Preparing Teacher Candidates with Global Competencies: Taking Action on the Global Water Crisis with Service Learning

ABSTRACT

Clean water is a basic necessity for sustaining life. Not only important for drinking, water is also necessary for good health and sanitation. The United Nations emphasizes the need for clean water in their Sustainable Development Goal 6, which seeks to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all people of the world by 2030. Despite the global attention related to accessing clean water, many future educators are not aware of issues related to Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (i.e., WASH) nor are they aware of the extent of the global water crisis. It is imperative that teacher education helps prepare teacher candidates to become globally competent as well as equipped to guide classroom students into taking action on WASH-related issues, including the global water crisis. The aim of this article is to describe and report on a case study of the implementation of a global service-learning project with teacher candidates. The case study is situated at a regional, teaching-focused university located in the southcentral region of the United States (n = 49). Our study examines teacher candidates’ perceptions of the service-learning project in relation to developing global competencies like “Investigating the World” and “Taking Action” about WASH issues.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical Cosmopolitan Theory
• global education
• global water crisis
• service learning
• teacher education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.