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In January, as part of the DFID Global School Partnerships team, we visited Vietnam to work with 30 teachers from schools in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
They were interested in setting up learning partnerships with UK schools and our aim was to explore global dimension goals with them and identify curricular opportunities for collaborative work on themes and skills related to global citizenship, sustainable development and diversity.
As part of the workshop, we asked participants to consider two possible scenarios for the world; the likely future and a more desirable future. We discussed what schools could do to support the latter and what role a partnership with the UK might play.
At the end of the session in Hanoi, Ms Nguyen Kim Thuy, an English teacher at Trung Vuong Secondary School said: ‘Internationalism and globalism are two key developments in education in the 21st century. As educators, we have an added responsibility to develop our students’ talents with a global outlook to better prepare them for the challenges they face.’
Teachers in the UK and Vietnam operate in very different educational contexts. It was fascinating to explore these differences and identify areas for collaborative work. We use similar activities in all our global school partnership workshop sessions.
The teachers’ responses then feed into future sessions with counterparts. For example, in Vietnam we used a list describing UK schools written by UK teachers to stimulate discussion about education. A similar list was compiled by the Vietnamese teachers for use in the UK.
The discussion revealed that the main differences were longer days and larger classes in Vietnamese schools which also seemed more hardworking and less creative.
The Vietnamese teachers felt that there were opportunities for incorporating global perspectives into the curriculum. Our activity is not intended to provide answers about what a global dimension or global perspective might mean for a partnership. Identifying opportunities is one of the first steps for future partner schools.
This will always be affected by the teaching and learning environment in the respective schools and by wider curricular and policy-level directives, but it remains one of the exciting areas to be discovered by the schools involved.
Clementine de Beaumont and Ruth Najda support teachers in the UK who are forming global links and adminster grants for reciprocal visits and joint work.
For details of the British Council’s DFID Global School Partnerships professional development programme for UK teachers, visit the Global School Partnership's website. If you are interested in linking with another school, visit the teacher/partner-finding section of the Global Gateway.
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