Integrating Social Responsibility And Global Education in to ESL

TeachingBy

Theresia Ndikum

Introduction

• Within the last ten years, there has been an explosion of interest in global issues, global education and social responsibility by the international English teaching profession.

Objectives

• Create an awareness about global education and social responsibility

• Provide a definition for global education• The rationale for global education• The interconnectedness between global

education and language teaching• Explore strategies for integrating social

responsibility and global education into the ESL classroom.

WHAT IS GLOBAL EDUCATION?

• What is our responsibility as language teachers given the serious global issues that face our world?

• Global education is a new approach to language teaching that attempts to answer these questions

Aim

• to enable learners to effectively acquire a foreign or second language while empowering them with the knowledge, skills and commitment required by world citizens to solve global problems.

• Kniep (1985:15) defines Global Education thus• “Global Education consists of efforts

to • bring about changes in the content,• methods and social context of

education• in order to better prepare students for • citizenship in a global age.”

• Fisher and Hicks (1985:8) states that it is

• “Education which promotes the knowledge,

Attitudes and skills relevant to living

• responsibly in a multicultural interdependent world.”

NEW PEDAGOGIC APPROACH

• Designates peace and harmony

• Human rights

• Development

• Environment

• as the four content areas of global education KIP CATES(1998).

• provides teachers with opportunities• to teach learners content, • skills and attitudes that will help them to• become critical thinkers,• cooperative team members,• life long learners, • socially conscious citizens • who think globally and act locally.

• Global education can be used to teach social responsibility, including

• Contributing to the classroom and school community

• Solving problems in peaceful ways

• Valuing and defending human rights and exercising democratic rights and responsibilities.

• Taking authentic action in the real world of problems encountered by students in their studies

• ..• Encouraging students to shape the future in positive ways

through their actions

• These are divided into knowledge, skills, attitudes and action.

• Knowledge about world problems. Learners should know the various problems that the world faces, their causes and viable solutions.

• Acquire skills for solving world problems – Communication, Critical and Creative thinking,

Cooperative problem solving, non-violent and conflict resolution skills.

– Decision making– Ability to see issues from different multiple

perspectives.

• Acquire Global attitudes– global awareness – curiosity– appreciation of other cultures– respect for diversity– commitment to justice– empathy with others

• Action• Democratic participation in the local and

global community to solve world problems.

• Our planet faces serious “global issues” or world problems.

• The world is a global village.

• Attitude of apathy, selfishness and ignorance of many modern young people.

• According to Kip Cates (1989). Opinion polls taken in various countries indicate that many young people have little knowledge of other cultures and care little about the world and its people.

• Current education system: • Young people are not adequately prepared to cope

with global problems.• As Edwin Reischauer (1973) puts it:• “We need a profound reshaping of education …. • Humanity is facing grave difficulties that can

only be solved on a global scale. Education is not moving rapidly enough to provide the knowledge about the outside world and the attitude towards other

• people that may be essential for human survival”.

Why Integrate Social Responsibility and Global Education Into ELT

• Rethinking Aims.The American educator H.D Brown (1990), poses the following

questions on the mission of the profession:• “What are we doing for the earth?• What are we doing to save it?• What are the issues?• And what on earth does this have• to do with you as an ESL teacher?• It has everything to do with you

• “We teachers have a mission, a mission of helping everyone

• in this world communicate with each other to prevent the global

• disaster ahead……..”H D Brown(1990)

MORAL DIMENSION

• Rethinking Aims• fostering a sense of social responsibility in students, • What good is it to teach our students to read • if they only read degrading pornography?

• What good is to teach students to write if they use their knowledge to write racist graffiti?

• • What good is it to teach students arithmetic if they use their

skills only to embezzle?

• What good is it to teach our students ICT skills if they use their knowledge only to scam and propagate internet crime?

•

MORAL DIMENSION

• .The world confederation of organisation of the teaching profession (1989:7) clearly states that its aims include

• the promotion of peace, equality, justice, freedom and human rights among all peoples

UNESCO’S Lingua pax project

• recommendations made to ESL/EFL teachers:• Be aware of their responsibility to further

understanding through their teaching • Increase language teaching effectiveness so

as to enhance mutual respect, peaceful co-existence and cooperation amongst nations.

