The Emerald Handbook on Teaching Global Competencies

Globalization in the 21st century is generating enormous problems and opportunities that demand stronger, more holistic and visionary education. Unfortunately, most education systems in the world today are strongly influenced by narrow-minded, shortsighted, rigid thinking that emerges from sociocultural and economic dogmatism. Fortunately, this handbook pushes back hard against that dogmatism by producing a holistic perspective on 21st-century education. The editor and contributing authors use impressive creativity, interdisciplinary thinking, and diverse perspectives to produce very promising ideas and strategies that can improve education systems, and ultimately the world. This volume launches us forward into a highly productive, ethical 21st-century vision of education and learning.

-- Dr. Donald Ambrose, Rider University, New Jersey, United States

The Emerald Handbook on Teaching Global Competencies is a significant and well crafted contribution to the field. The volume addresses central themes such as emotional and social intelligence, creative problem solving, interdisciplinary thinking, and global awareness in a concrete and practice oriented manner. The inclusion of transcultural perspectives and Indigenous knowledge gives the book an important breadth and situates global competencies within diverse cultural and educational contexts.

As a professor of History Didactics, I particularly value the handbook’s analytical approach to how learners develop the capacity to understand perspectives, handle complexity, and engage constructively with global challenges. Through case studies, empirical research, and innovative pedagogies, the contributors demonstrate how multimodal and lifelong learning environments can build competencies that help learners bridge cultural divides, strengthen community participation, and support sustainable development.

This is a thoughtful and relevant resource for educators, teacher educators, and researchers who seek practical tools as well as deeper theoretical grounding. I recommend it with confidence.

-- Professor Jan Frode Hatlen, NTNU – The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

In this terrible world scenario in which might is portrayed as right, wreaking carnage all over, each time gunning down "the Bird that makes the breeze to blow", we constantly require voices of sanity which exalt what the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge called the 'one life'. It represents a clarion call to value our cosmic connectedness. Education, though never an independent variable, is indispensable to render these voices audible and, more importantly, heeded by one and all. They reverberate throughout this painstakingly crafted volume. Let them not be cries in the wilderness. They furnish us with insights for a redemptive education nurturing relational beings, relational with all species beings.

-- Peter Mayo, Professor, UNESCO co-Chair Global Adult Education, University of Malta

The Emerald Handbook on Teaching Global Competencies is an essential resource for educators, researchers, and practitioners who see promise and possibility in today’s sociopolitical landscape. Expertly edited by Dr. Karen Magro, this multifaceted volume not only unpacks the dimensions of global competencies but also underscores the vital need for multiliteracies, creativity, cultural inclusion, critical thinking, and empathy in the classroom and beyond. In a time of deep division, The Handbook offers a compelling roadmap for those committed to embracing our interdependence and co-creating a more just and inclusive world.

-- Jaye Jones, PhD, City University of New York, PhD CUNY, United States

Education has the power to transform individuals and communities - nowhere is this better explored than in this book. The book argues powerfully for education that develops global citizens with global competencies who understand issues such as human rights, sustainability and cultural diversity. Moreover, the book emphasises the imperative to develop an educational approach that transforms us from global conflicts to respect for inclusion, equity and creation.

Through five themed sections, the reader is taken through exploration of local and global issues that impact on education; creativity and critical thinking; emotional and social intelligence; multiliteracies and transcultural issues such as inclusion. The text draws on a wide range of ways of knowing, including scientific and indigenous approaches, that each shape understandings of the world around us and our relationships with each other and our planet. It is a journey of learning that is values-based in its exploration of theoretical and practical aspects of education. Most importantly, it offers hope though new ways of co-existing in and with our world and this has to matter to all of us!

-- Charlotte L. Clarke, Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Health) and Executive Director of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health & Wellbeing, Durham University