Global education brings educational relevance to the foreign language classroom through meaningful content based on real-world topics and global issues, including the climate crisis and ongoing violent conflicts. With its focus on languages and different cultures and perspectives, the foreign language classroom can be an appropriate background for fostering global awareness.
This seminar offers participants the opportunity to experience a small-scale virtual exchange in an English as a lingua franca environment hands-on. Together with international student teachers*, we will discuss global issues, didactic approaches, and media (both fictional and non-fictional) in order to develop complex competence tasks. In the process, we will explore how the English language classroom may support the development of ambiguity tolerance and the role that controversial issues can play as didactic tools. Taken together, we will investigate what it takes to engage in critical global education.
*The online exchange partners will be introduced in the beginning of the course. If you sign up for this course, be prepared to check your emails regularly before the start of the semester. We will likely share important information to help you prepare for the exchange experience ahead of time.
Reading: Compulsory and additional reading material as well as a topic overview and schedule will be announced in the first session.
Course requirements: written reflection entries & a short term paper
