BRINGING GLOBAL COMPETENCE INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE CLASSROOM: UKRAINIAN EXPERIENCE

Abstract

With the challenges of the modern world concerning globalization, climate change, and healthcare, Ukrainian higher institutions started their way toward global education. Understanding the importance of the changes in education, the author of the study explores the ways of developing global competence in the first-year students of engineering specialties at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. In this paper, the author conducts an experiment in which she tracks the successful implementation of a suggested set of classroom activities to develop global competence during English lessons with the first-year students of technical specialties at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. Using the methods of analyses and syntheses the author presents the definition of global competence and its main constituents, which are knowledge, skills, and values to teach students to investigate the global world, recognize perspectives for successful cooperation and mutual understanding, communicate ideas using foreign languages and modern technologies, and, finally, take action as responsible citizens of their community, country and the world. In addition, the author describes the main constituents of a quality activity which engages students in vivid discussions and, as a result, develops higher-order thinking skills, necessary for a globally competent individual. Taking into account American experience in creating a globally oriented curriculum, six activities that include topics of local and global significance and can be added to the official curriculum in order to increase the level of global competence of the KPI students are suggested. Having conducted a series of personal interviews with the students before and after implementing the abovementioned activities, the author illustrates the findings in the form of a bar chart. The results of the study show that after implementing the suggested activities into the curriculum the majority of the students demonstrate better performance in critical conversation and development of core competencies by the end of the academic year.