Capacity-Building Activities
Online Trainings
Self-Paced
The Self-Paced Online Training – SPOT - Introduction to Global Education is an initiation to Global Education concept, its competences, methodological approaches, and resources to support Global Education understanding, practice, monitoring, evaluation and learning. Its structure has been designed to reinforce a practical approach to tackle different aspects of Global Education in a learning or a training context.
The course is accessible at any time in French, English, and Arabic for anyone interested in exploring Global Education. Start today:
Tutored
The Tutored Online Training Courses (TOTC) on Global Education were structured in 4 modules. Primarily asynchronous, participants learned at their own pace while maintaining regularity, especially for self-organised group activities. Synchronous sessions were included to support group work and enhance the learning process. Two tutors guided participants throughout the modules, providing feedback, moderating discussions, offering input, and encouraging reflection on key topics.
The youth-oriented new editions and of these online trainings are now available on the HEY programme page.
Global Education and Media
Media Literacy needs to be considered as a fundamental element for conscious and responsible living in an extreme complex world. Recognising Global Education as a specific field of education aiming at empowering citizens to deal with complexity and interdependency in the global context, Media Literacy needs to be subsequently integrated as pivotal aspect of Global Education, because it provides a lifelong set of skills and competences that enable informed decision-making and respectful interpersonal and intercultural dynamics.
Global Education and Intercultural/Interfaith Dialogue
As a part of a comprehensive approach towards the development of competences for democratic culture, the capacity to engage in intercultural and interfaith dialogue is fundamental: there is an explicit need to explore the nature of the intercultural and interfaith dialogue, its components, the critical knowledge and understanding it requires, the values it represents, the attitudes it expresses, and finally the skills that are associated with it and are needed for its implementation. Global education can fill this gap, adding the value of reflective learning, multiperspectivity and the development of critical thinking as a main goal of the education process. A process which also deals with the challenges posed by the new forms and the new ways of communication, and with the emergence of a generation of digital natives.
Residential Trainings
During a residential training course, participants were involved in an individual and group learning process, holistic and process-oriented, based on experience and action. Through non-formal learning methods such as group and individual work as well as reflections, simulations, role-play games, debates, activities based on creativity, and exchanges among participants, the group addressed the main content of the course and further develop specific competences related to it. Usually, a residential training course includes also a “meta-reflection” dimension on the different pedagogical approaches that support education practitioners in developing values, attitudes, knowledge and skills that enable people to face, understand and tackle the challenges of a growing interconnected world, and to work co-operatively on global issues.
Long-Term Training Course on Global Education and Education for Sustainable Development
1 August 2024 - 28 February 2025
The LTTC on GE and ESD was structured in a blended format, with a part online, a part that foresaw a residential activity, and a third part of practice, when participants implemented their follow-up activities. The online part was based on the SPOT - Introduction to Global Education; the residential training course took place in the framework of the University on Youth and Development 2024; the third phase of the LTTC foresaw a period of follow-up initiatives, when participants had to put in practice what they have learnt during the previous phases, designing, implementing and evaluating a specific local action, focused on one of the main topics of the LTTC, based on the pedagogical approaches explored, and aimed at promoting a multiplier effect at local level.
The LTTC on GE and ESD has been a direct follow up of the results of the Global Education Thematic Seminar 2024, organised on the topic “The benefits of an intercultural and holistic approach to education for sustainable development: a North-South perspective”; it has been also fed with the inputs and reflections coming from the Working Group on the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture and Education for Sustainable Development, coordinated by the Education Department of the Council of Europe.
Final report
Global Education Online Training Course for Youth Multipliers (Online Edition on the HELP Platform)
07-25 March 2022
9th Global Education Training Course for Youth Multipliers
10-14 September 2018, Mollina, Spain
8th Global Education Training Course for Youth Multipliers
16-21 April, 2018 - Cascais, Portugal
7th Global Education and Youth Training Course for Youth Multipliers
18-23 September 2017, CEULAJ, Mollina - Spain
6th Global Education and Youth Training Course for Youth Multipliers
3-8 July 2017, Centre de Loisirs et Vacances pour les Enfants, Hammamet - Tunisia
5th Global Education and Youth Training Course for Youth Multipliers
18-25 September 2016, Mollina - Spain
4th Global Education and Youth Training of Trainers
20-27 September 2015, Mollina - Spain
3rd Global Education and Youth Training of Trainers
21-28 September 2014, Mollina - Spain
The North-South Centre has been supporting formal and non-formal educators, institutional and CSO representatives, and policy-makers to develop specific competences related to global education through a wide offer of Self-Paced and Tutored Online Training Courses, in different languages (English, French Arabic) and on various topics, as Introduction to Global Education, Global Education and Media, Global Education and Intercultural/Interfaith Dialogue; through ad-hoc residential training courses, usually taking place in the framework of the North-South Centre Network of Universities on Youth and Global Citizenship; through the publication of the pedagogical resources, such as the Global Education Guidelines (2019) - a handbook for educators to understand and implement global education, available in English, French, Spanish and Serbian, that introduces a specific methodological approach focused on educators’ competences development, activities implementation, learning measurement and assessment, all in line with the Council of Europe Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture and with the SDGs monitoring process, as well as the Media Literacy for Global Education – Toolkit for Youth Multipliers (2022).
