Responding to Twenty-First Century Societal Trends through Nurturing Globally Competent Citizens

Higher education institutions play an active role in addressing and responding to twenty-first century societal trends. The two main factors, which have transformed the way we live and work are globalization and technological advancements. Consequently, global competence became imperative in twenty-first century. As evident from scholarly literature, global competency is the currency in today's world, which includes the capacity to view life from different perspectives, to value diversity, to engage in multicultural interactions and to have skills to respectfully navigate in the complex inter-connected world. Higher education has an important role to play in nurturing globally competent citizens with a critical worldview and the above-mentioned abilities. Considering the importance of this topic and the scarcity of literature grounded in South African context, the scope of this paper is to explore the development of globally competent citizens in selected South African higher education institutions. Employing document analysis method, this qualitative project investigated to what extent higher education institutions positioned themselves to address twenty-first century societal trends. Special attention was paid to competencies of globally competent citizens, educators' role in developing global competence and HEIs response to twenty-first century trends. Based on the findings, recommendations are provided on how higher education institutions may maximize development of globally competent citizens. [For the complete Volume 19 proceedings, see ED613922.]