Project Based Learning and Global Competence

 

Project based learning and global competence can be successfully taught exclusively of one another. However, by creating work that combines these two pedagogies, you will be creating dynamic and authentic learning opportunities for your students.

 

When global education was first introduced in schools, many people took the approach of food, flags and festivals.  Opportunities weren’t woven into the curriculum but rather resembled more of the dessert or buffet project ideas you learned about in the PBL video I created.  These projects felt like a “one off “ that only integrated surface knowledge of the concept.  For example, before the Chinese New Year schools might teach students where China is, what the China flag looks like, and to try some Chinese food.  Schools and teachers alike began to realize that this might not be enough. 

 

Kristen Zimmer, a former 1st grade teacher at Town School for Boys, felt this way.  She transformed her unit on China, using project based learning, by utilizing the following driving questions:

 

• How are the stories we read similar to and different from the stories children read in China?

• How Can We Use the Arts to Teach Understanding, Empathy, and Respect?

• How can we create opportunities for parents and faculty to share their cultural experiences with the community?

 

In a multi week unit on China, the students spent time talking about Lon Po Po vs Little Red Riding Hood and discussed the importance of story telling.  They learned kite making, martial arts, the Lion Dance and calligraphy.  Parents came in to share their experiences and helped to teach Mandarin and Cantonese, the importance of rice and tea and general etiquette, traditions and daily life experiences of being Chinese and Chinese American.  This unit was a PBL that incorporated the Gold Standards of inquiry, authenticity, voice and choice, reflection, critique and revision and public product.  As you can likely see, by taking a global concept, Kristen took the overall concept, China, and developed a PBL that allowed students to begin to develop global competence. In the end students had new knowledge, skills, behaviors and values, and attitudes.

 

 

Asia Society’s International Studies School’s Network, a network of 34 schools with the purpose of college readiness and global competency, has come up with a structure in which combines the initiatives of Project Based Learning and global competence education called the Sage Approach. 

                                                                               

                                                                                 Sage stands for:

 

  S Student Choice

   A Authentic Work

     G Global Significance

              E Exhibition to Real World Audience

 

You can read and hear more about the SAGE approach here: https://www.teachingchannel.org/blog/2014/06/04/sage-approach-to-project-based-learning/

 

With this approach in mind, I considered my own project work at Town School.  Let's revisit the project that I spoke about in my video.

 

How can we model micro-financing in our own curriculum?

 

While creating a unit that included the core concepts of financial literacy, proportions, ratios, percent, decimal computations, and statistical representations, I could have created a unit that focused on the US banking system that was rich in content (How do banks work?  How should I invest my money?).  While these PBL’s would teach these core concepts, it was my goal to create a PBL that would allow our students to gain a level of global competence.  Having already learned how this project meets the Gold Standards, let’s take a look at how it in incorporates the SAGE approach and global competence as a whole. 

 

According to Sage, students need to feel like they have choice.   During this project students open up businesses and they have full choice in their product or service. In addition, they have the opportunity to choose how they advertise, who they market and in the end who they lend their profits to.  Secondly, the work needs to be authentic.  Through opening up real businesses, students soon learn that running a business is not easy.  Third, the work needs to be globally significant.  By setting up the stage in fifth grade math that poverty is a global issue that needs to be addressed, students come into sixth grade math motivated to learn more.  By sharing the concept of microfinance as a method of alleviating poverty, students feel like they can make a real difference with their profits in the end.  Lastly, Sage suggests that the project needs a real world audience.  The businesses the boys create need to have customers.  These customers become the audience in many ways.  From other teachers and students, to parents and beyond, the students are constantly sharing their message with each sale.

 

The goal of this project goes far beyond the details above and is embedded in everything we do.  With the goal in mind to address global competence, the boys are constantly required to think critically, problem solve, collaborate, negotiate and be resilient. By allowing students to be borrowers (they borrow the money from the faculty and staff for their businesses), and therefore small and sometimes struggling business owners, students begin to empathize alongside borrowers around the world. They come to the realization that it takes hard work, problem solving, flexibilty and determination to succeed.  While looking at the power of microfinance and global poverty statistics, students begin to see the world from another perspective and they make intelligent and intentional decisions on whom to lend their profits to based on their knowledge and experiences.  They are engaged in constant inquiry.

 

In reflection on all of my Math PBL's, by creating a driving question or challenge I strive to set my students up to develop knowledge and skills aligned with global competence and I challenge you to consider doing the same.  By looking at curriculum components through a global lens we can assist students in understanding significant content, and how it affects the world, others and ourselves.  By engaging in sustained inquiry, participating as a member of a group, and working through complex problems, students learn to research, communicate opinions, and analyze significance.  Students learn to collaborate with people who may have different opinions, work with others that come from different cultures and backgrounds, and hopefully become more inclusive because of it.  By creating authentic project work, our students are forced to see the world through different perspectives, cope with conditions they are not used to and persevere. They learn flexibility, how to make mistakes, and do so while being motivated intrinsicly.  As students reflect, and experience critique and revision on their public product, they adjust their methods and products as they learn how to take feedback. Through these projects, students begin to understand that the world is bigger than them.  With this understanding, it is my hope that not only do they experience a change in perspectives, values and attitudes but also that they feel compelled to take action.   Using their voice and choice, students are able to then act in way that is meaningful to them. Project Based Learning allows us to engage our students in a powerful learning experience.   Combined with global curriculum, it can be life changing.