PGCE PROCESS WORK Module 1 Unit

    “Listen with Your Eyes” - looking at and listening to the world- 

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   Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ‘em.

Shakespeare’s words in the above quotation fromTwelfth Night,  pose the question: what is greatness? Before I could begin to establish the characteristics that I believe differentiate between Global-Mindedness (GM) and International-Mindedness (IM) I had to decide what I considered to be a ‘great’ teacher. I looked beyond the list provided to see how other people, including pupils, defined this.

I ended up with a long list of attributes that could constitute what it takes to be a ‘great’ teacher. The one that most struck a chord was:

“Ye great teachers: listen to what you say!” ~ Goethe

I think it is vital for a teacher to listen him/herself in order to try to avoid giving out information which could be misconstrued. It is also crucial to listen to his/her pupils and to listen to the many different voices that make up the multicultural world we live in - if we don’t listen, we don’t learn.

I realised I could use this idea of ‘listening’ to create an analogy to illustrate what I believe is one of the main differences between a teacher who is Internationally Minded and one who is Globally-Minded. 

Think of a piece of music in which the different sounds represent the different nations.The IM voice represents the vocalist working in collaboration with various instrumentalists to produce a multi-layered track. The GM voice is more of a mixing artist taking bits and pieces from the sounds around him to merge the tracks and produce a rich world sound scape.

I use this analogy because I think it shows how both concepts of IM and GM are closely linked and have shared components but also shows the difference resonance between the two outlooks. The IM teacher looks to co-operate with the world but the GM teacher seeks greater unity and a more immersive experience. Whether either can be deemed to be ‘great’ is, in my opinion, not just a measure  of how well they lesson to others but is also determined by how well others listen to them.