Preface

As international exchanges broaden and become more frequent, college students of this generation must possess intercultural communication competence and international perspectives to contribute to the development of a global community of shared future. A key component to achieving this grand goal is the cultivation of college students’ global-mindedness and cultural intelligence. As future teachers/educators, students in Normal Colleges and Universities should take the initiative to enhance their understanding of international relations, understand the development of the country and the world from a global perspective, and anticipate the symbiosis and inclusion of multiculturalism from a cross-cultural perspective. As a result, only by using global education to bring the world into the university classroom, thereby allowing classroom teaching to be initiated from a globalization perspective, can students in Normal Colleges and Universities master the knowledge of global education and avoid rigidity.

Global education highlights the commonalities of world cultures, emphasizes sharing different cultural heritages, and finds commonalities among heritages for further research. Strengthening the global education of Normal University students aims to enhance their ability to learn to interact with people from different cultural backgrounds, and at the same time, to transmit this concept to future students in their classrooms, in turn cultivating these students’ cultural sensitivity and intercultural communication competence. This book draws on the development concept of global education abroad, and pays attention to the cultivation of global-mindedness and cultural intelligence of students in Normal Colleges and Universities. Through the combination of theory and practice, the author advocates implementing the concept of global education in the teaching process of various disciplines, cultivating future teachers with global visions and providing well-rounded talents for accelerating the construction of a global community of shared future.

This book first examines the origin and development of global education in American higher education, surveys the definitions of related terms such as global education, global-mindedness, and cultural intelligence, and synthesizes its findings. Based on the current state of teacher education in colleges and universities, the book then proposes strategies and methods to develop the global-mindedness and cultural intelligence of Normal University students. In addition, the book uses the global-mindedness scale and cultural intelligence scale to evaluate the cultural sensitivity of Normal University students and to identify relevant factors that affect pre-service teachers’ global-mindedness and cultural intelligence. The book proposes teaching pedagogies and methods to improve global education from its research results.

This book is based on the first-hand materials obtained by the author in the United States, combined with his own study and work, and is an important reference in the curriculum, instruction, and intercultural communication field. It is suitable for university and college professors, graduate students, undergraduate students, and researchers in related fields to read and use. Due to limited time and energy, there are inevitably some deficiencies in the writing of this book, and readers are welcome to criticize and correct them.