Abstract:

Exploring Intercultural and Global Competencies for Educators focuses on a study performed for partial completion of a doctoral research. The growing numbers of people migrating around the world and the transformation of the maps of population distribution challenged the global world at the political, economic, social and environmental levels to change accordingly and to consider global competencies a necessity and a priority for the betterment of our global society. Professionals in all fields, particularly in education, need to understand and appreciate diversity, similarities and differences in their students; they need to have awareness of circumstances and factors that might make learning different; they need to take action with global perspectives in mind. Becoming a globally competent educator is an ongoing, fluid process in which the future teachers need to strive to challenge themselves to become effective in working in a new global context. Teacher preparation programs are presented with a challenge to deliver and to produce the future generation of educators in the nation, able to embrace these global changes. This quantitative comparative study, explored global competencies for future educators in a traditional versus global education teacher preparation program with the goal of illustrating the difference in global competency level between the participants in the two programs. The research study was completed by using the Global Competencies for Educators Survey and data was collected. Three constructs were investigated and compared: global awareness, global understanding and global action/behavior. This study concluded that there was a significant difference and the students who were participating in a global education program had higher level of global awareness, understanding and action/behavior than students who were participating in a traditional teacher preparation program.

Keywords:

Global competencies, intercultural competencies, teacher preparation and support, education and globalization.