OUMH1103 Learning Skills Assignment: GCED and Environmental Challenges

This assignment explores the application of Global Citizenship Education (GCED) in addressing environmental issues, specifically focusing on plastic pollution. The student's work begins with an introduction to GCED, emphasizing its role in fostering understanding of global issues like pollution and instilling values for positive behavior. The discussion section delves into the relationship between GCED and environmental concerns, highlighting plastic pollution as a major contemporary problem due to its non-biodegradable nature. The assignment then examines the three key conceptual dimensions of GCED: socio-emotional, cognitive, and behavioral skills, explaining how each can contribute to resolving environmental challenges. The student suggests ways to reduce plastic pollution by leveraging cognitive skills to increase understanding, socio-emotional skills to encourage responsibility, and behavioral skills to promote sustainable practices. The conclusion summarizes the benefits of GCED in promoting in-depth knowledge of plastic pollution and proposes effective strategies for mitigating the issue through the application of GCED's conceptual dimensions. The assignment concludes with a self-reflection note and a list of references.

Running Head: Learning Skills for Open Distance Learners
LEARNING SKILLS FOR OPEN DISTANCE LEARNERS

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Learning Skills for Open Distance Learners
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Discussion..................................................................................................................................3
a. GCED and the environmental issue....................................................................................3
b. Suggesting ways for resolving identified environmental issue..........................................4
Conclusion..............................................................................................................................5
Self-reflection note.................................................................................................................6
Reference list..............................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
Global citizenship education (GCED) helps to make a clear understanding of different global
issues like human rights violations and environmental pollution. This education can help to
instill values and proper behavior among humans that can help to eliminate different global
issues like pollution. Different issues like pollution, discrimination are thought by the
common people as local problems. However, these problems are global and proper education
and awareness must be increased to mitigate these issues. Main objective of this assignment
is to find out the benefits of GCED in resolving different environmental issues. Different
dimension of GCED has been discussed in this assignment.
Discussion
a. GCED and the environmental issue
Global Citizenship Education (GCED) is about educating individuals from all age groups to
make them eligible to take part in solving global challenges. This education system allows
learners to understand global issues and performing their roles to contribute to society. As
opined by Jambeck et al. (2015), GCED helps in developing skills to understand multiple
cultures and complexities throughout the world. It is important for learners to understand that
they need to respect each other to live together in a healthy environment. Three key structures
of learning objectives of GCED include behavioral, socio-emotional and cognitive domains.
Plastic pollution has been chosen as an environmental issue for this study. According to
Goren & Yemini (2017), plastic pollution has become one of the major issues of today’s
world. Plastic cannot be destroyed and this aspect is causing harm to the environment. This
non-biodegradable material cannot be dissolved in water and soil. Accumulation of plastic in
the environment is being considered as a reason behind increasing soil, water, and air

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pollution. People need to be educated about this adverse effect of plastic on the environment
and they must be encouraged for using other biodegradable alternatives.
Three conceptual dimensions of GCED
Three conceptual dimensions of GCED include socio-emotional skills, cognitive skills, and
behavioral skills. As mentioned by Tarozzi & Torres (2016), the socio-emotional dimension
of GCED is concerned about making learners more concern about nature. For example,
incident of death of aquatic animals due to consumption of plastic can influence students for
solidity. These kinds of influence encourage people to take part in campaigns to spread
awareness. Additionally, these dimensions make learners more aware of the harmfulness of
plastic. The cognitive skills help learners to think innovatively and find appropriate solution
for global issues. GCED is a civic learning program with this dimension and it helps learners
to think out of the box. It means that learners may research the alternatives available to
replace plastic. The third conceptual dimension of GCED is behavioral skills (Nasibulina,
2015). These skills allow people to understand their responsibility towards the society. This
dimension can benefit society by making people aware of the diverse effects of plastic. These
dimensions of GCED are educating society to reduce the use of plastic to save the
environment.
b. Suggesting ways for resolving identified environmental issue
The environmental issue of plastic pollution can be resolved through the three conceptual
dimensions of GCED. Plastic pollution can be decreased by increasing knowledge and
understanding of students through the increase of cognitive skills. They can be motivated to
think differently and look at a wider perspective (Vince & Hardesty (2017). Cognitive skills
of students can be increased through GCED and this can help them to gather more knowledge
about the issue find ways to reduce the problem. Moreover, they can gather information about

