My Global Evolution
Learning about global education was such an inspiring journey for me. It will help me formalize some of what is already a passion for me, but it also helped me learn about things I hadn’t even considered could be an aspect of librarianship and teaching. For example, I already work with several DEI initiatives and committees that help bring different perspectives, cultures and backgrounds into different parts of education, but I never considered actually connecting students via Zoom or other means to people around the world.
In particular, I have begun to consider how the 4 C’s (or 6!) can be incorporated and why that’s important. There is one institution in particular that I wish I could recreate as a library:
In particular, they have an entire Center for Civic Engagement lounge/classroom in the library. There are library communities devoted to problem-solving global issues, civic issues, and more. There are rooms for designing, telepresence rooms, and more. At the beginning of the video, there’s an image on the large screen in the lobby that shows where people are from.
I think what I found most inspiring about global education is how much room it has for empathy and collaboration. It’s a creative and worthy effort for our future populations. I also liked that it isn’t just about people; it’s about the environment and the future and how we can support the world around us, not just ourselves.
Global Connections
The Global Connections I found most valuable were the ones I made on a local level (to get started). I found that while through my observations, teachers seemed very communicative through means such as Twitter, I was not having the same luck with librarians, and since I do not use some social media such as Facebook, I am probably missing out in some great online communities. However, I am hopeful that my local connections will help me start branching out nationally and then globally, building my own little web of global librarians!
One of the books I have been reading on this topic has some tips regarding how I should present myself in order to join or create global networks, which I may need to work on:
“Be respectful but do not be shy.
Try to establish a cooperative connection and avoid being perceived as patronizing.
Leaders of international library development initiatives need to question what they bring to developing countries as outsiders.
Collective negotiation of timelines and schedules necessitates a calm approach, sensitivity, and flexibility (Constantinou et al., 2017).”
There were also a lot of resources I learned about this semester, such as the UN’s 17 sustainable global goals. Knowing about these resources is a great place to get started in building my own toolkit.
My Plan
I am planning to continue learning to be a global educator (and global learner) through library programming and networking. Through library school, conferences, webinars, and more, I have met and kept contact with librarians around the country (and even one currently practicing librarianship in China). My hope is that I can leverage these connections to pick their brains for more ideas and collaborations. Through my readings, I’m learning more about the technical and practical skills I will need to make the most of these connections, outlined in part above.
In researching how libraries can support global education, one of my big takeaways is that it largely requires cross-institutional work, or “boundary crossing.” One project in particular that drew on this used students and teachers to help the library form global library exhibits. According to Hickling-Hudson and Hepple (2020), this is part of a new field called “public pedagogy.” This is not the only way librarians can become involved, but it is a good place to start to bring multiple institutions together to help the public embrace global themes.
There are several instructors who work with their students on research for topics in different countries. I will contact them this year to see if we can display the student work outside the library in line with public pedagogy. Some of the research papers may not draw in attention, but one instructor in particular has a project regarding propaganda in different countries that I think could make an interesting and visually magnetic display.
Less concretely, I am looking into memberships that could assist the library in obtaining global resources. Back in the 1990s when the internet was becoming the electronic universe it is today, experts were examining how to support the “global village” it was creating. They found that education and library services might be at the core of this, especially in creating on- and off-ramps for all of the information available (Ballard, 1995). One of my favorite quotes about this is “A GVS (global village school) is a community of learners, not a place.” Ballard describes global education as preparing students to see connections between themselves and “their counterparts in other countries” and how that can lead to cooperation in the future.
Ballard (1995) also suggests that library’s are core to global education as opening electronic doorways to information and providing electronic access to databases and other digital resources. To that end, resources I already have access to that I will market to faculty through semesterly newsletters include our HeinOnline database which has a library of global constitutions, and Global Issues in Context which explores news and issues (both historical and current) around the world.
In particular, I am interested in the Centre for Global Education (centered in Northern Ireland) which includes a library of books, research, videos, music, articles, and more. This organization also has access to classroom support resources. The current issue is that I believe many of these resources are available in print only so I need to find a corresponding organization with either a larger amount of digital resources or something more local.
References
Ballard, D. W. (1995). The role of libraries in the global village. Library Software Review, 14(3).
Canstantinou, C., Miller, M. J., & Schlesinger, K. (2017). International librarianship: Developing professional, intercultural, and educational leadership. Suny Press.
Hickling-Hudson, A., & Hepple, E. (2020). Crossing the boundaries of imagination: The role of a public library exhibition in global learning for student teachers and teacher educators. Teaching and Teacher Education, 90(102916). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2019.102916
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