Education

Global competence development depends on many personal factors such as engagement, education, exposure, and experience. As each individual has different upbringing, personal motivation, and growth opportunities, the timeline for global competence development varies from person to person. Therefore, it is incorrect to assume that global competence is automatically attained by a particular age or by simply reaching an educational milestone, unless there have been significant supporting developmental interventions.

As presented in the Global Competence Model™, the construct of “global competence” requires a complete and unique combination of attitudes, knowledge about major cultures around the world, and sophisticated interpersonal skills. While students in grades K-8 may have begun to develop their Internal Readiness, they are deficient in most, if not all, of External Readiness.

While it is imperative to start the path towards global competence development in K-12 students, namely through globalized coursework, global competence will NOT be fully achieved at the completion of secondary school (high school). Secondary school students are only starting to develop the high order interpersonal skills that global competence requires. During maturity through young adulthood and far beyond, individuals further develop critical cross-cultural interpersonal skills after significant life experience.

While it may be tempting to try to measure global competence in the primary or middle school years, for the reasons outlined above, it is not appropriate or principled. The youngest students that can be rightfully measured are either graduating 8th graders or rising 9th graders, simply for the purpose of establishing a development baseline before they embark on a globalized secondary education curriculum. Students can be reassessed in 12th grade to determine growth and knowledge acquisition associated with the current curriculum and programming options.

Our organization has been asked countless times over the years to create a global competence assessment for K-8 students. For ethical reasons, we have decided that it was not appropriate. As the worldwide standard bearers for the topic, we concluded that if all eight dimensions of “global competence” could not be measured (due to maturity), then we would not be actually measuring “global competence.” Choosing to assess only certain dimensions of the construct is NOT assessing “global competence;” such a subset becomes some other term or idea, such as global education or global learning.

Syphoning off only specific dimensions of interest is not only doing a disservice to the term and, therefore, diluting the intention and meaning of “global competence,” but it also causes confusion and conflicts with the needs of downstream stakeholders, such as higher education and the workforce.

In order to achieve success, it is important to develop and formally measure global competence beginning at the secondary educational level, extending into the post-secondary education years, and at key points in one’s professional life. Most institutions evaluate student learning outcomes related to global competence by assessing a control group compared with treatment groups. Another common practice is pre-testing students at the beginning of a curriculum or program, then post-testing students at its conclusion. Such understanding about an individual’s or cohort’s growth towards global competence can assist in identifying areas for personal goal setting and in addressing remaining opportunities for improvement, as well as curricular or programmatic enhancement opportunities.