Global Education analyses, debates and creates long-term solutions to social and environmental problems. Solutions that:

• reduce poverty
• connect social and environmental issues locally and globally
• affirm and celebrate cultural diversity
• involve everyone
• seek non-violent resolutions to conflict

Global Education: yesterday and today

In the 1960s development education in the West was concerned with raising awareness of poverty in the "Third World". Aid organisations, church groups and many concerned individuals hoped such education would build political support for increasing the amount of overseas aid to countries in Africa, Asia and in Latin America.

Today, development education cuts much deeper. It is now called global education and it emphasises the interdependence of our world - the links that exist between environmental degradation, poverty, human rights and the economic and political structures here in Australia and internationally. It stresses the need for economic, political and social change in all societies, to create a just, peaceful and sustainable world.

Global Education is about...

• Global concerns
  Global Education is about recognising that we live in an interdependent world. It aims to develop an understanding of the interacting factors that cause poverty, injustice, inhumanity, conflict and environmental abuse in our own country and internationally.
  

• Relationships of power
  Global Education analyses how power is exercised locally and globally, and provides strategies for empowering individuals and communities. It promotes inquiry into prejudice and discrimination, such as racism and sexism.
  

• Critical awareness
  Global education fosters critical awareness of our own and other societies and cultures. It is a search for alternative views, experiences and methods that acknowledge equality of people within and between nations.
  

• Participation
  Global education develops the skills, values and attitudes that lead to a commitment to act for change. It encourages action to preserve and fairly distribute the earth's resources and to create a more just society, locally and globally.
  
  (Margaret Calder and Roger Smith, A Better World for All; Development Education in the Classroom, Canberra, AGPS, 1991 (Book 1, Teacher's Notes, p. 17)

Global Perspectives: A framework for global education in Australian Schools was released in 2008 and builds on Global Perspectives: A statement on global education for Australian Schools which was first published in 2002. The document provides a useful grounding in the scope and approach to Global Education for Australian teachers and Schools. More information about the document can be found at the Global Education website.

© 2009 - Global Learning Centre