees, and teachers. We have done this using the open source Learning Designer Tool created by the Institute of Education at UCL (University College London) in the UK.
To anchor all of these resources on a developmental framework, we have used the ASCD’s Globally Competent Learning Continuum, which also resonates with the OECD’s definition of Global Competence. The continuum identifies the dispositions, knowledge, and skills that educators need to teach students from diverse backgrounds and prepare all students to thrive in a global society. It is a tool for self-reflection and self-guidance for educators wishing to reflect on their own level of Global Competence and to learn the characteristics included in higher levels to advance along the continuum. The three categories of this continuum, namely “Teacher Disposition”, “Teacher Knowledge” and “Teacher Skills” with the different elements and levels defined under each category, are the basis for creating learning designs for teacher trainers and for organizing existing resources.
A pilot of these learning designs ran from October - December 2021 using Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) in several European countries and in the USA to gauge the usefulness of the Flexible Teacher Training Programme. We then launched the programme for Teacher Educatrors, non-formal educators and learners worldwide in 2022, at a Learning Teaching Training Event at UCLL in June 2022.
Approximately 19 months following the Global Competence in Teacher Education (GCTE) project launch in September 2019, global events have made it indisputably evident that we need to better prepare learners and teachers to embrace flexibility and innovation. We must urgently help them (and ourselves) learn to work across differences in order to find the sustainable solutions that are needed in times of great uncertainty. Indeed, the COVID19 crisis has shown that our education systems worldwide are under-prepared and predictable in our coping mechanisms. Teachers have had significant growing pains adapting to the new learning and teaching models of the pandemic times. Many teachers and students alike are overwhelmed with COVID19-related changes. The pandemic has amplified the importance of our Global Competence in Teacher Education project and its aims.
BUT ALSO AN OPPORTUNITY FOR A NEW APPROACH
In this context, we propose that during times of change, instead of trying to teach many little things, this is an opportunity to focus, so that we instead teach the most important things, deeply and richly. Such times can be a chance to be creative and adapt to the different skill levels and life circumstances of learners and teachers. To do this, the key issue is not lowering standards for teaching. Rather it is teaching for and from a different standard, one that focuses on the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values that can enhance Global Competence. Preparing future teachers to be more Globally Competent and foster this competence in their students does not require a completely new curriculum. Instead, it requires combining instructional strategies for active learning with global issues and then weaving these into the existing curriculum. We believe that in order to scale Global Competence, we need professional development that will help Teacher Educators do this — and thereby transform themselves, their teaching, their classroom, their schools, and, ultimately, their students — this is crucial.
The challenge, however, is how to provide access to this type of professional development to all teachers to use. The GCTE project has done this through a Flexible Teacher CPD Programme that is now complete and is published in our Digital Book, that was launched in October 2022, and is freely available from this website, (scroll to the bottom of this page).
ACTIVE LEARNING & CRITICAL PEDAGOGY AS OUR BASIS
Seven building blocks form the core center and heart of what we emphasize in our Flexible Teacher Training Programme. Each of these is related to learning beyond the classroom through exploring, combining and experimenting. They are:
- the OECD’s PISA Global Competence Assessment Framework,
- the OECD’s Future of Education and Skills 2030 recommendations,
- Beames and Brown’s four dimensions of Adventurous Learning,
- Roots and Shoots’ nine Compassionate Leadership Skills and Traits,
- the Model of Learning Objectives based on Heer’s Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives,
- UNESCO’s four Pillars of Learning, and
- the EU’s Entrepreneurship Competence Framework.
After investigating the current situation of teaching and learning through our Scoping Studies, we were able to identify several push and pull factors that play important roles in what is being taught, how it is being taught and why it’s being taught. The scale of this is spread across the macro, meso, and micro levels. All in all the most tangible factor at hand is what the initial teacher training curriculum looks like and what is being expected from the teacher trainees.
Educators and education systems worldwide are reassessing the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values students need to succeed in this rapidly changing world. Despite this, many if not most education systems — including in some of the partner countries involved in this project (the UK, Italy, Belgium, Greece) — are built around the traditional economic system. Our goal with the Flexible Teacher Training Programme is to go beyond “teaching to the test” and instead use critical pedagogy and the inquiry stance of teachers as the literature and stakeholder testimony indicates is necessary to develop Global Competence. Beyond the immediate environment of teaching and assessing, the Programme provides Teacher Educators and their teacher trainees space for understanding and appreciating, communicating across cultures, and keeping in mind the collective well-being of the learners and the teachers in the Global Competence development process.
A PLATFORM FOR NEW & EXISTING CONTENT, SELF-ASSESSMENTS
To achieve this, we have developed the GCTE Teacher CPD Programme on a web-based training platform that features an inspirational data bank enriched with hands-on, actionable materials and examples in a set of 12 Learning Designs plus a self-assessment tool for Teacher Educators and teacher trainees to use to gauge progress against their self-selected goals.
The platform hosts newly created and specially curated existing content. Concerning the former, there are five different level-based versions (nascent, beginner, progressed, proficient and advanced) of 12 learning design. Concerning the latter, although a number of Teacher Educator endorsed, effective, and openly-available resources for developing global competence at scale already exist, they are dispersed. Our opportunity is to bring these together on one platform that provides access to professional learning for all Teacher Educators, trainees, and teachers. We have done this using the open source Learning Designer Tool created by the Institute of Education at UCL (University College London) in the UK.
To anchor all of these resources on a developmental framework, we have used the ASCD’s Globally Competent Learning Continuum, which also resonates with the OECD’s definition of Global Competence. The continuum identifies the dispositions, knowledge, and skills that educators need to teach students from diverse backgrounds and prepare all students to thrive in a global society. It is a tool for self-reflection and self-guidance for educators wishing to reflect on their own level of Global Competence and to learn the characteristics included in higher levels to advance along the continuum. The three categories of this continuum, namely “Teacher Disposition”, “Teacher Knowledge” and “Teacher Skills” with the different elements and levels defined under each category, are the basis for creating learning designs for teacher trainers and for organizing existing resources.
A pilot of these learning designs ran from October - December 2021 using Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) in several European countries and in the USA to gauge the usefulness of the Flexible Teacher Training Programme. We then launched the programme for Teacher Educatrors, non-formal educators and learners worldwide in 2022, at a Learning Teaching Training Event at UCLL in June 2022.
eBook: GCTE Resources for Teaching and Learning
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The majority of this eBook reports back on Intellectual Output 4 (as discussed on this page) and contains the complete set of Learning Designs and a raft of other resources and information about this project. The eBook will help Teacher Educators and their Trainees be more Globally Competent and foster this competence in their students.
The work contained in the eBook has been developed by the project team who have been expertly led in IO4 throughout the development phase, testing phase (COILS) and delivery phase (LTTE) by Dima Bou Mosleh and Gorik Van Helleputte of UCLL. 
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An Invitation...
To get involved or to learn more, please join our online network here: The Global Education Network or contact the Project Lead, Dr Sarah-Louise Jones ([email protected]).
