According to Landorf, H., & Doscher, S. P. (2015), Global Learning is defined as the process of diverse people collaboratively analysing and addressing complex problems that transcend borders.

It is described as an approach to learning about international development through recognising the importance of linking people’s lives throughout the world. Schools participating in global learning recognise the impact that knowledge and understanding of development can bring to students’ learning across the curriculum.

Global learning supports the long-term development and success of learners, by enhancing their critical thinking skills and boosting their relationships with peers. Implementing a global element into teaching across the curriculum can help the education system to:

• Develop a richer and more interesting curriculum.
• Use the real-world contexts to inspire and engage learners.
• Support the raising standards.
• Help the learners to make sense of the world in which they live and to understand their role within a global society.
• Develop an ethos encouraging empathy, fairness, and respect.

Global learning can help learners gain additional knowledge about the developing world, the reasons behind poverty, and the actions required to minimise it. It can also help them develop the skills to interpret that knowledge in order to make judgements about global poverty. This, in turn, helps the learners to better understand their role in a globally-interdependent world and to explore strategies by which they can make it more just and sustainable; move from a charity mentality to a social justice mentality; and explore alternative models of development and sustainability.

According to Terry Heick, the process of globalization is simply a complete illumination of the planet through the interdependent illumination of the local. Here “local” is simply the opposite of “global,” referencing individuals (“selfs”), families, neighbourhoods, communities, and so on in a ripple outward, in a spectrum ranging from available intimate knowledge to mere vague familiarity to outright reductionism in the form of categories, demographics, and “policies.”

A takeaway then could be to grasp a new kind of respect for the scale of truly global learning so that the appropriate kind of thinking to responsibly pursue global learning can be done.

For more information, refer to https://www.aacu.org/global-learning/definitions and https://www.globallearningni.com/.