Global citizenship amid COVID-19: why climate change and a pandemic spell the end of international experiential learning

ABSTRACT

The September 2019 Global Climate Strikes witnessed hundreds of thousands of students express forms of global citizenship through street-level environmental activism. These strikes were led, and motivated, by youth who chose to strike from class in order to send a message to world leaders. It was an enormous occupation of public space and public imagination that encouraged schools to cancel classes for students to go outside to engage in street-level politics. Five months later, everyone was told to stay at home. COVID-19 ordinances effectively made many normal activities suddenly illegal, including the sort of activism that engaged youth around the world only months before. This article explores how the Global Climate Strikes and the COVID-19 pandemic will be important moments to advance the concept of global citizenship education within International Development Studies, and especially around the place of international experiential learning in the discipline. Studying, and volunteering abroad, has been long encouraged in International Development Studies (IDS), but with a global youth movement encouraging less carbon-based travel, more street-level activism and a pandemic demanding more digital learning, how will International Development Studies programmes respond? The author argues that International Development Studies can adapt to these events through “Anthropocene Activism”, a term used to depict global connectedness and consciousness for change-making politics. IDS programmes will need to focus curriculum on inclusive postcolonial pedagogy including land-based pedagogy, foster skills of intercultural communication and encourage change-making politics, even if it means expressing it indoors and online. Climate change and COVID-19 are global problems that will require a global citizenship education that goes far beyond experiential learning through service-learning, and instead recognise that meaning can be made out of our current global challenges, including through Anthropocene Activism.

RÉSUMÉ

Les grèves mondiales pour le climat de Septembre 2019 ont été l’occasion pour des centaines de milliers d’étudiants d’exprimer des formes de citoyenneté mondiale en descendant dans la rue pour manifester au nom de l’environnement. Ces grèves furent lancées et menées par des jeunes qui avaient choisi de quitter les cours afin d’attirer l’attention des dirigeants mondiaux. Ce fut une occupation extraordinaire de l’espace public et de l’imagination du public, qui encouragea les écoles à annuler les cours afin que les étudiants puissent sortir dans la rue pour démontrer leur engagement politique. Cinq mois plus tard, on ordonna à tout le monde de rentrer chez soi. Les décrets portant sur la pandémie de COVID-19 ont de fait soudainement rendu beaucoup d’activités habituellement normales illégales, y compris le type d’activisme qui avait mobilisé la jeunesse à travers le monde seulement quelques mois plus tôt. Cet article explore la manière dont les grèves globales pour le climat et la pandémie de COVID-19 joueront un rôle important dans l’émergence du concept d’éducation en citoyenneté mondiale au sein des études sur le développement international. Une attention particulière sera accordée au rôle croissant de l’apprentissage expérientiel international. Étudier et faire du bénévolat à l’étranger ont longtemps été des activités encouragées dans les programmes d’études en développement international. Cependant, face à un mouvement de la jeunesse mondiale qui encourage la diminution de l’empreinte carbone des transports ainsi que l’augmentation de l’activisme de rue, et face à une pandémie qui requiert une augmentation de l’apprentissage numérique, quelle pourra être la réponse des programmes d’études en développement international? Dans cet article, je démontre que les études en développement international pourront s’adapter aux évènements grâce à « l’activisme de l’anthropocène, » un terme employé pour décrire la connectivité mondiale et la conscience de la nécessité de politiques réformatrices. Les programmes de développement international devront donner un rôle essentiel dans leurs curriculums à une pédagogie inclusive et postcoloniale. Celle-ci inclura une pédagogie centrée sur le rapport à la terre; elle promouvra l’acquisition de compétences en communication interculturelle; et elle encouragera les politiques réformatrices, même si tout cela devra avoir lieu chez soi, et en ligne. Le réchauffement climatique et la pandémie de COVID-19 sont des problèmes globaux. Il faudra pour leur faire face que l’éducation en citoyenneté mondiale aille beaucoup plus loin que le simple apprentissage expérientiel par le biais de l’apprentissage par le service. Au contraire, il lui faudra reconnaitre que l’on peut trouver un sens aux défis mondiaux actuels, y compris par le biais de l’activisme de l’anthropocène.

KEYWORDS:

• Global citizenship
• climate change
• COVID-19
• online learning
• activism

Introduction

The 2019 youth climate strikes and the COVID-19 pandemic have put international experiential learning, which is “the process of making meaning out of direct international experience”, into an existential crisis (Tiessen and Huish 2014, 4). As such, educators in International Development Studies (IDS) will need to continue the gradual shift away from global citizenship education as international experiential learning. Amid broader climate change protests, the 2019 youth climate action strikes demonstrated that today’s youth are taking to the streets as a form of global engagement that goes beyond the traditional global citizenship education frameworks of volunteerism abroad (Schneekloth, Williams, and Dyett 2019). Youth in the global North and the global South alike are demanding drastic change on climate change policies. In doing so they are seeking the skills and experience to make change happen (O’Brien, Selboe, and Hayward 2018). Now, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a period when public gatherings and most international travel are banned, both student activism and international experiential learning will change. The purpose of this article is to suggest that educators can have an important role in fostering deeper experiences of global citizenship education through decolonial pedagogies. To deliver this argument, I critically discuss the issues facing international experiential learning, offer dialogue on how pedagogy can be modified in the wake of COVID-19 by reflecting on Kolb’s work, and then discuss what deep global citizenship pedagogy towards Anthropocene Activism could look like.

