Abstract:

Research and experts in learning worldwide agree on the necessity to reform the current formal education systems and politics to better cope with the demands and imperatives of the constantly changing, knowledge-based, interconnected, technologically-driven, unstable and highly competitive universal society of the 21st century. In this globalized society, critical pedagogical practices such as Global Citizenship Education (GCE) have been developed in and outside of Europe and Frameworks have been issued to address the need to deal with these challenges. UNESCO has made GCE one of its key education objectives for the years 2014-2021 and EC has issued the DigComp Framework for Citizens with eight proficiency levels, while the United States have come up with 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Partnerships worldwide promoting the 21st century skills concept, emphasize the prioritization teaching these skills in today’s schools, suggesting also frameworks and skills’ listings and taxonomies to make easier the integration of the suggested education model and the evaluation procedures in the curriculum (i.e. the 4Cs, etc.)
The BRIGHTS-Boost Global Citizenship Education using Digital Storytelling project, exploiting the results and experience from RIGHTS project and UNITE-IT online platform, has elaborated a research framework for the conduction of semi-structured interviews in the four partner countries: Belgium, Italy, Croatia and Greece. Results of this field research has shown important facts regarding GCE in formal and non formal education systems in Europe. GCE, proposed by BRIGHTS as a different approach to the development of 21st century skills in favour of both teachers and students, facilitates the transition to a new educational vision based on “reassembled curricula”, where GC is not seen as an extracurricular activity, but as a common thread between all subjects and on several school years, with Digital Storytelling (DS) as a best practice to work with computer-based tools to tell stories; an innovative pedagogical approach that can engage students in deep and meaningful learning, and it has proven to be beneficial especially for young people as an effective tool embracing creativity, digital literacy, critical thinking and conflict resolution skills. Moreover, it enables learners to take active responsibility on global issues as socially conscious citizens, by providing them with appropriate knowledge, skills and attitudes such as the ability to adapt to a multicultural world and to make lifestyle changes taking into account the world’s limited resources, and the capacity to participate in political debate forming and justifying their own opinion, to develop social, civic and intercultural competences. On the other hand, through GCE, educators can also develop a better understanding of the concept of global citizenship and improve practices in the classrooms to engage students in discussions related to global issues. Results and experience from BRIGHTS dual phase training of the participating educators (MOOC and F2F trainings) as well as the production of digital stories by groups of students at school, during the final phase of the project, under the guidance and coordination of the specifically trained teacher, are expected to also have an added value and a multiplying effect for the local, European and global society awareness on global issues.

Keywords:

21st century skills, Global Citizenship Education, Digital Storytelling.