Glocal Education in Practice: Teaching, Researching, and Citizenship

XVII BCES Conference 2019 Theme as proposed by

Dr. Ewelina K. Niemczyk (Canada, currently at North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa)

Internationally, there is a growing body of work on globalization and glocalization driven by a rapidly changing world and associated global and local issues. Although, both notions, globalization and glocalization, have developed as a response to the increasingly inter-connected and inter-dependent world, global education has gained stronger scholarly attention than glocal education. This keynote address provides a platform to put together the two notions in conversation with one another in order to uncover the meaning of glocal education in practice in connection to teaching, researching, and citizenship.

Currently, there are no universal or established standards for glocal education, however, some scholars, institutions, and organizations have developed a variety of approaches and frameworks for glocal education. The glocal approach to education can be understood in terms of (a) how educational institutions manage to transfer understanding of global realities, opportunities and challenges with connection to the local context and (b) how are the educational institutions meeting the mission of addressing local needs while addressing global realities and performing at a level of global aspirations. At the heart of glocal education is the exploration of local and global connections to maximize glocal consciousness and to contribute to a local and global common good. The concept can be understood in a form of a dual-citizenship that comes with privileges and responsibilities. We are all citizens of a specific nation(s) as well as citizens of the world sharing the same goal to understand and sustain the world in which we live. Glocal education is meant to provide the capacity to recognize oneself in the narrative of the interconnected world as well as local realities.

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