1. Global Skills- Framing the Issues
Dr. Douglas Bourn
Development Education Research Centre, IOE

2. Aims of Presentation
Impact of globalisation on learning and practices in higher education
Ways in which institutions can and are responding
Global Perspectives and Global Skills
Framework for Global Skills

3. Context Globalisation
Pressures on universities to compete in global market place
Needs and agendas of key stakeholders on society

4. Globalisation Interdependent World (Giddens,1991)
Flat World (Freidman,2005)
More than just new technology and instant communications (Castells, 2000)
Social, cultural and economic dimensions (Harvey,2003)

5. Examples Dislocation from our traditional moorings I am from nowhere
When do we turn the lights out
Everyone needs to learn Mandarin

6. Globalisation and Global Skills
Context of globalisation and rapidly changing world
Equipping learners to make sense of, and have the skills, to engage in a global society
Skills needs for a global economy
Making connections between the local and the global

7. Global Perspectives and Global Dimension
Understand our situation in a wider context
Make connections between local and global events and scales
Develop skills and knowledge to interpret events affecting our lives
Learn from experiences elsewhere in the world
Identify common interests and explore wider horizons
(Bourn,MacKenzie, Shiel, 2006)

8. Skills for Global Perspectives
Self Reliant – where global awareness heightens self‑awareness, confidence, the ability to respond positively and pro‑actively to personal and professional change in today's globalised world.
Connected ‑ global citizens work well as part of a team, recognising the value and role of each member, inspiring others and developing cross-cultural capability and sensitivity to others.
Well‑rounded ‑ a graduate's range of skills can only be considered as well-rounded when they reflect the global environment in which we all operate.
Critical reflectors – a global perspective requires a student to challenge knowledge, reflect on the economic, social and political contexts that shape experience and adopt a critical perspective in analysis and decision-making, reflecting on self and others. (Shiel, Williams and Mann (2005

9. Complexity and Uncertainty
We ourselves argue that the challenge for learning in relation to sustainable development is to confront learners with competing accounts of human and environmental reality wherever complexity and uncertainty mean that it is possible for competing rationalities to yield competing versions of the truth. (Scott and Gough,2005)

10. Changing Perspectives
Equipping Learners to Participate in a globalised world requires:
Moving from fixed content and skills to conform to a predetermined idea of society to concepts and strategies to address complexity, difference and uncertainty
Moving from absorbing information, to reproduce received knowledge, to accept and adapt to existing structures and models of thinking, knowing and being to assess, interrogate and connect information, to generate knowledge, to live with difference and conflict, to shift positions and perspectives according to contexts
Moving from structured, ordered and stable, predictable, comprehensible as a whole, universal meanings and interpretations to complex and changing, uncertain, multifaceted and interconnected, different meanings and interpretation

11. Global Skills
Key message is demonstrate skills for a global economy need to recognise global and culturally diverse nature of society and that the skills needs for today and tomorrow need to recognise complexity and uncertainty.

12. Features of Global Skills
An ability to communicate with people from a range of social and cultural backgrounds
An ability to work within teams of people from a range of backgrounds and other countries
Openness to a range of voices and perspectives from around the world
Willingness to resolve problems and seek solutions
Recognition and understanding of the impact of global forces on people’s lives
Willingness to play an active role in society at local, natural and international level.

13. GLOBAL ENGINEER Why global issues are critical to engineering education What global skills look like and the alignment between different initiatives How the global dimension can be embedded: looking at examples of current practice

14. Global Health We aim to enable medical students to
Challenge attitudes towards patients, individuals, communities and health care delivery systems.
Recognise factors contributingﾊ to global health inequalities.
Identify the role of governments, international companies, international organisations and NGOs.
Recognise the factors underpinning global inequality and access to health care services.
Acknowledge the interdependence within a global health system. (

15. Thoughts for the Day
‘A global institution does not impose one view, one way of life, or form of knowledge on the rest of the world. It creates a space in which ‘the rest of the world’ can examine what we hold to be important and true in a safe, enjoyable and productive relationship of equals. Only once we have created such spaces will we be able to claim that we are becoming global.’ (Tormey, 2006).
Education’s main contribution should be to familiarise learners with perspectives other than their own (Professor Bill Scott, Centre for Environmental Education Research, University of Bath

16. Thanks d.bourn@ioe.ac.uk