Abstract

One of the missions of the XXI century university is to train professionals to know how to respond to social demands. In this sense, education for global citizenship contributes to social transformations while enhancing the integral learning of students by establishing relationships between what is taught in classrooms and social reality. This article presents a series of social thematic activities framed in cooperative learning in an English language subject. These activities will be described, as well as the main social skills that students acquire with them, such as communication, cooperation, and empathy. The didactic proposal presented is intended for the students not only to acquire content, but also to acquire competences so that their formation is integral. The methodology used has followed a qualitative-descriptive model. Moreover, a survey was prepared in order to know students’ opinion on some aspects of the teaching-learning process, and to find out if there was any contribution to the formation of global citizenship. This survey was designed taking into account the notes that the teacher had taken in class by observing if the students carried out a relationship between the proposed social activities and the acquisition of social competencies. The data were collected at the end of the semester anonymously, and analysed in a manual manner. The results show that the majority of the students believe that they have grown as global citizens by being aware of social realities distinct from their own, and empathize with unfair situations. This study reveals that basing the subject on social content not only contributes to the acquisition of competencies but also to increase students’ social and global education.

Keywords: Education for global citizenship; social competences; cooperative learning; teaching-learning process