Table Of ContentUNDERSTANDING
GLOBAL SKILLS
FOR 21ST CENTURY
PROFESSIONS
Douglas Bourn
Understanding Global Skills for 21st Century
Professions
“This book presents a comprehensive study of the need of global skills to meet
the challenges of globalisation. It moves the discussion forward from ‘lumping’
global skills in with 21st Century skills and makes the case for why this is a criti-
cal issue for universities and colleges.”
—John Mountford, Head of International Development, Semta, UK
“As someone who works in a widening participation university with collabora-
tive partners across the world, I am interested in equipping all students with
global skills to effect global social change, not just pay lip service to marketable
skills on paper. Professor Bourn’s readable but scholarly book inspires me to
challenge my own perception of what constitutes a 21st Century skills agenda,
so that I can apply this to curriculum design and partnership operation; my
students will have a better chance of being skilled, critical and transformative.”
—Claire Aindow, Academic Co-ordinator – Standards, Enhancement and the
Learner Experience, University of Bolton, UK
“This book is a successful attempt to systemise various approaches to definition
and classification of the one of the most demanded and valuable skills, so called
21st century skills. This book also specifies differences and similarities between
often substituted and confused terms such as soft skills, employability skills,
global skills and 21st century skills. What I found especially valuable from prac-
tical point of view is that the author goes even beyond generic examples of those
skills and gives suggestions on what are those skills in four professional areas:
teaching, engineering, medicine and business.”
—Dr. Miroslava Dmitrieva, German Chancellor Fellow for Prospective Leaders
Douglas Bourn
Understanding
Global Skills for 21st
Century Professions
Douglas Bourn
Development Education Research Centre
University College London
London, UK
ISBN 978-3-319-97654-9 ISBN 978-3-319-97655-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97655-6
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Preface
The idea for this volume grew out of discussions with students on my
Masters programme in development education and global learning,
where the term ‘global skills’ features as one of the themes for an activity
in a core module on Globalisation. Students have used some of my earlier
thinking on global skills as the basis for their essays and dissertations.
Being increasingly uncomfortable about what I had written on this
subject over a decade ago, I felt there was a need to re-visit the area, par-
ticularly in the light of international discussions on global competencies,
21st century skills and global citizenship.
My engagement in the debates on global skills began in 2008 when I
produced two reports, with colleagues (Bourn 2008; Bentall et al. 2009),
for the Centre for Excellence (CEL) and its successor organisation, the
Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS) on what the concept
might mean within further and vocational education in the UK. These
reports, based on research and evidence from a range of further education
and training providers, outlined a potential conceptual framework for
global skills. They also showed that at that time in England there were
opportunities and good examples of practice that demonstrated how
global skills could be seen as part of the curriculum in a range of further
education colleges.
Research was also undertaken within the engineering profession in
terms of what companies were looking for in the skills of graduates. This
v
vi Preface
research (Bourn and Neal 2008; Bourn and Sharma 2008; Bourn and
Shiel 2009; Blum and Bourn 2011) showed that many companies were
looking for graduates who were culturally sensitive, who understood the
impact of engineering on the environment and on societies, were pre-
pared to have some form of global social responsibility and to have the
skills to look at issues from a range of perspectives.
I further developed my thinking in this area in Bourn (2011). This
article aimed to locate the debates and practices around global skills
within three distinct thematic areas:
– skills for work in a global economy;
– skills to engage people from different cultures;
– skills for making sense of and engaging with the globalised world.
This separation into three distinct themes mirrored broader debates
that have taken place around global education and global citizenship edu-
cation in terms of an economic or neo-liberal interpretation, a broader
cosmopolitan or humanistic approach, and a postcolonial or critical ped-
agogical perspective. These themes are developed further in later
chapters.
More recently, in my volume on Theory and Practice of Development
Education (Bourn 2015: 146), I suggested that a framework for global
skills needs to include:
– understanding what globalisation means, particularly in relation to
planned or current areas of employment;
– ability to understand and engage with global challenges, such as cli-
mate change and poverty, to be a more informed and engaged citizen;
– development of skills to understand and respect a range of cultures and
values, and ability to reflect critically upon one’s own values base.
My focus then was primarily on the formal and school-based educa-
tion sectors, and there was not space in that volume to develop my think-
ing further. My work in the field of development education and global
learning had tended to make passing reference to ‘skills’ without investi-
gating to any degree of depth the relevance and importance of the term
Preface vii
within the discourses and practices in equipping learners to make sense of
the globalised world in which they live.
This volume aims to build on my own theoretical perspectives of devel-
opment education and global learning. There has to date been no major
academic publication proposing a distinctive pedagogical approach based
on the concept of global skills. This volume aims to start the process of
encouraging a debate on global skills and how they can be reflected within
professions. For it is areas such as teaching, health, business management
and engineering, outlined here, that can, by including global skills in
their professional development, help equip societies and economies to
respond to the challenges that globalisation brings.
London, UK Douglas Bourn
References
Bentall, C., Blum, N., & Bourn, D. (2010). Learning and Skills for a Global
Economy. Coventry: Learning and Skills Improvement Service.
Blum, N., & Bourn, D. (2011). Global Perspective for Global Professions in the
UK, Engaging Students Within Engineering and Health. Compare, 43(1),
37–55.
Bourn, D. (2008). Global Skills. London: Centre for Excellence in Leadership.
Bourn, D. (2011). Global Skills: From Economic Competitiveness to Cultural
Understanding and Critical Pedagogy. Critical Literacy: Theories and Practices,
6(1), 3–20.
Bourn, D. (2015). The Theory and Practice of Development Education. Abingdon:
Routledge.
Bourn, D., Mackenzie, A., & Shiel, C. (eds.) (2006). The Global University.
London: DEA.
Bourn, D., & Neal, I. (2008). The Global Engineer. London: Engineers Against
Poverty.
Bourn, D., & Sharma, N. (2008). Global and Sustainability Perspectives Within
Engineering. The Municipal Engineer, 161, 199–205.
Acknowledgments
In drafting this volume, I would like to thank my colleagues in the
Development Education Research Centre at UCL for their support and
encouragement. Specifically I would like to thank the following individu-
als who have commented on drafts: Claire Aindow, Clare Bentall, Nicole
Blum, Vicki Bowden, Alistair Cook, Martin Doel, Miroslava Dmitrieva,
Sally Issler, Simon Eten, Estelle Lauvergne, David Montemurro and John
Mountford. I would also like to thank colleagues at the British Council
and the University of Bath who allowed me to test out ideas with them in
various seminars. I am indebted to them all.
Douglas Bourn
ix
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Part I Globalisation and Skills 15
2 Globalisation, Education and Skills 17
3 Skills: Importance, Scope and Relevance 37
Part II Debates and Conceptualisations on Global Skills 61
4 F rom 21st Century Skills to Global Skills 63
5 D ebates on Global Skills 87
6 A Conceptual Framework for Global Skills 111
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xii Contents
Part III Global Skills for Global Professions 133
7 Global Skills for Global Graduates and Business 135
8 The Global Teacher 163
9 The Global Engineer 201
10 Skills for Global Health Professionals 221
Part IV Global Skills for Social and Sustainable Change 239
11 Skills for Sustainable Development 241
12 G lobal Skills for Global Social Change 267
13 C onclusion 285
Index 293
