Global Children

Connecting teachers in the US and Japan to nurture global competence in early childhood

IN: Assessment, Evaluation & Documentation - Civic Engagement - Collaboration & Group Learning - Global & Cultural Understanding - Learning Environments

Overview

The Global Children project brings together a group of early childhood educators in the US and Japan to examine the teaching and learning demands associated with nurturing global competence among children ages 3-5.

We ask: How do children make sense of the world and multiple cultures within and beyond their immediate environments? How to they learn to deploy the many languages of childhood to communicate with children far away? How do children begin to take perspective and expand their universe of care? How do they participate to make a difference in their worlds? How do we as educators deepen our own global competence as we learn to teach about, with and for the world?

Through a dynamic dialog between theory, practice, documentation, and reflection our project examines ideas of inquiry, culture, dialog, empathy, altruism and action as foundational to the development of global competence among the youngest of our citizens.

Our research group is composed by teachers from School within School, a public school in Washington DC, and Poppins’ Nishigotanda, Magome, and PALIS Nursery Schools in Tokyo.