Educating for Global Citizenship: Conflicting Agendas and Understandings

Educating for global citizenship is increasingly named as a goal of education. This study examines the variations in intent and approach to global education and educating for global citizenship. A review of the literature identifies the links between citizenship and globalization as well as the conflicting discourses and agendas surrounding citizenship education in a globalized neoliberal policy context. Using a conceptual framework that highlights three contrasting approaches to globalization—a neoliberal approach, a radical approach, and a transformational approach—this article compares three global education policies and their citizenship education approaches and highlights the issues implicit in each as well as the problems and possibilities for furthering a social justice agenda. The article concludes that education for global citizenship is a complex and contested concept and that educators who claim to be educating for global citizenship must be clear on the implications of their work.L’éducation civique visant la formation de citoyens du monde est de plus en plus évoquée comme un des buts de l’éducation. Cette étude porte sur les différentes intentions et approches relatives à cet objectif. Une analyse documentaire identifie les liens entre la citoyenneté et la mondialisation, en même temps que les discours et les programmes contradictoires en ce qui concerne l’éducation civique dans un contexte mondialisé de politiques néo libérales. S’appuyant sur un cadre conceptuel qui met en évidence trois approches contradictoires à la mondialisation – une approche néolibérale, une approche radicale et une approche transformationnelle – cet article compare trois politiques en matière d’éducation planétaire et leur approche à l’éducation civique tout en faisant ressortir les enjeux liés à chacune ainsi que les problèmes et les atouts quant à la possibilité de faire avancer un programme de justice sociale. Nous concluons que l’éducation visant la formation de citoyens du monde constitue un concept complexe et contesté et que les enseignants qui prétendent offrir une éducation civique planétaire doivent bien comprendre les conséquences de leur travail

Decolonizing UNESCO's post-2015 education agenda : global social justice and a view from UNDRIP

As education actors gather to review the failure of the 1990 – 2015 global Education for All (EFA) agendas to achieve their goals of universal delivery and access to education, there are few new ideas being submitted on how to change directions. This study brings together the two worlds of UNESCO’s Post-2015 Education Agenda and the United Nations Declaration of the Rights on Indigenous People (UNDRIP) in a policy encounter that not only highlights the colonial legacies present in global education policy but suggests how renewed efforts for EFA might be a decolonizing contribution if UNDRIP was taken as a starting place for policy development. It is my objective, in this article, to provide a de-colonial and anticolonial lens on the processes, objectives, and aims of Post-2015 EFA, as well as to propose some alternatives that could enhance global education goals of equity and enhanced citizenship and democracy.peer-reviewe

Disrupting Contemporary Child Slavery Through Organization Networks: The Possibilities and Barriers

Increases in slavery have been identified in most countries in the world and are understood to be a global problem with local patterns and consequences. Education organizations, including schools, teacher organizations, as well as non-formal education organizations, have the potential to function as powerful partners in preventing and eliminating child slavery through the provision of quality education and also as locations of information sharing and action coordination. This study examines existing organization, inter-organization and organization–institution networked relationships to understand if and how education organizations have taken up an active role as sites to disrupt contemporary child slavery or to rehabilitate children removed from slavery. The study reveals four key barriers to successful utilization of education providers and provides new understandings of how to more effectively address the ever more expansive and violent practice of child slavery. Le redoublement de l\u27esclavage a été identifié dans la plupart des pays du monde et reconnu comme un problème mondial avec des conséquences et caractéristiques locaux. Les organisations scolaires, comprenant les écoles, les organisations des enseignants ainsi que d\u27autres organisations scolaires non formelles, ont la possibilité de fonctionner comme des partenaires puissants dans la prévention et l\u27élimination de l\u27esclavage des enfants en procurant une éducation de qualité et en servant comme les lieux d\u27échange de renseignements et de coordination d\u27actions. Cette étude examine la relation entre les membres du réseau déjà établi des organisations, inter-organisations et des institutions pour savoir si et comment les organisations scolaires prennent un rôle actif comme des sites, luttant contre l\u27esclavage contemporain des enfants, ou servant de centres de réadaptation aux enfants sauvés de l\u27esclavage. Cette étude montre les quatre barrières clés qui interdisent le succès du service des pourvoyeurs d\u27éducation et propose de nouvelles compréhensions pour montrer une voie plus efficace dans la lutte contre la pratique expansive et violente de l\u27esclavage des enfants

