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Helping young people worldwide to become global citizens

An online course to support global citizenship education in the classroom is empowering educators in more than 100 countries to teach young people how to engage with global issues.

Children looking at a globe

14 June 2022

The need for coordinated action against climate change and its impacts has never been greater. Other global challenges including social injustice and inequality also need to be addressed. Education is vital to equip young people with the skills and understanding to rise to and address these challenges.

To help educators apply a ‘global learning’ approach in their teaching, Dr Nicole Blum and Dr Fran Hunt (both UCL Institute of Education), have devised a professional development course for primary and secondary teachers across the world, to provide much-needed training in global education and related topics.

The course, which runs over three weeks and takes approximately three hours per week to complete, is available free on FutureLearn and provides a platform for teachers and other educators to learn together and share their diverse experiences and expertise.

It explores different pedagogical approaches to engaging students and provides practical ideas, lesson guides and examples of current policy and practice that empower educators to facilitate global learning in the classroom.

Since its launch in October 2020, the CPD training course – Global Education for Teachers –has attracted almost 6,000 educators from more than 100 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America.

"Teachers need to support learners to engage with the big challenges the world faces."

The course draws on knowledge and expertise from UCL IOE’s Development Education Research Centre (DERC), a world-leading hub for knowledge generation, research, and new thinking on policy and practice in global learning, education for sustainability and education for global citizenship.

As well as providing much-needed CPD, the short course, developed with support from UCL Digital Education, also provides a springboard to UCL’s MA in Global Learning, which explores transformational educational approaches to help prepare learners for life in an increasingly complex and challenging world.

“Teachers need to support learners to engage with the big challenges the world faces,” explains Dr Blum. “This short course helps educators around the world to build the knowledge and skills that will empower them to encourage learners to apply critical thinking and make connections between their own lives and the lives of others.

Related links

Register for the course Global Education for Teachers 
DERC
> MA in Global Learning