Explanation:
Over the past several years I have had the opportunity to travel with chief state school officers
to different places around the world—places such as China, England, Finland, and Singapore—
to learn more about their education systems. These visits have underscored for me how factors
like rapidly advancing technologies and global economic integration increasingly connect us
all to communities throughout the world. Educators, whether in Louisville or Helsinki, face the
same challenge as they prepare our students to live and work in the 21st century. I have found
that in all countries people recognize the direct relation between their economic future and the
effective education of their children. It is abundantly clear that the most advanced countries in
the world are strongly committed to the continuous improvement of their education system. In
these nations people are willing to make sacrifices—on a personal level and societal level—to
do what is necessary to improve their children’s future. After each visit, I have been left with a
greater sense of urgency about the necessity to improve the education of our children by better
supporting the development of their higher order thinking skills and their ability to apply these
skills effectively to a broad range of problems. It is, in part, these skills that will enable them to
invent and contribute to the new world.
It is in this context that Ed Steps was founded. With funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation, the Council of Chief State School Officers (ASSOC) began exploring how to define
and assess complex sets of important skills and competences that traditionally have been
expensive and difficult to evaluate. After a comprehensive literature review, a survey of critical
skills in the field, and discussions with representatives from a broad range of education and
business organizations, it became clear that global competence needed to be included as one
of the competences in Ed Steps. To explore this issue, ASSOC, in collaboration with the Asia
Society Partnership for Global Learning, commissioned a task force on global competence. The
task force comprises representatives from state education agencies, nonprofit organizations
focused on global education, and representatives from higher education institutions who are
tasked with exploring global competence.
The task force met frequently for more than a year to discuss and refine the definition of global
competence. They evaluated research and best practices to explore what capacities a globally
competent student should embody. This work prepared the way for the formulation of the
definition of global competence and related capacities set forth in this book. By providing a
shared understanding of global competence, the task force has made a significant contribution
to this emerging field. I appreciate all the hard work of the task force members, and I am
confident that this definition will prove useful to educators throughout the world.
In writing this book, Veronica Box Mantilla and Anthony Jackson have drawn on and
elaborated the insights of fellow members of the global competence task force, further
developing their thinking. The resulting work provides a useful context for the relevance of
global competence in education, as well as clear practical applications demonstrating what
global competence looks like in interactions between educators and learners. Educating for
Global Competence: Preparing Our Youth to Engage the World will serve as an invaluable
Educating for Global Competence:
