Antti Kylänpää and I are two coordinators of the Global Education Research in Finland (GERIF) network . We were invited to take part in the Bridge 47 seminar The role of critical global citizenship education within marginalised and disadvantaged communities in the Global North in the University of Stirling. We were happy to receive this invitation because our national network actively develops connections in the international context.
The local organizers already wrote a blog post about the event and the discussions that were raised there (https://www.bridge47.org/news/01/2020/global-citizenship-education-uncertain-times). Therefore, in this short blog post, I reflect on how the event resonated with the needs of the Finnish researchers and practitioners of global education. Before that I'll shortly introduce GERIF.
GERIF was founded in 2018 and its purpose is to bring together researchers working with global education in Finland (see also https://gerif.home.blog/). Currently more than 50 researchers, educational practitioners as well as NGO workers are involved in GERIF. The network focuses on encouraging academic debate and cooperation, bridging gaps between research and practice as well as presenting research in an accessible way.
In our own talk in the Bridge 47 event, we introduced the audience to the Finnish education system from the perspective of global education. We noted that the new National Core Curricula for Basic and Upper Secondary Education emphasize global education but schools and teachers could be supported more in its implementation. One important form of support for the teachers and schools are the global education NGO’s. We presented examples of the work of individual teachers and schools who exercise transformative and global education in their classrooms.
The topics and perspectives of the Bridge 47 event in Stirling resonated with Finnish global education research, in which there is a trend towards the adoption of critical and postcolonial perspectives (Lehtomäki & Rajala: Global education research in Finland, in Bourn [Eds.], The Bloomsbury Handbook of Global Education and Learning). The plan for Bridge 47 MOOC was introduced in the event. This is a useful initiative from the perspective of Finnish global educators. In GERIF we have identified a need from practitioners for making research more accessible and presented in popularized ways.
Overall, we enjoyed the well-organized Bridge 47 event in Stiring and look forward to continuing collaboration with the researchers and organizers we met during our visit.