Global Citizenship Via Distance Learning: SEL & Culture While Connecting with International Peers

Purpose & objective

The purpose of this presentation is to share best practices with participants that educate learners at the crossover of social-emotional, cultural and technical skills focusing on the theme of identity/identities. The model that we have used since 2008 is based on spiralling of knowledge and skills, and using the social-emotional and cultural competencies to scaffold digital competencies including responsible digital citizenship. We will walk participants through the process and scaffolded and spiralled unit activities from grades 5, 6, 7 and 8 will be shared with participants.

Outline

Learning outcomes / Pre-test: (3 min)
At the end of this workshop presentation, you will be able to adapt and apply best practices designing lessons and activities in teaching global citizenship using social-emotional, cultural, linguistic and technological competencies in a digital, distance learning classroom.
When you think of “teaching culture,”, what do you think of?
What is culture?

Intro: (7 minutes)
When pressed to define “culture”, well, what exactly is it? What are best practices for teaching culture in the classroom?
Our context:
- Supplementary English as a second language classes.
- Digital learning classrooms with teachers Zooming in from the US to classrooms in grades 5-8, private school in Taiwan.
- Class sizes range from 22-45. Co-teacher is physically present for support in the Taiwanese classroom.
Our exploration:
- Re-visioning our curriculum led us to really need to define this “culture” thing we’re claiming to teach. It’s such a fuzzy topic – it encompasses so many different things. We wanted to ensure that we were not just leaning on things like food stereotypes to teach culture (Japanese eat sushi, Americans eat hamburgers etc.)
- Eventually we arrived at a definition of culture which includes building a global world view that raises awareness of different perspectives, different contexts and the frameworks that bring us all together
- We used the Oxfam Global Citizenship to help guide our revision process. in this revision. This Oxfam curriculum is written as a supplementary curriculum for K-12 classrooms in the UK. We chose to use this curriculum as a jumping off point for developing our own because it focuses on knowledge, skills and values across a number of different curriculum areas that help to foster global citizenship
- We also use the CASEL framework for social emotional learning that works nicely with the Oxfam Global Citizenship curriculum to help us create a framework for our curriculum needs
- The Common European Framework of Reference was also a reference in guiding the process, as well (specifically related to SEL, e.g. by breaking out functions like “language to negotiate” and other language interactions that facilitate relationship skills and responsible decision making)
- The ISTE student standards were used as a basis for digital competencies in our 1:1 whole group blended learning / distance learning classroom.

Challenges: (5 minutes)
Sounds great so far - but nothing is without its challenges - and of course, we had some challenges to keep in mind!
Considerations for ELLs:
o age appropriateness vs. linguistic ability - needing to be able to demonstrate competency in English meant that sometimes the age appropriate goals were unattainable, and so we needed to revise and make sure that scaffolding ran throughout
o teaching the functional language to be able to achieve cultural goals in an appropriate way (for example, if you’re working on things like learning to compromise, there’s specific types of language (softening phrases, summarizing language, polite suggestion) that can be used to facilitate this, but if learners aren’t aware of the language types to use, they may end up working at cross-purposes by coming across as deman
ding, rude or uncooperative)
o cultural context of learnersBest practices:

Development of skills statements that spiral (10 minutes)
Present examples of skills statements that spiral/scaffolding - keeping in mind that students are ELLs and that they must be able to actually demonstrate their skills and understanding in English .
Present skills statements in raw form to participants - how to adapt to their classroom considerations like age group, culture, administrative red tape, etc.?
Developing projects (10 minutes)
How to develop projects that build skills in all areas, developing the scaffolds for the projects being mindful of the skills statements (what order, how, what is prioritized?)
o use the same skills statements for G5 -G8 and show projects for those statements
o adapt the working docs that show what questions need to be asked for each project and the working docs that show what is being asked of the lesson developers (distribute the handy checklist for unit projects)
o use examples of at least 2 projects that have spiraled skills statements across different grades (project outlines, not materials)
o give away a project in this part (the idea, outline and some materials) to show the scaffolds and how SEL specifically is built into different areas of the competencies
o use the strand that ends in gender issues and upstander/bystander (G8)
issues of teaching cultural issues (prejudice, etc.), building in cultural considerations
ask participants to look at the sprialling skills statements and get them to work in pairs or small groups to develop their own sprialling activites

Application (20 minutes)
Present a scenario for participants based on the above factors and have them brainstorm and share project ideas that teach global citizenship using social-emotional, cultural, linguistic and technological competencies

Q & A (5 minutes)

Supporting research

Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. Edited by David Buckingham https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/26085/1004001.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Digital identities: Tracing the implications for learners and learning. Edited by Sonia Livingstone.
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/33825/1/Digital_identities.pdf

Education for Global Citizenship. Oxfam GB.
https://www.oxfam.org.uk/~/media/Files/Education/Global%20Citizenship/Global_Citizenship_Schools_WEB.ashx

Fostering Global Citizenship Across Content Areas 2016
https://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/2138

Global Citizenship & the Crises of Multiculturalism 2016
M. Tarozzi & C.A. Torres -- interesting because it discusses multiculturalism, interculturalism (E.U.) and globalism