The UN Sustainable Development Goals as a Bridge Between Global Learning and Local Action

by DA Global | Apr 28, 2025 | Global Impact Exchange, Summer 2021

Authors:

• Elisheva Cohen, Post-Doctoral Fellow – Indiana University Bloomington

The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development aims to foster a better, more sustainable planet by the year 2030 (United Nations, 2015). At the heart of this ambitious agreement lie the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 17 goals that seek to address the world’s most pressing challenges including: ending poverty and hunger, protecting the environment from climate change, ensuring prosperous and fulfilling lives, and fostering peaceful and inclusive societies. The SDGs are universal goals meant to be achieved in both developed and developing countries.

Beyond their policy implications, the SDGs are a powerful tool for the field of global education. Using the SDGs in the classroom enables educators to bridge global and local learning and encourage globally minded and locally grounded civic engagement. By global I refer to processes, relationships, and ideas flowing through unbounded and multidimensional spaces, transcending national borders (Kearney, 1995; Appadurai, 1990). This notion of global is inextricably tied to unique localized conditions, interpretations, and understandings, thus embodying what de Sousa Santos refers to as a dual process of globalizing localisms and localizing globalisms (2006). The SDGs introduce challenges on a global scale and a shared global vision for addressing them. Yet, to fully understand and analyze the goals, and to develop action towards them, attention must be given to their daily manifestations at the local level. 

Exploring the SDGs Through the Inquiry to Action Project

In the fall of 2020, I used the SDGs as a guiding tool in a virtual course about sustainable development. Through a semester-long Inquiry to Action Project, each student identified a social, economic, or environmental issue to research and a specific geographic location in which to study the issue. After conducting research on the topic and exploring its connection to the SDGs, students took action to address it. Given that students would conduct their action projects without traveling abroad, I encouraged them to consider indirect forms of action, including advocacy, philanthropy, and awareness-raising. To prepare for this project, we discussed the dangers of white saviorism and American exceptionalism, reflected on the ethics of community engagement, and analyzed our own positionality.

While the final action projects ranged greatly in shape and form, they all represented locally grounded actions towards global issues. What emerged from these projects is a framework of four ways that the SDGs can be used to facilitate and understand global learning and local engagement, which I share below.

Four Approaches to Connect the Local and Global Through the SDGs

Local as Part of the Global. The first way that the SDGs can facilitate both local and global learning and action is by serving as a global lens to analyze and act on a local issue. Students may study and address an issue in their local community and use the SDGs to view that local challenge through a global lens. For example, four students in the course collaborated to produce a series of podcasts about clean water in Bloomington, Indiana. Through recorded conversations among their team and interviews with local government and NGO leaders, they discussed the challenges to accessing clean water in our town and how the issue is being addressed. By using the language of SDG 6, students connected the challenges of clean water in Bloomington to a larger, global framework. This enabled them to take global action that was locally grounded.

Localizing the Global. In contrast to the approach above, where students began with a local issue and tied it to a global framework, another approach to locally grounded global engagement is to begin with the global issue and then connect it to a local context. For example, several students in my course focused their research on broad trends and challenges of a specific global issue and then looked at how that issue is addressed or impacted in a local context. One student centered her project on forced migration. Her research placed the issue in historical context and highlighted contemporary challenges related to forced migration. Her action project then situated this global issue, which she tied to SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, in a local context by interviewing three young women who came to the United States as refugees. Through the interviews, she explored their experiences of migration to the United States and then tied those experiences back to the global trends she identified. 

Local for the Sake of the Global. A third approach involves actions in the local community in order to address a global issue. Through this approach, students took action from home that was connected to issues overseas. For example, one student created a campaign to raise awareness about the rise of early marriage among Syrian refugees. This action targeted her peers in our local campus community in order to address a global issue which, in this case, was based in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. In a second example, a student researched human trafficking in Italy and created a series of Instagram posts to raise awareness of this phenomenon among her Instagram followers. In both of these instances, the students took locally grounded action to support a global issue by raising awareness of the SDG 5: Gender Equality.

The Local Implicated in the Global: A final approach to breaking down the local-global binary is by understanding how the local and global are intimately tied together and impact each other. For instance, in some Inquiry to Action projects, students addressed the problematic ways that local actions impact global issues. One student researched the negative consequences of oil dumping carried out by America-based companies, focusing on the Chevron oil company’s work in the Ecuadorian Amazon. She learned about the environmental impacts of such actions, with a focus on SDG 13: Climate Action as well as its implications for individual and community health and wellbeing (SDG 3). Based on her research, she wrote a letter to the oil company explaining the damage they are causing and advocating for a change in policy.