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different government and non-government programs that have been initiated to reduce plastic
pollution.
Another way of reducing the problem is by encouraging common sense in students. This can
be done by increasing learning of socio-emotion. Encouraging the students can help students
to increase their sense of responsibility towards nature and natural resources. In the article by
Vikas & Dwarakish (2015), it can be seen that a large number of ocean species are dying due
to plastic pollution. This report can help to increase the feelings of students and increase their
will to reduce plastic pollution. Campaign can be conducted by them to reduce spillage of
plastics on ocean and other water bodies.
Another way of decreasing the problem of plastic pollution is by increasing behavioral skills.
This skill can help humans to maintain their responsibility and duties towards nature and lead
a sustainable life. Humans need to be motivated and encourage others to create less impact on
nature. As viewed in the article of Babader, Ren, Jones, & Wang (2016), different methods of
plastic recycling and reusing are mentioned. This can help to gain motivation to behave
responsibly towards environment and less use of plastics can be done. Recycling of plastic
bags and using cloth bags instead of plastic bags can help to reduce pollution to a greater
extent.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that GCED can help to increase in-depth
knowledge about the global issue of plastic pollution. This pollution is taking lives of water
animals and causing deeper harm to nature. Effective ways for reducing this problem can be
devised through the conceptual dimensions of GCED. Increase in cognitive kills in humans
can help them to build a proper understanding of the problem and they can find ways to
mitigate the issue. Moreover, common sense and good thoughts can be devised and students

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can be encouraged through the dimension of socio-emotion. Proper encouragement and
motivation can help to reduce the threat of plastic pollution.
Self-reflection note
This assignment is a group work that has been performed through proper collaboration and
understanding. We have conducted group meetings and divided the assignment into different
parts. Other members have performed the four tasks by searching a global issue and ways of
mitigation. Different ideas about the conceptual dimensions of GCED were gained by the
group members and written in a proper way. In addition, support articles were searched from
relevant sources. I have learned about different skills that can be used to reduce plastic
pollution from this assignment. Moreover, knowledge about GCED was also gained while
conducting this assignment.

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Reference list
Babader, A., Ren, J., Jones, K. O., & Wang, J. (2016). A system dynamics approach for
enhancing social behaviours regarding the reuse of packaging. Expert Systems with
Applications, 46, 417-425. Retrieved from:
http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/3153/1/paper.pdf
Goren, H., & Yemini, M. (2017). Global citizenship education redefined–A systematic
review of empirical studies on global citizenship education. International Journal of
Educational Research, 82, 170-183. Retrieved from:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883035516308163
Jambeck, J. R., Geyer, R., Wilcox, C., Siegler, T. R., Perryman, M., Andrady, A., ... & Law,
K. L. (2015). Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean. Science, 347(6223), 768-
771. Retrieved from:
https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/17969/Plastic_waste_inputs_f
rom_land_into_the_ocean.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Nasibulina, A. (2015). Education for sustainable development and environmental
ethics. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 214, 1077-1082. Retrieved from:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042815060632/pdf?
md5=daf57a5cd85bf8de9e63edfd26eb7cf6&pid=1-s2.0-S1877042815060632-
main.pdf
Tarozzi, M., & Torres, C. A. (2016). Global citizenship education and the crises of
multiculturalism: Comparative perspectives. Bloomsbury Publishing. Retrieved from:
https://books.google.co.in/books?
hl=en&lr=&id=9ohXDAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=Global+Citizenship+Educ
ation+And+environment&ots=gggFJp1tJF&sig=Y3rRZ8CndxYbid9Qazmx9ElJFV0

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Vikas, M., & Dwarakish, G. S. (2015). Coastal pollution: a review. Aquatic Procedia, 4, 381-
388. Retrieved from:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214241X15000528/pdf?
md5=a0a84b4a4f47ab26b68b0d4bc1d91eac&pid=1-s2.0-S2214241X15000528-
main.pdf&_valck=1
Vince, J., & Hardesty, B. D. (2017). Plastic pollution challenges in marine and coastal
environments: from local to global governance. Restoration ecology, 25(1), 123-128.
Retrieved from: https://eprints.utas.edu.au/23597/1/Vince_et_al-2016-
Restoration_Ecology.pdf