Integrating Global Education into Primary English Curriculum in a Foreign Language Context

In a globalization age, due to frequent exchanges among countries, global education becomes more and more important in equipping children and young people with the knowledge and skills to cooperate with people around the world [1, 2]. Global education emphasizes the establishment of learners' creativity, critical thinking and the awareness of cultural differences [3.4]. British official report of putting the world into world-class education [5] in 2004 reveals the promotion of global education to prepare people for working and living in global society; in Taiwan, Ministry of Education published the White Paper on international education for primary and secondary schools [6], with the strategies to foster school-based curriculum, stimulate teacher professional development, and encourage global issues integrated into curriculum. In order to connect learners to the world with the key tool of English [6], and to solve the problem of primary English curriculum in lacking global education elements [7], it is crucial to integrate global education in English curriculum to associate learners with their life experiences [8, 9, 10]. This paper draws upon a learner-centered project which learners propose creative ways to explore and deal with global education issues, based on their interests and ability, and it aims to discover the effectiveness for learners and the difficulties and solutions for teachers. This paper starts with a pre-study questionnaire and the English ability pre-test, then engages learners in the project with multiple learning strategies, such as interviewing the neighborhood, discussing over video clips, or displaying the ideas by teamwork. Finally, learners answer the post-study questionnaire and the English post-test and the collected data are analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. The learners responded positively to the project, with a focus on creative thinking, motivation for learning, caring for people around them, acquiring knowledge and skills to help others and developing English ability as well. We can conclude that global education integrated into English curriculum has significantly positive outcomes on creative thinking, communication skills and English ability to be a global citizen for 21st century. Based on the research results, we make suggestions to school teachers: with varieties of learner-centered activities, to introduce a wide range of global issues, to create opportunities for teamwork, to invite learners to express opinions in creative ways, and to balance the learning of attitude, knowledge and skills.