Relation between school education aims and Finnish adolescents’ global mindedness: The mediating role of tolerance

Abstract

Global mindedness is increasingly crucial for individual, national, and global flourishing, and thus obtains great emphasis in school education. This study aimed to examine the associations between adolescents’ global mindedness and three-dimensional school education aims (aims for academic achievement, employability, and narrow-sense holistic development). We further explored the role of adolescents’ tolerance that might explain the associations. A total of 2448 15-year-old Finnish adolescents were selected and two-level hierarchical liner modeling was employed. Results showed that (1) academic achievement aim played a positive role in adolescents’ global mindedness, whereas narrow-sense holistic development aim and employability aim showed insignificant and negative effect on it, respectively; and (2) adolescents’ tolerance mediated the associations of these three school education aims and global mindedness. Findings identified the fundamental contribution of academic achievement aim to global mindedness, and imply schools to integrate global education with academic education, as well as to forbid the discouragement for tolerance and global mindedness in employability education.