A Social Network Analysis of Global Citizenship Education in Europe and North America

In the last decade GCED has developed in Europe and North America (EUNA) through conceptual, political and pedagogical negotiations among policymakers, educators, and community members. Working from the geographic area understood as “the global north”, EUNA actors are positioned within complex global relations. Drawing on the results of a Social Network Analysis, this chapter is a contribution towards understanding patterns of relationships among key GCED actors across the region. Adopting a whole network approach, the study discusses the structural characteristics of the system following the investigation of three one-mode networks, based on direct ties: collaboration, information exchange, and meetings

What are we Saving? Tracing Governing Knowledge and Truth Discourse in Global COVID-19 Policy Papers

As the world went into a swift lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, sending individuals to their homes and shutting businesses and institutions, the closing of schools posed big problems. The majority of the world’s children were out of school leading to the largest period of school closures in history. We saw educators turning towards responses, not aimed at collegial and community-engaged strategies for education in an emergency but to online learning cast as education/business as usual. This study explores the logic driving this global response through the policy papers released by three key global education actors: 1) the OECD and its paper A Framework to Guide Education Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020; 2) UNESCO’s Global Education Coalition #LearningNeverStops; and 3) the World Bank’s Guidance Note on Education System’s Response to COVID-19; and Guidance Note: Remote Learning and Covid 19. We draw on Bacchi’s post-structural policy analysis to make visible the key concepts and binaries used within policy texts and to understand the technologies of saving that were invoked in each policy response, locating the education programs, activities and actors within knowledge practices in educational reform. This article explores the World Bank, OECD, and UNESCO responses using an analysis of knowledge harmonization and difference among these institutions as well as their location as key norm setters and governing actors in the field of education

Global Citizenship Education (GCE) in Post-Secondary Institutions: What is protected and what is hidden under the umbrella of GCE?

In this article, we examine how educating for global citizenship has increasingly become a shared goal of educators and educational institutions interested in expanding their own and their students’ understanding of what it means to claim or to have global citizenship in the twenty-first century. While this trend may be considered a uniform response to urgent global issues and contexts, through document analysis of various policies and programs of Global Citizenship Education (GCE) in North America, it is evident that global citizenship is far from a uniform idea and, in fact, is a much contested term. There is a general consensus, however, that higher education institutions have a role to play in preparing citizens who are informed and able to participate in our complex globalized and globalizing world. Post-secondary institutions join other social institutions in working toward understanding their role in addressing social, economic, and political issues of our times. As global citizenship educators grapple with and respond to the global unevenness of internationalization, the legacies of colonialism, and ideologies that support a system that benefits the few at the expense of the many, educators look to global citizenship education efforts to open educational spaces for working for a more just and peaceful world

(Re) Imagining a Shared Future through Education for Global Social Justice

(Re) Imagining a Shared Future throughEducation for Global Social JusticeAli A. AbdiProfessor, University of AlbertaCanadaLynette ShultzAssistant Professor, University of AlbertaCanad

Citizenship and Youth Social Engagement in Canada: Learning Challenges and Possibilities

With the general increase in the ‘production’ of citizenship and global citizenship education scholarship, one might think that we have established a clear and comprehensive understanding of these concepts and their daily implications and possibilities. That may not be the case, and while all claims, contexts and formations of citizenship are important and certainly empower individuals and groups in important ways that directly affect their lives, they do not necessarily explain or actively respond to the qualities of citizenship that people experience, desire or are able to achieve. Our analysis of youth engagement holds that by strengthening the quality of local citizenship, the connections to global citizenship are also affirmed. To discuss and analyse these active youth engagement projects in Canada’s public (and to some extent private) spheres, we look into the socio-political formations of three contemporary Canadian youth movements. The first is Lead Now; the second is the Journey of the Nishiyuu and Idle No More and their members; and the third is the student movement that was organized by youth for the adequate funding of higher education in the province of Quebec