Conceptual and Methodological Framework
The conceptual and methodological framework of the training courses organised by the North-South Centre of the Council of Europe is based on the Global Education Guidelines.
Participants’ learning process focuses on developing competences related to the main topics of each training course: the CoE Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) is the reference in terms of competences.
Principles of Global Education Methodology
- Comprehensive and holistic
- Values based
- Carefully designed — according to the needs of the context and related evaluation
- Practiced within a learner-centred pedagogy
- Designed to develop critical thinking and understanding of diversity
- Problem-oriented
- Participatory in the process and in the goals
- Intentionally directed towards transformative learning
Transformative Learning Process
By separating themes and categorizing subjects, most formal education systems have established hierarchies of knowledge while alternative ways of learning and of exploring knowledge have been depreciated. The detachment created by this process of compartmentalised education did not place the educator nor the learner in a connected world and is one of the main reasons why building bridges to approach, get to know and critically understand self and others has been a daring experience. Global education came to fill this gap, adding the value of reflective learning, multi-perspectivity and the development of critical thinking as a main goal of the education process. A process which also deals with the challenges posed by the new forms and the new ways of communication, and with the emergence of a generation of digital natives.
More About The Transformative Learning Process
Transformative learning through global education, involves a deep structural shift in the basic premises of thought, feelings and actions. It is an education for the mind as well as for the heart. This implies a radical change towards interconnectedness and a real sense of the possibilities and opportunities for creating equality, social justice, understanding and cooperation amongst nations and peoples. Global education, as transformative learning implies problem analysis and participatory decision-making processes at all these stages. The educator and the learner need to be able to critically examine the present reality and facts and explore how to move beyond it. The goal of this kind of learning is to develop connections between people in order to foster mutual knowledge and understanding and a collective self-awareness.
As a transformative and a learner-centred learning process, global education stimulates self-consciousness about the learner’s responsibility as an agent of change within its political, economic, social and cultural environment, and makes the learner, as well as the educator, aware of the impact and the interconnectedness between its local actions and global challenges. This mindfulness offers a way to make changes at local levels to influence the global levels and builds citizenship, with a global perspective, through participatory strategies and methodologies - so people learn by taking responsibilities that cannot be left only to governments and other decision makers.
Transformative learning enables people to shape a common vision for a more just and sustainable world for all. A focus on the kind of future we want is therefore crucial in such a transformative vision. The dream drives the vision in this sense and the collective imagination must contribute to the dream. Global education can contribute to the visioning process, but it can also play a role in the critique of unjust societies as well as in the creation of new methods and strategies where grass-roots movements and non-formal learning approaches are essential as they make room for values and themes which are not central to formal learning and give voice to all peoples, including the marginalised.
By applying the concept of holism, global education affirms the integration and intertwining of all components of a given subject or problem to be studied. It calls for a systematic integration of content and process, employing participatory and problem-oriented pedagogies. When tackling content in the form of problems or questions related to a specific context, global education promotes a broader and more participatory learning about possible solutions and ways to achieve them. It is also learner-centred, based in a pedagogy that develops learners’ autonomy and independence by acknowledging learners’ voice as central to the learning experience. The learning process is reciprocal to educators and learners and facilitates the building of collective knowledge recognising the experiences of all learners involved in the process. Global education explores multi-disciplinary and cross-cutting approaches to address globalised issues and problems in its varied forms, dependent upon contextual conditions, as well as on learners’ and educators’ specific life experience.
Theses onlines courses are supported by Ilegend: a Joint programme of the European Union and the Council of Europe: co-funded by the European Union in the Framework of DEAR Programme and the Council of Europe.