The COVID-19 pandemic will bring educators into a new era of global citizenship education that will never “be business as usual” (Steele 2020). This may be a time to build on the work of decolonising disciplines, such as International Development Studies, to revisit the purpose, ethics and values that have come with international experiential learning (White 2002). International Development Studies educators have a decades-long dialogue about decolonising the academy (Sultana 2019). Alongside this process, the 2019 youth climate action strikes showed a deep concern youth have with the amount of carbon globalisation demands, including that from air travel (Ifran 2019; Ruiz 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic drastically reduced carbon output and derailed global transportation networks, all the while showing the possibilities of forming connections and building understanding through distance learning and telework (Ellis 2020; Ruiz 2020). Universities, in cancelling study-abroad classes, showed how quickly degree requirements could be changed and even overlooked to avoid experiential learning (Jones 2020). Recognising the extensive work about decolonising curricula around international experiential learning, the 2019 youth climate strikes raised concerns, and demands, over carbon footprints tied to the heart of globalisation. This includes international experiential learning opportunities that depend on crossing borders. As the COVID-19 pandemic halted international experiential learning altogether, it is an opportune time, and a fitting juncture to consider how higher education in International Development Studies may finally move beyond the era of globetrotting as global citizenship, to an era of essential travel as necessity, not as opportunity, and experiential learning from making meaning, rather than making memories (Tiessen and Huish 2014).

In the winter of 2020, every Canadian university scuttled study-abroad and international experiential learning opportunities, replacing the curriculum with online, distance learning. To be clear, international experiential learning can refer to three broad experiences. First is “study abroad”, which are formally organised courses that students take at an overseas institution. Second is “service-learning”, which implies a commitment to volunteer hours at the community level for partial fulfilment of university credit. And third is “voluntourism” which are international volunteer experiences organised by private firms, to which universities may recognise as counting towards scholarly or competency credit. Taken together, these experiences fall under the wide umbrella of global citizenship education. COVID-19 raises questions about achieving goals of global citizenship education while adhering to social distancing and self-isolation. It is a unique moment in International Development Studies when decolonial pedagogy and global climate action, amid a pandemic that prohibits movement and assembly, couples with enormous demand for online learning. Indeed, it is a crisis of opportunity. While some feel the social and economic impacts of the pandemic will pass, leading some educators to call for “doing online learning poorly” (Barrett-Fox 2020), educators in International Development Studies would do well to realise that this is not a temporary pause before going back to “business as usual” and is indeed a clarion call for reconsidering the ethical foundations of some traditional elements of the discipline.

In this article I outline how the youth climate strike and the COVID-19 pandemic will be important steps in the process of reshaping international experiential learning away from globetrotting, and more towards what I call “Anthropocene Activism”. The term refers to conscious methods of activism and direct engagement that are mindful of a world where humans are a “force of nature”, and that human action and environmental dynamics “are deeply converged” (Hamilton, Bonneuil, and Gemenne 2015). It recognises that past pedagogies may be under-equipped for the health and safety challenges of activism in the Anthropocene, and that deeper commitments to global citizenship education also require encounters with the colonial present (Abu El-Haj and Skilton 2017). It also recognises that human impact is not just against physical nature, but also against peoples and communities who resisted processes of colonialism. This article revisits Kolb’s experiential learning model through the lens of Anthropocene Activism, by exploring how pedagogy can adapt to new politics and to new technology for twenty-first century higher education, which includes decolonial education through land-based pedagogy (Boyatzis and Kolb 1995). This comes down to three essential processes.

First, requiring the making of meaning without necessarily travelling or organising in public spaces. Second, relying on virtual learning spaces to produce inclusive curricula that overcome traditional classroom hierarchies to encourage a wider range of voices to guide the learning experience. Third, recognising that the COVID-19 pandemic is a globally shared experience of disruption and that the “learning moment” may in itself be rooted in the practice of listening and mindfulness by engaging with decolonial pedagogy. How educators choose to embrace these new global realities in learning spaces will not only further the decolonial shift of International Development Studies, it will also signal an important opportunity to foster engagement and action in virtual space for the challenges that youth today will face (Kothari 2006). This is the moment in International Development Studies pedagogy to move beyond traditional constructs of volunteerism and global citizenship, and towards change-making in an era of unknown expectations.

