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As our world becomes increasingly interconnected, complex global challenges necessitate cross‐cultural collaborative efforts. Thus, developing cosmopolitan literacies among students and teachers becomes ever more important. Believing that cosmopolitan literacies are central to being literate in contemporary times, the authors build on their existing project‐based inquiry model to include global themes (e.g., poverty, global water and sanitation, climate change) and cross‐cultural exchange. This theory‐into‐practice article explains the Project‐Based Inquiry Global process and six design features that enable teachers to facilitate collaborative inquiry projects with their students. As students interact during the process, they begin to practice cosmopolitan literacies by engaging in reading, writing, and inquiry with people and topics from around the world, becoming cross‐cultural difference makers.

Inquiry is featured prominently in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) as a promising pedagogical approach. Building on current conceptions of inquiry, a mixed-methods research design was used to explore the effects of Project-Based Inquiry (PBI) Global on student science content knowledge, motivation, and perspectives related to inquiry in a cross-school collaboration. The data sources included pre-/post-tests on science content and student motivation (n = 75), transcripts from student focus groups (n = 26), and students’ multimodal learning products (n = 18 teams). The quantitative findings indicated School B students were more motivated by the project than School A students, which mirrored student performance. The student focus group findings generated three themes: constructing empathy, learning for impact, and navigating challenges. The discussion focuses on an integrated view of what students gained and did not gain from the PBI Global experience, including a nuanced explanation of how motivation and content knowledge may be influenced by student experiences and school contextual factors during PBI Global. Implications for instructional practice highlight how relationship building, mutual respect, and consensus making are essential components of constructing cross-school collaborations and the importance of integrating instructional frameworks with teachers and students. Future research will focus on investigating the effects of PBI Global on student learning in cross-school partnerships through experimental-designed studies, and the systemic and structural barriers to scaling cross-school inquiry-based learning.

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Globalization, migration, transnational movements, and new economies have led educational leaders worldwide to view schools as key venues to develop global competence in working and learning with people from different cultures. With this global trend as a context, a state-of-the-art high school was created in Suzhou, China through a public-private partnership. Additionally, the school leaders invited North Carolina State University to be the creative partner for the school. This chapter traces the development of the new educational facility, the innovative curriculum embracing the best of Chinese and American education, and the successes and ongoing challenges that the members of the collaborative partnership experience.