Spring 2006

Wellbeing and connectedness

Global learning: a key to youth resilience

Global learning has immense potential for contributing to student wellbeing. Lindsay Rae spreads the word.

Global education is an approach that emphasises deep learning about global issues and processes. Global learning has potential for contributing to students’ wellbeing by strengthening and extending their repertoire of responses to global events, and by enhancing their sense of optimism and their capacity to help shape their own future and that of the global community.

Good global learning—learning about the world as it really is, in all its complexity and with all the challenges it faces—can assist young people to develop resilience in the face of complex and threatening events. More broadly, it can nourish students’ emotional and psychological wellbeing and also contribute to their development as conscious and active citizens.

Young people can experience traumatic stress reactions in response to a wide variety of events—either firsthand in their immediate world of family, friends, school and local community, or in the public sphere.

While it may seem that a traumatic event within a young person’s immediate world would present the most difficult emotional challenge, this is not always the case. Distant events may threaten an individual’s sense of security less directly, but opportunities for active coping, by doing something concrete to change the situation, are more limited. Ample evidence exists to demonstrate that young people’s responses to traumatic public events often mirror the ways they respond to traumatic experiences in their immediate world.

From the public sphere, disturbing images and stories intrude into young people’s private worlds—images of war, terrorism, violent crime, disasters, extreme poverty, humanitarian crises and disease.

Over ten years ago, Australian Broadcasting Authority research showed that nearly two-thirds of primary school children watched television news every day. Since then, the range of new media has increased dramatically. So, in the wake of a traumatic public event, children may view unsettling images and stories numerous times, from multiple sources, over an extended period. Images and stories depicting violence against children may present particular sources of stress for young people.

Intervention by caring adults, at home or at school, may help children to put these images in context and to deal with them. But before such intervention can take place, children may have already processed the images through the lens of their existing understanding of the world’s processes and the dangers and opportunities that it presents.

A key challenge for parents, teachers and professionals working with children is to foster resilience, which can also be understood as positive adaptive behaviours. Following a traumatic event, a proactive approach that seeks to equip young people with the intellectual context to understand public events and the emotional freedom to express their concerns about them is far more likely to be effective than purely reactive intervention will be.

Drawing on a wide body of research, the American Psychological Association has identified three key drivers of positive adaptive behaviours in young people.

One is the availability and quality of social resources and support, especially within the family and from peers. The most important sources of this support will vary between children of different ages and developmental stages.

Another is the presence of specific coping strategies—especially a capacity for active coping, where someone can take action that addresses or mitigates the problem. In the case of traumatic public events, this is often not possible, or how it might be done is not immediately clear. In such ‘low control’ situations, children’s stress reactions can be reduced by thinking about their emotions, expressing their feelings and asking for support. More severe reactions are linked with negative responses such as giving up normal activities, having feelings of guilt and blaming oneself for situations.

The third is how young people view and engage with the world—not just what they know, but how they are able to make connections between their immediate environment and the wider world. A useful tool in understanding this process is an ecological framework.

Individuals interact with the environments in which they live, and different factors apply in different environments. So a child lives in a ‘microsystem’ of the family and household, while also living in a wider ‘mesosystem’ of school, neighbourhood and community. At wider levels again is a ‘macrosystem’ influenced by global trends, economic structures and the interplay of social and cultural values and beliefs. Such environmental systems do not totally determine how individuals operate or interact, because individuals all have their own personal characteristics, preferred learning styles and needs, but this model does suggest a way of understanding the external environmental factors that are at work.

The capacity of young people to engage successfully at these different levels allows them to develop the intellectual and emotional agility to extend their repertoire of supports and responses from one environment to another. Hence the apparently distant environment of global events and issues, over which they seemingly have little control or capacity to respond to in active ways, can become an environment in which they develop the ability to operate and thrive.

Good global learning can powerfully assist young people in adapting to these different environments and in moving between them, both cognitively and emotionally. However to fulfil its potential, this learning must be born of a holistic approach that enmeshes cognitive knowledge and understanding of processes and systems with the development of positive values, a repertoire of skills and a disposition to active involvement and participation. Good global learning also needs to allow for diverse development pathways and different cultural and personal learning styles.

The values dimension is essential. Global education should never be reduced to the study of apparently overwhelming and insoluble problems. It must embrace values such as responsibility, respect, tolerance and understanding, and the willingness to make an effort for the benefit of others. It must give young people the opportunities to express their commitment to building a better world for the future through creative, generative activities that apply good values alongside well-developed knowledge and skills.

It would be wrong to suggest that global education alone will meet the challenge of building resilience in young people, but a personal development or values education strategy without global education will miss one of the key drivers of resilience. Deep understanding of how people live in the world, how they are surviving in challenging situations, and how they are actively working to reshape their futures empowers young people to feel more optimistic and more in control of their own lives.

Globally aware, emotionally resilient, active young citizens will be better equipped to deal with traumatic public events. When disturbing events—terrorism, war, a tsunami, or a Cronulla riot—occur, young people will see what has happened through a brighter and more powerful lens. They will more likely respond by identifying how they can help to shape a better future, rather than fall victim to negativity, anger or despair.

Comments would be welcome to lindsay.rae@worldvision.com.au

Lindsay Rae is senior education advisor with World Vision Australia.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au