6.1.2.1.1 The Interview Study (Study 1). What emerged from the interview study with the five teacher trainers is that they all believe that educating students is part of being a teacher, thus, they are also responsible for developing their students’ global competence. Nevertheless, it should be every teacher’s task, no matter what their subject matter is, and students should all be active participants in developing these knowledge, skills, and attitudes. The way they see globally competent teachers is similar to the profiles drawn up in the literature (Cates, 2004; Longview Foundation, n.d.; Pike & Selby, 1988): they believe that globally competent teachers should above all else, be authentic in their role, and also involve their students in decision-making, create a classroom with a democratic atmosphere, bring in topics of global interest, include experiential learning activities in the classroom and have a meta-awareness, meaning that they should be aware of the power dynamics in their classroom and as critical educators, they should never indoctrinate their students (Freire, 1985).

 

6.1.2.1.2 The Questionnaire Study (Study 4). To yield qualitative data to answer the research question, the respondents of the questionnaire were asked to enumerate the characteristics of globally competent teachers and then to rate to what extent these characteristics are true for them. Apart from the personality traits the participants mentioned, their answers could be categorised into five main categories: overall competences, attitudes, skills, knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge. In line with the literature (Andreotti, 2012; Guo, 2014), almost one-third of the respondents believe that teachers need to become global citizens first to be credible in their global teacher role (competence). Open-mindedness emerged as the most mentioned attitude from their answers. They believe that globally competent teachers should have sensitivity and lifelong learning skills. Regarding the knowledge component, they think that global teachers should be well-informed; nevertheless, they did not make reference to the fact that they should have wide knowledge about global issues, history, geography, cultures, languages, environmental or economic systems (Longview Foundation, n.d.). Very few tutors referred to the importance of having pedagogical content knowledge specific to global education: i.e., globally competent teachers should know about the global dimensions of their subject, and they should know how to integrate issues of global significance into their subjects in an engaging way. To ensure the integration of GCED into teacher education, it would be imperative to raise teacher educators’ awareness of the characteristics of globally competent teachers so that they could educate globally competent teacher trainees who have GCED content-specific knowledge, who can facilitate student discussions, and who can plan and organise activities catering to their students’ 21st-century needs (Lányi & Kajner, 2018; Wiksten, 2020).