This volume presents a critical discussion that brings contemporary academic debate about ‘southern theory’ to Global Citizenship Education (GCE). It situates the discussion on GCE in the Global South within a post-colonial paradigm informed by critical pedagogy ingrained in social justice.

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.

This book brings together key perspectives from scholars in the Global South and Global North to illustrate diverse ways in which the UN’s Global Citizenship Education (GCED) agenda can promote social justice and be used as a vehicle for negotiating and learning about diverse and shared objectives in education and the global public sphere. Recognizing the historical function of education as a prominent public sphere site, this book addresses questions around how forms of global education can serve as public sphere sites in various contexts today and in the future. Specifically, it questions established notions of education and proposes new interpretations of the relationship between practices of education and the public sphere to meet the needs of our contemporary turbulent era and a post-2020 world. By offering conceptual analyses, examples of policy and educational practices which promote global learning, democratic citizenship, common good, and perspective-taking, the text offers new critical understandings of how GCED can contribute to the public responsibilities and roles of education. Chapters consider examples such as non-formal adult education at the Mexico–US border, teachers’ responsibilities in Japan and Finland, developments in education policy and practices in Brazil, civic religious teachings in Canada, online learning in the United States and China, and support to the participation of women in higher education in Pakistan. Given its unique approach, and the range of case studies it brings together, this book is a timely addition to the literature on education in the global public sphere. It will prove to be an invaluable resource for scholars working at the intersections of global education and transnational education policies, and for teachers involved in global education.

With a focus on the Global South, this book argues that awareness and discussion of the politics of equity and inclusion in global citizenship education (GCE) research are essential to the future of nuanced and effective research in this area. The book explores the notion of heavily regulated hard spaces to examine areas of institutional blindness and reflects on ways to negotiate the issue of sensitivity in an institutional context, exploring how one’s sensitivity relates to pedagogy and ethics. Through this in-depth metadiscussion of GCE research, the book provides a complex portrait of unique challenges in this domain and explores the nuanced experience of navigating temporal intersections of the global, the citizen, and education in geographically and thematically obstacled spaces. This book will be of great interest to researchers, policymakers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of global education, comparative education, and educational policy.

Drawing on contemporary global events, this book highlights how global citizenship education can be used to critically educate about the complexity and repressive nature of global events and our collective role in creating a just world.

This edited book provides new research highlighting philosophical traditions, emerging perceptions, and the situated practice of global citizenship education (GCE) in Asian societies. The book includes chapters that provide: 1) conceptions and frameworks of GCE in Asian societies; 2) analyses of contexts, policies, and curricula that influence GCE reform efforts in Asia; and 3) studies of students’ and teachers’ experiences of GCE in schools in different Asian contexts. While much citizenship education has focused on constructions and enactments of GCE in Western societies, this volume re-centers investigations of GCE amid Asian contexts, identities, and practices. In doing so, the contributors to this volume give voice to scholarship grounded in Asia, and the book provides a platform for sharing different approaches, strategies, and research across Asian societies. As nations grapple with how to prepare young citizens to face issues confronting our world, this book expands visions of how GCE might be conceptualized, contextualized, and taught; and how innovative curriculum initiatives and pedagogies can be developed and enacted.

This volume presents a critical discussion that brings contemporary academic debate about 'southern theory' to Global Citizenship Education (GCE). It situates the discussion on GCE in the Global South within a post-colonial paradigm informed by critical pedagogy ingrained in social justice.