In a second example, a student focusing on SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities had intended to develop a virtual museum exhibit highlighting art of Indigenous women in Argentina; yet she changed her project approach after realizing that the project itself might perpetuate a western gaze upon the Indigenous community. As she wrote in her final reflection:

While I had originally meant for this project to be solely an exhibition…It became hard for me to not feel like I was contributing to the uneven power dynamics in museum spaces, and I did not want to further the feelings (and reality) of surveillance and captivity of Indigenous people.

These two projects illuminate the ways that local actions—of corporations, organizations, and individuals—are implicated in reinforcing global inequities and neocolonial power dynamics.

Researching and taking action towards the SDGs empowered students to act locally within a global framework. The goals highlighted the inextricable link between the local and global, thereby breaking down the binary between the two, and led to civic engagement and action that was simultaneously local and global.

Resources to support incorporating the SDGs into higher education:

• Levi, L. & Rothstein, B. (2018, November 9). Universities must lead on Sustainable Development Goals. University World News. https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20181106131352348 
• Sustainable Development Solutions Network Australia/Pacific. (2017). Getting started with the SDGs in universities: A guide for universities, higher education institutions, and the academic sector. https://resources.unsdsn.org/getting-started-with-the-sdgs-in-universities 

References

Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. Theory, Culture & Society, 7(2–3), 295–310.

Kearney, M. (1995). The local and the global: The anthropology of globalization and transnationalism. Annual review of anthropology, 24(1), 547–565.

de Sousa Santos, B. (2006). Globalizations. Theory, Culture & Society, 23(2–3), 393–399.
United Nations (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development. https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda

Back to Basics in Education Abroad: A Case for Language & Culture Programs

by DA Global | Apr 28, 2025 | Global Impact Exchange, Summer 2021

Authors:

• Kati Bell, Ed.D., Senior International Officer – Dominican University of California

Education abroad is currently in a unique position to examine where it’s been and where it’s going. It’s not often an entire professional area shuts down and has an opportunity to reflect and plan for a reboot. The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting standstill of global student mobility forced international educators into this unexpected hiatus. It has also given us unusually ample time available to reflect; there is significant soul-searching happening. One potential opportunity that presents itself is the return of language and culture programs in education abroad. Many of us know that language and culture programs are the earliest iterations of education abroad. There was a time when language learning was synonymous with study abroad. Unfortunately, participation in language acquisition and cultural programs abroad has decreased significantly due to a variety of reasons, including a growing emphasis on shorter terms, an increase in faculty-led programs, and an overall decline in language teaching at the university level. Including language acquisition and intercultural knowledge as learning outcomes in education abroad prioritizes the application of vital cross-cultural skills and opens the door to developing innovative teaching/learning models to meet the student learning outcomes. Here are several reasons why getting back to our education abroad roots may be one of the best options forward. 

1. Technology & Language Learning Pedagogy – Online learning has been normalized during the pandemic and become a familiar teaching modality for both students and teachers. Both synchronous and asynchronous online learning lend themselves quite well to language acquisition and show promise to increase language learning for individual and/or group settings. For universities faced with reducing teaching staff due to low enrollments, online classes present a potentially cost-effective option to continue offering foreign language courses. Additionally, pre- and posttests, taken online, can provide important data to assess language learning successes. 
   
2. Global to Local Emphasis – This pandemic proves our global interconnectedness. Now more than ever, students need to not only see this connection firsthand, but also develop the vital global skills of language acquisition and cultural knowledge, to increase local impact. Education abroad shares high-level goals with community engagement programming at most universities, and by participating in campus service-learning, students returning from study abroad can keep their language skills sharp through involvement with local, non-English-speaking communities. Language and cultural skills acquired through study abroad should be seen by students as opportunities for enhanced interaction with local immigrant communities and increasing social impact. Many students put education abroad on their proverbial “bucket list,” seeing it as a one-off undergraduate activity unconnected to their major. Supporting language and culture learning outcomes for education abroad connects overseas study to future academic and career goals. 
   
3. Career & Professional Development –There are not many career fields left in the US in which a bilingual employee would not be of added value and benefit. Despite companies experiencing both a shift towards more global business and the workforce becoming increasingly multicultural and diverse, the teaching of foreign languages has, unfortunately, decreased substantially in the past two decades. Encouraging students to focus their education abroad goals on language learning will double the value of their overseas experience with future employers. Another area worthy of emphasis is the promotion of language acquisition for “specific purposes.” Many universities offer medical Spanish to healthcare majors. Both students with basic knowledge of a foreign language as well as heritage speakers, already with bilingual proficiency, would be well served to increase target language fluency in healthcare, education, or business, through education abroad. 
   
