Environment-related education topics within global citizenship education scholarship focused on teachers: A natural language processing analysis

Abstract

Intergovernmental organizations (IOs) increasingly promote global citizenship education (GCE) and related topics. This paper analyses the body of scholarship on GCE that focuses on teachers and interprets the development of environment-related education (ERE) within the GCE discourse. Using a novel, data-rich methodology employing Natural Language Processing and Social Network Analysis, we trace how ERE is represented within the GCE scholarship and how this representation evolved during the last ten years. We argue that ERE topics have become increasingly prominent within the GCE discourse, as a tendency toward subject-specific discourse emerged in GCE, heavily influenced by intergovernmental organizations’ policies. It is important to trace and understand such transformations, given their possible influence on curricular development and classroom experiences. Future research directions and possible practical implications are discussed.

Keywords:

• Education for sustainable development
• environmental education
• environment-related education
• global citizenship education
• natural language processing
• social network analysis

Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Max Planck Society and Minerva Foundation. The authors thank Dr. Efrat Blumenfeld-Lieberthal and Mr. Nimrod Serok for the generous assistance in network analysis and algorithm development and the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their insightful comments and constructive suggestions which helped us to improve the manuscript.

Notes

1 We use the term Environment-Related Education’ (ERE) in this paper as an overarching term encompassing Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), Environmental Education (EE), and related notions, to track the development of various terminologies and thus meanings and enactments of education related to environmental issues within the GCE discourse. As such, we continue the line of inquiry pursued by Sauvé, Brunelle, and Berryman (2005; 2007), Hart, (2003), and others who broadened the scope of their analysis by including all education topics related to the environment without adopting any specific term with a loaded meaning.

2 http://en.unesco.org/gced/approach. Target 4.7 also applies the concept of ESD, thus interlinking these concepts.

3 Open Calais Main Site: http://www.opencalais.com/

4 Open Calais User Manual: http://www.opencalais.com/wp-content/uploads/folder/ThomsonReutersOpenCalaisAPIUserGuide020316R93.pdf

5 Gephi User Manual and Tutorials: https://gephi.org/users/

Additional information

Funding

Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Max Planck Society and Minerva Foundation.