Educators’ Subjectivities in Localising Global Citizenship Education: A Chinese Case

ABSTRACT

Global citizenship education (GCE) encounters epistemic barriers in curriculum localisation, which, from a semiotic perspective, are related to educators’ subjectivation process. By choosing a Chinese case based on six secondary schools on the east coast of China, this paper builds on previous efforts to investigate how principals’ (n = 6) and teachers’ (n = 10) subjectivation process could influence their comprehension of the concept of GCE. The focus of this paper is on distinguishing the subjectivities in participants’ interviews that related to their perceptions and planning of the curriculum. The findings of the study included qualitative feedback, which was later categorised into three themes: the communitarian subjectivity, the hybrid subjectivity and the assimilated subjectivity. The three forms of subjectivity exposed the vulnerability inherent in participants’ efforts to localize GCE. This study demonstrated a specific epistemic condition that challenges the prevailing discourse, suggesting that defending traditional culture does not always serve the purpose of promoting cultural diversity on a global scale.

KEYWORDS:

• Global citizenship education
• vulnerable subjectivity
• semiotics
• Deleuze

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Jiangsu Academy of Educational Science under Grant number [C/2022/01/79].

Notes on contributors

Yi Hong

Yi Hong received a Ph.D. from the University of Sydney and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Soochow University. She researches citizenship education, educational philosophy and curriculum studies.