• Exploit extra-curricular activities such as pen-pal programs, video exchanges and overseas excursions to develop international understanding. etc.

THE NEED TO RETHINK CONTENT

• Content educators such as Brunton, Snow and Wesche (1989) stress that language is a means of learning about the world and recommend the use of motivating themes and authentic materials in classroom teaching

• Design content that informs learners of important world issues

• And challenge them to consider world solutions

aching. In

Wilger M Rivers(1976,p.96)

• “As language teachers we are the most fortunate of teachers …

• All subjects are ours. Whatever the learners want to communicate about

• whatever they want to read about is our subject matter”.

• The communicative approach to SL Instruction emphasizes that languages are best learned by using them to communicate meaning, rather than by focusing on explicit learning of grammar and vocabulary.

• Global education provides a world of content and themes for learners and teachers to choose from.

STRATEGIES FOR INTERGRATING

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY & GLOBAL EDUCATION INTO THE ESL/EFL

CLASSROOM

CONTENT AND MATERIALS

• Include global issues and social responsibility into all aspects of language teaching

• Grammar: study the past present and future of global issues:eg

• Background of environmental pollution• Pollution in your local community today• Future orientd activities to solve these

problems.

Comparatives and Conditional tenses

• Comparatives - can be practised by comparing human rights in different countries or contrasting global inequalities of First World Wealth and Third World Poverty.

• Conditional tenses - you can design exercises to teach students the conditional “if…then” while promoting environmental awareness and social justice.

Conditionals

• If we all recycled paper ,we’d save more trees

• If we all picked up dirt at our school campus, we’d have a clean and beautiful environment.

• If we planted trees round the house we’d shape our homes

• |If we shared our wealth with the needy, we’d reduce poverty in the world etc

Sources of Materials

• Newspapers• Journals• NGOs• Government organisations• Media• Internet• Collaborate with other Language teachers

to creat and share materials

Students Resources

• Students could

• Bring in articles from newspapers, magazines,radio,TV and the web

• Record songs related to global education

• Suggest topics related to events taking place where they live ex:air pollution, landslides, Earth quarkes, floods, waste management etc

Advantages of Learner Created Materials

• Motivated when their level of control and initiative increases

• Materials become more relevant to ss backgrounds and intrests

• Variety and surprises replace materials from the sampe textbook year after year

• Learners gain more insight into their learning• Learnrs become more skilful• Teacing becomes more interesting and ss

participation increases

Methods

• Projects

• Role play

• Simulations

• Cooperative learning

Group Activities

These may include

Writing letters to government on global issues such as human rights abuse

Poor envirinmental policy

Taking part in campaigns o persuade others to participate in environmentally friendly actions

Growing trees and other plants etc

CONCLUSION

• Evidence of Growing interest in global education and social responsibility within the field of English Language education over the past two decades is manifested in the number of global education education and social responsibility special interest groups within major international English Language teaching organisations

• JALT’s(Japan Association of Language Teachers) ’Global Issues in Language Education’ National special interest group-CN-SIG-(1991)

• Global issues SIG within the Korean TESOL organisation(March1995)

• IATEFL’s global Issues SIG( April1995)• TESOL(USA) Social Responsibility

Interest group

THEIR AIMS

• Promote the integration of global issues, global awareness and social responsibility into ESL teaching

• Promote networking and support among educators dealing with global issues in language teachng

• Promote awareness among teachers of developments in global education and the related fields of environmental education, human rights and development education

CAMELTA: THe Way FORWARD

• CAMELTA needs to go on board and join the other national and international orgransations to creat her own global issues and social responsibility Interest group within the association to realise the general goals discussed in this paper

• As the great thinking skills expert, Edward de Bono(1988/8) says

• If something needs doing, then do something about it.

• Don’t just hope that someone else will• What is everyone’s business has to be

someone’s business • Integrating social responsibility and global issus

into ESL in Cameroon is my business. Join me on board .

REFERENES

• See hard copy

WEBSITES

• http://envirolink.org/airs/index.html• http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningengl

ish/downtoearth/index.html• http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com• http://www.freethechildren.com• http://www.citizens4change.org/global/global_e

ducation_home• http://

www.un.org/pubs/cyberschoolbus/indexasp• http://www.esl-lab.com/world/worldscl.html