This volume provides new perspectives into the challenges of citizenship education in the age of globalization and in the context of multicultural and conflict-ridden societies. It calls on us to rethink the accepted liberal and national discourses that have long dominated the conceptualization and practice of citizenship and citizenship education in light of social conflict, globalization, terrorism, and the spread of an extreme form of capitalism. The contributors of the volume identify the main challenges to the role of citizenship education in the context of globalization, conflicts and the changes to the institution of citizenship they entail and critically examine the ways in which schools and education systems currently address – and may be able to improve – the role of citizenship education in conflict-ridden and multicultural contexts.

This open access book takes a critical and international perspective to the mainstreaming of the Global Citizenship Concept and analyses the key issues regarding global citizenship education across the world. In that respect, it addresses a pressing need to provide further conceptual input and to open global citizenship agendas to diversity and indigeneity. Social and political changes brought by globalisation, migration and technological advances of the 21st century have generated a rise in the popularity of the utopian and philosophical idea of global citizenship. In response to the challenges of today’s globalised and interconnected world, such as inequality, human rights violations and poverty, global citizenship education has been invoked as a means of preparing youth for an inclusive and sustainable world. In recent years, the development of global citizenship education and the building of students’ global citizenship competencies have become a focal point in global agendas for education, international educational assessments and international organisations. However, the concept of global citizenship education still remains highly contested and subject to multiple interpretations, and its operationalisation in national educational policies proves to be challenging. This volume aims to contribute to the debate, question the relevancy of global citizenship education’s policy objectives and to enhance understanding of local perspectives, ideologies, conceptions and issues related to citizenship education on a local, national and global level. To this end, the book provides a comprehensive and geographically based overview of the challenges citizenship education faces in a rapidly changing global world through the lens of diversity and inclusiveness.

Citizenship under Fire examines the relationship among civic education, the culture of war, and the quest for peace. Drawing on examples from Israel and the United States, Sigal Ben-Porath seeks to understand how ideas about citizenship change when a country is at war, and what educators can do to prevent some of the most harmful of these changes. Perhaps the most worrisome one, Ben-Porath contends, is a growing emphasis in schools and elsewhere on social conformity, on tendentious teaching of history, and on drawing stark distinctions between them and us. As she writes, "The varying characteristics of citizenship in times of war and peace add up to a distinction between belligerent citizenship, which is typical of democracies in wartime, and the liberal democratic citizenship that is characteristic of more peaceful democracies." Ben-Porath examines how various theories of education--principally peace education, feminist education, and multicultural education--speak to the distinctive challenges of wartime. She argues that none of these theories are satisfactory on their own theoretical terms or would translate easily into practice. In the final chapter, she lays out her own alternative theory--"expansive education"--which she believes holds out more promise of widening the circles of participation in schools, extending the scope of permissible debate, and diversifying the questions asked about the opinions voiced.

Part I: Education for Active Citizenship in Areas Affected by Conflict -- 1. Education for Development and Social Construction -- 2. Constructing Ideals of Citizenship for Living Together -- 3. Effective Learning for Active Citizenship -- Part II: Citizenship Education in Lebanon in Rhetoric and Reality -- 4. Lebanon: Education Policy in Times of Conflict and Change -- 5. Young People: Their Citizenship, Their Learning -- 6. Teachers: Teaching Civics -- Part III: Pedagogies in Conflict -- 7. Undermining Active Citizenship -- 8. Transforming Civics and Conflict.

This book examines the issues of theorizing citizenship education research in non-Western societies that have embarked on democratic development after the fall of authoritarianism and colonialism. Despite a proliferation of studies on citizenship and citizenship education in non-Western contexts, there has been limited theorization of this research and little discussion of the applicability to such contexts of Western theoretical frameworks. This volume addresses these issues through empirical case studies of citizenship conceptions, practices, and education in South and West Africa, Latin America, Central Europe, and the Middle East. The contributors to the volume call into question the uncritical application of Western theoretical frameworks to non-Western societies and advocate for the development and wider application of new paradigms rooted in local processes and indigenous knowledge to better understand and theorize citizenship and citizenship education in such societies. This volume will be of interest to scholars, researchers, and practitioners working in the field of comparative and international citizenship education. It was originally published as a special issue of Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education.

This book offers an examination into the meanings of citizenship in the contemporary world, and trends that are forcing a rethinking of the concept in today’s nation-states.