Global Citizenship

As a partnership, we see global citizenship as part of our framework for learning rather than an additional lesson or subject within our curriculum. Global citizenship inspires children to develop knowledge, skills and attitudes they need to engage with the world. The Oxfam Education resources helped form the foundation of our global citizenship context. Children are given opportunities to think critically about the possible consequences of not being able to access basic needs and then learn how communities around the world are collaborating to resolve these issues.

The Inspire Curriculum provides children with the knowledge, skills and attitudes they require to explore complex and controversial global issues they encounter through the media and their own experiences. It has a critical role to play in equipping a generation with the vision and means to rise to complex challenges that transcend national borders. The Oxfam Curriculum for global citizenship has developed key elements that have shaped our global curriculum.

The intended impact of the global citizenship aspect of the Inspire Curriculum is that learners will:

Be aware of the wider world and have a sense of their own role in the global community
Respect and value diversity in the full sense of the word
Understand how the world works including a geopolitical awareness
Be passionately committed to social justice wherever it is required
Participate in the community at a range of levels from a school level to an international level
Collaborate with others to make the world a fairer and more sustainable world
Take responsibility for their actions

A focus on citizenship within our global curriculum encompasses a wide range of teaching and learning methodologies including discussion and debate, role play, ranking exercises, cause and consequence activities, and lines of enquiry. These approaches used in conjunction with a global perspective, can advance global understanding while fostering depth of learning skills such as critical thinking, questioning, communication and cooperation. They also enable learners to explore, develop and express their own values and opinions, while listening respectfully to others’ viewpoints. This is an important step towards learners making informed choices about how they engage with global issues.

The children were learning about Social Justice and Equity with a focus on homelessness in the community; they titled their learning journey ‘We are the 99%’. They developed the skills of taking informed and reflective action by going out into the community and raising awareness of homelessness and collaborated with local businesses to donate items that the children could use to create ‘Care Packages’ for the homeless.

Children were learning about sustainable development with a focus on water sustainability around the world. The children developed a sense of empathy towards communities that lacked a solution for a sustainable water supply and took part in a local campaign to raise money for a water well in a rural community in Malawi.

Global skills map

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