District-wide Professional Development
Reimagining Teacher Professional Development: A Global Cities Approach
Madrid
A recent collaboration with the Ministry of Education in Madrid, Spain shows how the Global Cities approach to professional learning can be replicated in school systems around the world.
The course improved teachers’ ability to plan and lead learning activities that combined academic content alongside global learning outcomes. They analyzed student work samples for evidence of learning and reflected on the process of prioritizing, teaching, and measuring students’ global competency. The course also included interaction among teachers on discussion boards, where conversations ranged from how to incorporate environmental science into English lessons to ideas for prioritizing cultural understanding skills in lesson planning. At the end of the course, the teachers produced an instructional portfolio reflecting on a lesson they taught that blended academic content with a global competency indicator.
Read more about our work in Madrid.
catalonia
Partnering with Spain’s Catalan Regional Ministry of Education, Global Cities delivered a two-day training tailored to the specific needs of local educators. Global Cities introduced educators to a research-backed tool, the Codebook for Global Student Learning Outcomes, and translated it into Catalan to ensure accessibility and cultural alignment.
In early 2025 Global Cities facilitated a virtual PD course, “Teaching Global Competency,” that was open to all K-12 Madrid teachers, across grades and subjects. The course was grounded in Global Cities’ rigorous research and decade of experience training educators around the world through our signature Global Scholars program.
Participating Madrid teachers embarked on the 20-hour course over six weeks, blending live, collaborative workshops with asynchronous, online exchanges of ideas.
Catalonia’s unique inspector–teacher model added additional support for implementation. In Global Cities’ training, educators and inspectors worked together to develop a shared vision and a common understanding of global competency. They mapped where global outcomes fit into existing units, co-planned lessons, and calibrated expectations for student learning. Inspectors then provided ongoing support for teachers’ work by visiting classrooms, offering coaching, and helping schools align across grade levels and subjects.
In the months following the Global Cities training, teachers compiled portfolios with the materials and student work from the lessons they taught to capture how global learning came to life within their classrooms. These portfolios both documented progress and informed the next cycle of planning. As one inspector put it, the process created a “before and after” at the school level—teachers saw paths to integrate global learning and students began to understand how small actions can have impact across the world.
Read more about our work in Catalonia.
The Teaching Global Competency course can be embedded into existing PD programming, making it a sustainable and effective solution for education systems. Because the course is both virtual and interactive, it can be facilitated with any group of educators while also customized in real-time for specific contexts and questions. And given that the modules and asynchronous discussions take place over several weeks, allowing teachers to practice and reflect on their learning, the course is easier to implement than in-person or full-day PD options.
If you are thinking of bringing global competency into your district, ask:
Where in our existing curricula might we enhance student learning by tying it to measurable global learning outcomes?
How could such a partnership be tailored to the unique contexts of our teachers and students?
What existing structures within our district could we leverage to drive impact?
To learn more about the opportunity to train your faculty in research-based global competency instruction through this 20-hour, no-fee curriculum, please visit our Contact page.