We are delighted to share this link to a free, Open Access book, just published by Fernando Reimers, the Ford Foundation Professor of the Practice of International Education, and Director of the Global Education Innovation Initiative and of the International Education Policy Masters Program at Harvard University. The book explains how to reform education systems so they educate all students as global citizens, with the necessary competencies to achieve the UN SDGs. Today more necessary than ever.
To access the book please click here ‘Educating Students to Improve the World’
About this Book
This open access book addresses how to help students find purpose in a rapidly changing world. In a probing and visionary analysis of the field of global education Fernando Reimers explains how to lead the transformation of schools and school systems in order to more effectively prepare students to address today’s’ most urgent challenges and to invent a better future. Offering a comprehensive and multidimensional framework for designing and implementing a global education program that combines cultural, psychological, professional, institutional and political perspectives the book integrates an extensive body of empirical literature on the practice of global education. It discusses several global citizenship curricula that have been adopted by schools and school networks, and ties them into an approach to lead school change into the uncharted territory of the future. Given its scope, the book will help teachers, school and district leaders tackle the change management needed in order to introduce global education, and more generally increase the relevancy of education. In addition, the book offers a “bridge” for more productive collaboration and communication between those who lead the process of educational change, and those who study and theorize this important work.
At a time when the urgency of our shared global challenges calls for more understanding and collaboration and when the rapid transformation of societies requires that we help students develop a clear sense of relevancy and purpose, this book offers a way to pursue deep and sustainable change in instruction and school culture, so that students learn that nothing human is foreign and that they can find meaning in lives aligned with audacious purposes to make the world better.
Table of contents (8 chapters)
- Five Eyes to Educate Global Citizens. The Need for a Useful Theory of Global Education
- What Is Global Education and Why Does It Matter?
- A Cultural Perspective and Global Education
- A Psychological Perspective and Global Education
- A Professional Perspective and Global Education
‘Educating Students to Improve the World’ “offers a blueprint to prepare students to find meaning and relevance in a rapidly changing world, equipping them with the skills to invent the future. Brings together scholarly work and literature that supports practical approaches to empowering students as global citizens. Proposes a comprehensive framework for planning and implementing global education programs that combines the five core dimensions of lasting educational change: culture, psychology, profession, institutions and politics. Offers a rich framework integrating an extensive review of empirical literature on the practice of global education to help leaders manage the complexity of educational change to align instruction with today’s most urgent challenges. Easily navigates between the worlds of scholarship and practice, illustrating core theoretical ideas with concrete examples of curriculum and teacher development in global education.”