4. Intercultural Communication and Knowledge – Being fluent is much more than just knowing the words to the language; understanding the culture behind the language is vital to mastery. Culture learning has a two-fold value, in that as you unpack and experience another’s culture you are also evaluating and assessing your own culture by comparison. Students always report a tremendous increase in self-awareness as a key take-away from their education abroad experience. This increase in intercultural knowledge can be applied directly to cross-cultural situations not only while abroad, but also within our own borders. It is a critical component integral to everyday interactions in a multicultural society, yet it is the most undervalued skillset in the academy. 

As we explore options to bring education abroad back, we should challenge ourselves to set goals for our programs that prioritize vital global skills, such as language and culture learning, that will enable better and more impactful engagement with local communities.

Suzhou North America High School [SNA] (n.d.). https://www.sna-edu.com/en/

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press.

Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (1993). Building school communities: An experience-based model. Phi Delta Kappan, 75, 324–324.

Going Global Without Going Abroad

by DA Global | Apr 28, 2025 | Global Impact Exchange, Summer 2021

Author:

• Ashley Bender | Assistant Professor and BA Program Coordinator, Texas Woman’s University
• Gretchen Busl | Associate Professor and Graduate Programs Coordinator, Texas Woman’s University

This essay is rooted in the belief that thinking “globally” does not always mean “internationally” and that global awareness begins with self-awareness. Often the idea of “global citizenship” remains abstract to students, and previous efforts to create global curricula suggest that students need more than theoretical knowledge to “develop their own agency as responsible actors in the world” (Sperandio, Grudzinski-Hall, & Stewart-Gambino 2010). Our National Endowment for the Humanities funded project, “Building Global Perspectives in the Humanities” (2018-2020), intentionally brought these ideas together to expand the quantity and quality of our institution’s global learning opportunities. Our model demonstrates the benefits of training faculty in experiential learning focused on developing global citizenship through local engagement. The research-based methods we suggest can make global experiences more inclusive by making them more accessible, especially for economically disadvantaged students. Such an approach—what we call “going global without going abroad”—can provide the transformative experiences students need in order to see themselves as global actors with the potential to effect change in the world. In designing similar programs, we encourage institutions to reflect on their students’ unique needs within the context of their geographical locations and limitations.

The Building Global Perspectives program came about in part because of the unique situation of our university, from demographics to curriculum to geographic placement. Texas Woman’s University (TWU) is the largest public institution primarily for women in the US and a minority-majority, Hispanic-Serving Institution. Most of our students are first generation; many are considered non-traditional: they have full-time jobs, are returning to school at a later age, and/or are parents or caregivers. Such student populations face unique challenges in their quest for academic success (Blankenship, 2010; Dolan, 2008; Kirby, White, & Aruguete, 2007). The factors behind these challenges also affect our students’ willingness to consider study abroad opportunities. Lack of awareness about opportunities and benefits of study abroad, familial responsibilities, and (perhaps most important of all) financial implications are clear barriers to minority and first-generation student participation in education abroad (Brux & Fry, 2010; Kasravi, 2009; Salisbury, Umbach, Paulsen, & Pascarella, 2009).

While our short-term, faculty-led study abroad programs are one successful approach to helping students make space for global learning, we also wanted to provide another accessible curriculum-based option. As our mission at TWU is to cultivate engaged leaders and global citizens, all students must complete one Global Perspectives (GP) course in order to graduate. Global Perspectives refers to “skills, knowledge, and attitudes in areas such as global dynamics, non-western worldviews, international systems and events, and global cultures.” We chose to enhance our university’s global education by providing GP-designated courses that emphasize the idea that global learning begins at home and cultivate students’ awareness of their own place in overlapping global networks. As a result, we developed a “going global without going abroad” model that promotes learning in the same dimensions emphasized by many study abroad programs.

In designing our program, we drew from the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ Global Learning Rubric, which defines such learning as “a critical analysis of and an engagement with complex, interdependent global systems and legacies (such as natural, physical, social, cultural, economic, and political) and their implications for people’s lives and the earth’s sustainability.” Local experiential learning with a global focus has enormous potential to help students meet the goals of “1) becom[ing] informed, open-minded, and responsible people who are attentive to diversity across the spectrum of differences, 2) seek[ing] to understand how their actions affect both local and global communities, and 3) address[ing] the world’s most pressing and enduring issues collaboratively and equitably” (AAC&U). The key to such experiences is engaging students directly in communities and fostering their ability to reflect on their own actions and those of others in ways that inform their future decision-making. 

