{"id":79805,"date":"2013-06-25T10:14:08","date_gmt":"2013-06-25T14:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=79805"},"modified":"2023-10-22T19:31:28","modified_gmt":"2023-10-22T23:31:28","slug":"helping-future-teachers-develop-global-literacy-skills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2013\/06\/helping-future-teachers-develop-global-literacy-skills\/","title":{"rendered":"Helping Future Teachers Develop Global Literacy Skills"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Neag<\/a>
Neag students show their excitement to be in Paris for the Study Abroad Program. (Photo courtesy of Alan Marcus)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Today\u2019s students are graduating into a global society where, at work, employees come in daily contact with people from around the world and, at home, neighborhoods are becoming more diverse. That means today\u2019s teachers need to help students learn to live in this increasingly interdependent world.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe issue of creating globally competent educators wasn\u2019t something previous generations had to face, but it\u2019s a very real issue now, and its importance is only growing,\u201d says David M. Moss, interim director of teacher education at UConn\u2019s Neag School of Education. \u201cOur goal as teachers is to prepare students for all aspects of life \u2013 for personal, social, and professional success \u2013 and today, that means preparing them to be global citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teaching global literacy today gives students an intellectual foundation they\u2019ll be able to build on in the years to come.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Considered an expert in the field, Moss has given several presentations over the past few years at conferences such as those hosted by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) and the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) about the need for greater cultural responsiveness in education.<\/p>\n

An associate professor of curriculum and instruction, he has also played a key role in establishing programs that have helped the Neag School of Education become a \u201ctop-tier leader\u201d in the U.S. in global literacy and in training teachers how to lead multi-cultural classrooms.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudent bodies have become so diverse that creating globally competent educators has really become a fundamental element of quality teaching,\u201d Moss says.<\/p>\n

\"While<\/a>
During the two-week World War II education study abroad program, Neag students visit Maritime Greenwich, the baseline for the world\u2019s time zone system and for the measurement of longitude around the globe. (Photo courtesy of Alan Marcus)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With this in mind, the Neag School, with support from the Carnegie Corporation\u2019s Teachers for a New Era project, brought nationally recognized ELL experts to UConn to teach faculty in the Integrated Bachelor\u2019s\/Master\u2019s Teacher Education and Teacher Certification for College Graduates programs how to infuse cultural and linguistic diversity into all disciplines.<\/p>\n

The program, known as Project PREPARE-ELLs (Preparing Responsive Educators to Promote Access and Realize Excellence with English Language Learners), has quickly become a national model. Inquiries from other universities have led to Project PREPARE co-directors Thomas Levine and Elizabeth Howard to craft a book about the program\u2019s implementation and successes, with chapters written by various Neag faculty members.<\/p>\n

Moss says the lessons are relevant to all classrooms, not only to those with English language learners. \u201cOne of the points [Project PREPARE] stresses is that every classroom, even those without ELL students, is culturally diverse,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Other programs in the Neag School that focus on global competence include:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Education in London<\/b> \u2013 a semester-long study abroad program in the fall that is open to fifth-year Integrated Bachelor\u2019s\/Master\u2019s students. Students live in London and work at international middle and secondary schools. Some of these expose the Neag students on any given day to as many as 40 different ethnicities and 50 spoken languages, including those from Africa and the Middle East.<\/li>\n
  • Developing Global Teachers<\/b> \u2013 a two-week study abroad program open to fifth-year Integrated Bachelor\u2019s\/Master\u2019s students with a history\/social studies concentration. The study abroad focuses on \u201cTeaching World War II: Multiple Perspectives on the War in Europe.\u201d Offered every other year in May, it\u2019s geared toward students who plan to teach in middle or high school, and teaches about the war from the European perspective. Students visit historic sites and meet survivors and scholars in Britain, France, Holland, and Germany.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    \u201cIn the U.S., we forget that by the time America entered the war, European countries were already four years in,\u201d says Moss, \u201cso this class provides a very different look at the war overall and how other countries view our participation. At the end of the program, most students say it was transformational.\u201d<\/p>\n

    His passionate belief in the importance of developing global literacy has led Moss not only to write articles for publications including the Journal of Teacher Education<\/i>, but to develop a new academic journal called Global Teacher Education<\/i>. He\u2019ll be founding editor.<\/p>\n

    \u201cIt\u2019s a niche, and there\u2019s a real gap out there,\u201d Moss said.<\/p>\n

    He\u2019s also in the final stages of evaluating a self-reflection tool called My Cultural Awareness Profile, or myCAP, that\u2019s already been used by thousands of students at dozen of U.S. universities. Created with Neag Teacher Education doctoral graduate Helen Marx, now an assistant professor at Southern Connecticut State University, the survey is designed to provide higher education faculty with a better understanding of preservice teachers\u2019 current degree of cultural awareness, as well as areas to challenge and support continued growth.<\/p>\n

    \u201cSo far, the response has been wildly positive, and we hope to have it being used by even more colleges and universities in the fall,\u201d said Moss.<\/p>\n

    \u201cThere\u2019s a statistic that says if you look at the types of jobs available today, half of them didn\u2019t exist 20 years ago,\u201d Moss continued. \u201cSo what does that mean for our kids 20 years from now? What kinds of opportunities and jobs will be available to them when they become adults? None of us knows for sure, though clearly they\u2019ll have a global perspective. Teaching global literacy today gives students an intellectual foundation they\u2019ll be able to build on in the years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Neag School\u2019s David Moss is a champion for the global literacy skills teachers and their students will need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":79800,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1855],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[117],"class_list":["post-79805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-neag"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-13 02:23:10","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79805"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206006,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79805\/revisions\/206006"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/79800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79805"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=79805"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=79805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}