Proceedings of the International Social Sciences and Humanities Conference
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Globalization and Education: Self-Evaluation of Teacher Candidates and Primary Education Teachers’ Competences for Teaching about Global Issues
Zdenko Braičić
ABSTRACT:
Even though in recent past education was strictly a national issue, nowadays national education policies are influenced by the events on global scale. The term global education policy (GEP) includes ‘global education agendas’ which result in implementation of similar education reforms round the world. Global discourses which play an important role in shaping national education policies are lifelong learning, learning foreign languages, knowledge economy, sustainable development, civics, cultural pluralism etc. Education programmes for teachers ought to be synchronized with the principles of global education in order to prepare them for teaching on global problems thereby contributing to creation of ‘global citizens’. The aim of the research is to determine how teacher candidates (university students) and primary education teachers evaluate their own competences for teaching about global issues. The survey was conducted in 2024 on a sample of 199 respondents from Croatia. The respondents mainly perceive themselves as competent to teach about human rights, inequalities around the world and world peace. The lack of competence is noticed when teaching about contemporary migrations, and to some extent, energy and climate change is concerned. The non-parametric Mann-Whitney test was used to determine statistically significant differences between the attitudes of the two groups of respondents.
keywords: global education policy, global issues, teacher candidates, teachers, teaching competencies