Feature Article: June/July 2010

Global Competence: Where Do World Languages Fit In?
by Michele Anciaux Aoki, Ph.D., World Languages Program Supervisor, Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. Member of the CCSSO Global Competence Workgroup and member of Partnership for Global Learning.

Over the past decade, a number of leaders in business, education, government, and the non-profit sector have come together to articulate a vision for global education in our country. Much of the impetus for this new-found focus on internationalizing curriculum and preparing students P-20 (preschool to graduate school) for today’s interconnected world has come from funding and advocacy efforts of the Asia Society and the Longview Foundation, beginning with the first States Institute on International Education in 2002 and currently supported by the Partnership for Global Learning, established in 2008.

The notion that our schools and colleges should be preparing students to be “global citizens” has even been adopted as part of the definition of basic education in some states, such as Washington. In 2008, a non-profit organization, Global Washington, published a set of Global Learning Goals for the state – now endorsed by the majority of university and college presidents in Washington, that describe the attributes of a “globally competent” graduate. Clearly, “globalization” has gone mainstream in education.

In 2009, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) launched an innovative project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to develop a new type of assessment system designed to use actual student work to develop a continuum of work that exhibits global competence (see www.edsteps.org). As the workgroup began to meet, they realized that first and foremost they would need a definition of “global competence.” To that end, the workgroup developed a Global Competence Matrix that highlights what students can do when they:
• Investigate the world beyond their immediate environment.
• Recognize their own and others’ perspectives.
• Communicate their ideas effectively and with diverse audiences.
• Translate their ideas and findings into appropriate actions to improve conditions.

When the Global Competence Matrix was first presented to a number of world language leaders, it engendered an interesting response. They felt it did not go far enough in making explicit the requirement for students to study and learn languages beyond English. (But doesn’t investigating the world or recognizing others’ perspectives and communicating to diverse audiences suggest that a person likely has some experience and skill in more than one language? Maybe not.)

And being totally candid with each other, the world language leaders had to admit that even studying another language did not guarantee that a student would develop global competence. It would certainly be possible to simply become narrow-minded in more than one language or to study the language as an academic object of interest without “translating their ideas and findings into appropriate actions to improve conditions.”

So, one definition of global education might be an approach to education that creates opportunities for both teachers and students to demonstrate global competence: “the knowledge, skills, and disposition to understand and act creatively and innovatively on issues of global significance (issues that are global in scope or important local issues that are faced by others in the world).” (EdSteps Global Competence 6/14/2010)

Do world languages fit into that definition? Absolutely, but only when teachers intentionally create those opportunities for learning by helping students to:
• Communicate their ideas effectively and with diverse audiences (including speakers of the target language)
• Recognize their own and others’ perspectives (through understanding and comparing the similarities and differences between their mother language and culture and the world language and culture they are studying)
• Investigate the world beyond their immediate environment (by using all of the critical thinking skills from other disciplines, such as social studies, science, math, and the arts)
• Translate their ideas and findings into appropriate actions to improve conditions (by taking their language skills out into the community and the world, both in person and through technology)

Indeed the Global Competence Matrix aligns well with the 5 C’s (Communication, Culture, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities) of the national Foreign Language Standards. World language teachers who have brought their language classrooms to life through teaching the 5 C’s can be confident that they are also preparing their students to be globally competent.

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