Education for global citizenship “means embracing a more holistic view of what kind of skills and attitudes are needed in our world today. While skills for jobs are important, so are skills for living together”.The purpose of this part is to clarify the meaning of global citizenship education by understanding its goals and its core conceptual dimensions.
Goals of global citizenship education: The aim of global citizenship education is to enable students to participate and have active roles locally and globally. Also, it supports the learners with skills that help them to face and solve global challenges and become active contributors to the sustainable world. Moreover, global citizenship education provides students with the capability to understand their rights and responsibilities to promote a better future.
Core conceptual dimensions of global citizenship education: Global citizenship education provides the learners with the capability of gaining knowledge about specific global issues and appreciating key general values like human rights, diversity and democracy. The core conceptual dimensions can be divided into the following: Cognitive, socioemotional and behavioral, which are explained below:
Cognitive: To acquire knowledge, understanding and critical thinking about global, regional, national and local issues and the interconnectedness and interdependency of different countries and populations.
Socio-emotional: To have a sense of belonging to common humanity, sharing values and responsibilities, empathy, solidarity and respect for differences and diversity.
Behavioral: To act effectively and responsibly at local, national and global levels for a more peaceful and sustainable world.
The concept of global citizenship education in this study is the education that provides the students with cognitive skills that help them to be creative, innovative, problem solvers and decision makers, and non-cognitive skills like openness to experiences and interacting with people of different origins and backgrounds. Also, it encourages the learners to engage in proactive actions.
Montessori’s methods help in an indirect way in reinforcing teaching global citizenship education through living out the values by fostering critical and independent thoughts that provide a manner of awareness and developing imagination by allowing children to go for their curiosity that contributes in solving the common problems.
Education plays a significant role in the growth of a child. Therefore, parents should focus on providing high quality education to their children for ensuring a bright career. Montessori education involves unique approaches that help to improve the skills of a child. It provides methods for nourishing the abilities naturally to witness major changes. This system creates opportunities for a child to learn on his/her own with freedom of choice. Besides education, children will be allowed to motivate themselves with a variety of materials for gaining more benefits.
Anyone who wants to improve the talents of their child can choose it for reaching next levels in life. It also shows ways for developing leadership, decision making and other skills to become a responsible citizen in the society. A child can be able to increase self-confidence and self-esteem levels in this education for knowing the responsibilities. Another advantage is that it makes feasible ways for augmenting intellectual, physical and cultural abilities to a greater extent. Montessori education emphasizes more on respecting others, tolerance, concern for others and working with the communities.
21st century skills
The 21st century skills are the skills that are needed for the students to compete in the work field. Due to the change in the economy, technology and job types, there has been a shift in the essential skills that are needed for the work field. They moved from manufacturing skills to information and knowledge skills. Education is considered the main tool that provides people with the skills that help them in meeting these challenges. The 21st century skills are divided into learning skills and career skills. The learning skills are defined as the ability of communicate, collaborate, critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity and innovation. Career skills are defined as the ability of individuals to work effectively with different teams, and social and cross-culture skills. The methods that facilitate providing the students with these skills are the following: project-based learning, problem-based learning, and design-based learning. Unfortunately, these skills are not recognized by traditional educational assessments that are based on memorization. While 21st century skills are important in improving economic competitiveness.
The 21st century skills include the skills that this study is looking for, which are critical thinking, problem-solving, global and local citizenship, decision making and personal and local responsibilities. These skills are the skills that this study is investigating and which Montessori education is providing children with and education for sustainable development and global citizenship education are calling for.
The 21st Century skills and Montessori Education
The 21st century skills include critical thinking, problem solving, global and local citizenship, decision making and personal and local responsibilities. These skills are related in Montessori Schools in Bangalore Education. Looking at the skills that Montessori education develops at an early age, it can be seen that critical thinking is one of them. The child through exposure to new materials and trying to learn how to use them develop critical thinking skills. Problem solving skills are also achieved when the child tries to use the materials within the Montessori method. Global and local citizenship, as discussed earlier in the global citizenship education system, is related to Montessori education. Decision making is a cornerstone of the Montessori method because, as presented earlier, the child is left to do his own things and this helps in developing decision-making skills in deciding what, how and when to do things. Having personal and local responsibilities is the tying point between 21st century skills, ESD and Montessori. A child who learns to take care of the environment and think in a sustainable manner, will have personal and local responsibility. To sum, the 21st century skills are part of the Montessori education, ESD and GCED.
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