What is Global Competence, and how can it be learned effectively?

After many decades of advocacy by academics and educators alike, education for global competence was formalised in 2018 as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) launched a new assessment of global competence as part of PISA. The Programme for International Student Assessment is a triennial international survey that aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students. The member states of the United Nations (UN) had previously adopted the UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. Global competence is considered necessary for achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, a list of 17 overarching aims considered essential in achieving global sustainability for all. For example, gender equality, an end to poverty, climate action, and peace and justice (OECD and Asia Society, 2018). A group of seven European partners from Catalonia, Belgium, and Wales are currently working on an Erasmus+-funded project on global competence. The partner institutions are drawn from across a broad range of educational institutions, including schools, universities, and local authorities. Further information can be found on the project website: https://blocs.xtec.cat/thinkglobal/ The Think Global! project explores how global competence is defined, taught, learned, and measured in the classroom, through international collaboration, and offers a model of professional learning for teachers to support students in developing global competence. The project seeks to address the following research question, through development and piloting of practical classroom activities: What is global competence, and how can it be learned effectively? This paper aims to explore the theoretical issues underpinning the research question through a review of the literature, in order to provide some context to the project. The paper addresses a number of themes, beginning with the terminology of global competence, how it has been incorporated into the curriculum, the pedagogies which are reported to support learning global competence, how it might be assessed effectively, the implications for professional learning, and finally the issue of representation and questions of bias