Building bridges between the Romanian National Curriculum for Elementary Students and the Global Context

Today's schools need to educate for the future more than ever before, as the world's challenges and opportunities become more compelling. With this regard, we should provide the students with opportunities for learning about issues that have local, national and global significance, leading to an understanding of human commonalities and empowering them to take thoughtful action. In this respect, the aim of this article is to show to what extent the Romanian national curricula for primary students, through its objectives and themes, foster the development of global citizenship. Unfortunately, a curriculum for global citizenship has not been developed yet in Romania, but we can identify some aspects in the curricula of various subject areas or disciplines. Education for global citizenship needs to be based on resources, material and learning engagements that encourage the students to ask questions, argue effectively, use critical thinking and reflection in an attempt to ultimately link learning to their own lives. The Romanian curricula for primary students offer some support in this sense through themes such as empathy for other human beings, respect and appreciation for human dignity. Moreover, humanitarian values and attitudes, the development of a sense of identity and the acquisition of knowledge about local, national and international institutions, good governance, rule of law, democratic processes, civil society and participation are supported. Our research also shows that the Romanian curricula support the development of life skills, including intra-personal skills such as emotional awareness, and inter-personal skills such as communication, cooperation, problem-solving, conflict resolution and advocacy. The conclusion of our research shows that the educational field in Romania needs to be more concerned with creating the right ethos and climate within the school as well as with empowering the students to take responsible action. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.