Our program built on TWU’s Quality Enhancement Plan, which centered on experiential learning because it can create a positive impact on minority student persistence and graduation rates, workforce readiness, and pursuit of advanced degrees (Dolan, 2008; Espinosa, 2011; Eyler, 2009; Kelly, 2011; Lee, 2007; Stocks, 2011). To ensure the highest standards in creating learning experiences, we based our faculty training on the National Society for Experiential Education’s “8 Principles of Good Practice.” Perhaps the most important of these practices for global learning are authenticity—the need for real-world outcomes—and reflection. Not only did we encourage faculty reflection in the process of creating course outcomes and designing assignments, but we also emphasized the critical role that reflection plays for students in transformational learning.

The core of our program was an interdisciplinary group of faculty fellows that created or revised GP courses with a GP designation to include at least one significant experiential learning assignment. We held five workshops for each of our cohorts in both 2018-2019 and 2019-2020. In our three fall workshops, we explored theoretical topics related to global learning, global citizenship, and applied humanities, providing the foundation for our faculty to meaningfully apply these ideas to new or revised student learning outcomes for their courses. During two spring workshops, we shifted to the theory and practice of experiential education and developing experiential opportunities for their curricula. Central to our success was ensuring that the faculty in our workshops (and, eventually, the institution) had a network of potential partners. To do this, we created a list of some 300+ organizations and cultural events that faculty can use to research potential partners for their experiential learning opportunities. 

Our own program takes advantage of our position near a major metropolitan area. TWU is less than an hour from the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, which allows us to capitalize on the presence of international corporations and organizations and the diverse international population in North Texas. Of course, one need not be situated closely to a metroplex in order to take advantage of a “going global without going abroad” model. We encourage other institutions to look first among their staff and students to find organizations and affinity groups that represent diverse perspectives and faculty with research and teaching experiences in topics that address global systems. We also encourage a broad understanding of diversity in seeking local organizations and businesses to collaborate with. Finally, we encourage colleagues to consider broadening their radius for potential experiential learning opportunities to include faculty-led travel within the broader United States. 

The most significant outcomes of our program were an increased awareness of the benefit of interdisciplinary collaboration in defining global citizenship and increased opportunities for students to have global experiences on a local scale. Not only do these curricular interventions make global learning more accessible and more inclusive, they also help students see beyond the purely theoretical to the ethical and pragmatic values of a global outlook. Just as global learning begins at home with each student’s own awareness of their place in the world, each institution must begin by looking within (see Table 1 for a recommended institutional self-assessment). Based on our experience, we believe that similar projects could be highly successful at a broad variety of institutions, as long as they include explicit training in experiential learning best practices, especially critical reflection; open, interdisciplinary dialogue about the values and characteristics of global citizenship; and a willingness to promote internal and external partnerships.

Table 1: Institution Self-Assessment

References

American Association of Colleges & Universities (2014). Global learning VALUE rubric. American 

Association of Colleges & Universities. https://www.aacu.org/value/rubrics/global-learning 

Blankenship, M. (2010). How some schools increase graduation rates of minority students. Education Digest, 76(4), 26–29.

Brux, J. M., & Fry, B. (2010). Multicultural students in study abroad: Their interests, their issues, and their constraints. Journal of Studies in International Education, 14(5), 508–527. 

Dolan, T. (2008). Minority students and college success: Challenges and solutions. Education Digest, 73(7), 27–30.

Espinosa, L. (2011). Pipelines and pathways: Women of color in undergraduate STEM majors and the college experiences that contribute to persistence. Harvard Educational Review, 81(2), 209–241.

Eyler, J. (2009). The power of experiential education. Liberal Education, 95(4), 24–31.

Kasravi, J. (2009). Factors influencing the decision to study abroad for students of color: Moving beyond the barriers. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. (UMI No. 3371866) 

Kirby, E., White, S., & Aruguete, M. (2007). Predictors of white and minority student success at a private women’s college. College Student Journal, 41(2), 460–465.

Lee, S. (2007). Increasing student learning: A comparison of students’ perceptions of learning in the classroom environment and their industry-based experiential learning assignments. Journal of Teaching in Travel & Tourism, 7(4), 37–54.

National Society for Experiential Education (1998; 2013). 8 principles of good practice for all experiential learning activities. National Society for Experiential Education. https://www.nsee.org/8-principles

Salisbury, M. H., Umbach, P. D., Paulsen, M. B., & Pascarella, E. T. (2009). Going global: 

Understanding the choice process of the intent to study abroad. Research in Higher Education, 50, 119–143.

Sperandio, J., Grudzinski-Hall, M., & Stewart-Gambino, H. (2010). Developing an undergraduate global citizenship program: Challenges of definition and assessment. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 22(1), 12–22. Stocks, J. (2011). Undergraduate research with students at risk. CUR Quarterly, 31(3), 5–6.