Moving beyond travelling for opportunity

Experiential learning is about “making meaning out of experience” (Tiessen and Huish 2014). Often, the practice and pedagogy of experiential learning has lent itself to a sense of “doing good”. International volunteerism programmes, both university-run or privately run, abound to help students “do good” abroad, and universities regularly offer credit and experience for this (McGloin and Georgeou 2016). The idea of offering international travel opportunities is to create improved understandings of inequality, justice and the causes of poverty (Conran 2011). Even some high schools (secondary schools) take this approach in offering international volunteer learning opportunities (Schneller and Coburn 2018). More commonly, many school boards require students to achieve a certain number of hours volunteering at the local level (Billig 2000). Not only is volunteerism for credit common, it is widely celebrated. The organisation “Me to We” rewards this service through large rock-concert style rallies on something referred to as “WE Day” (Jefferess 2012). As Jefferess (2012) argues, WE Day brings with it a particularly colonial narrative that reinforces the saviour complex, within a student’s own country. International service-learning, when conducted through this lens, emphasises the values of “doing good” and often furthers colonial narratives, but falls short of skill-building towards solidarity or structural change. It is something to which the Canadian Association for the Study of International Development has outright “condemned as a model of development” (Canadian Association for the Study of International Development 2020).

The moral challenges of global service-learning emerge by combining three very separate moral platforms in order to achieve the goal of “making meaning”. The first is the value of doing good through service to communities. The second is the pursuit of academic merit. The third is the desire to explore. In their own right, each moral platform is justified and worthwhile, but when combined as one packaged experience, issues arise both in terms of marketing and representation of the experience, but also in terms of outcomes. Early arguments for this approach to service-learning as experiential learning suggested that persons who pursue volunteerism in their degrees would be more likely to have long-term community engagement (Barber, Mueller, and Ogata 2013). However, as Butin (2010, xiii) argues, “the service-learning-as-social movement phenomenon is ineffectual in accomplishing its intended transformational goals”. As she says, positioning service-learning as the overarching answer for higher education has transformed it into common sets of institutional practices (Butin 2010). The reflexive representation of experiential-learning and service-learning is greatly focused on the experience of the individual, rather than on structural transformations at the community level (MacDonald 2014). In some cases dependency issues arise when communities that receive international volunteers rely on the financial benefits that are associated with regularly returning programmes (Hernandez-Maskivker, Lapointe, and Aquino 2018).

I have argued elsewhere that teaching tactics of activism and direct engagement is not just perceived as “risky”, but that it is in itself a “dangerous knowledge” that is feared by university administrations, and even governments (Huish 2013). Developing curriculum around the skills of activism while exploring the history, philosophy and ethics of change-making demonstrates that small groups of committed individuals can have enormous power and influence in creating structural change (Shaw 2001). The successes, struggles and reactions of each movement are moments to be studied and discussed, especially by positioning them against processes of coloniality. Transformative activism requires careful thought, preparation and grounded skills in cooperation, organisation and communication (Wolf 2018). These skills often rely on selflessness, a lack of formal recognition for work put in, and, increasingly, global connections through virtual space rather than through traditional travel routes.

International Development Studies has the ability to connect youth to complicated global challenges. Part of this rich experience has been the offer for students to “experience” the place of development through study-abroad programmes or service-learning abroad. Often this has involved courses, six months or two weeks at a time, where students earn credit for travelling abroad, volunteering or visiting field sites (Georgeou 2012; Heron 2007). Sometimes a beach or a safari is involved as a formal part of itineraries and associated expenses. However, the study-abroad experience, in as much as it has been held as a means to enhance global citizenship, has not fully embraced the place of change-making within current global crises (Baillie Smith and Laurie 2011; Epprecht and Tiessen 2012). This could be a tremendous opportunity lost for educators and students alike.

Many experiential learning educators ground their curricula in Kolb’s learning cycle model, which includes six key propositions: (1) learning is a process, not a set of outcomes; (2) learning is relearning one’s processes and beliefs; (3) learning requires the resolution of conflicts; (4) learning is process of adaptation to the real world; (5) learning involves transactions between individuals and their environments; (6) and learning in itself is the process of creating knowledge (Koob and Funk 2002). At the heart of these propositions is the need for circular reflection, which means that students are in a constant state of reflection in order to gain a deeper sense of their own positionally within global society (Kolb 2014). International experiential learning is meant to enrich circular learning in order to achieve these six propositions through reflection on the experiences itself. Even then, challenges remain in dealing with individual guilt of privilege, and burn-out from hypercritical self-reflection (Banki and Schonell 2018; Langdon and Agyeyomah 2014). No guarantee exists that curricular design built upon travel abroad, service-learning and time spent with communities will deliver on all of these goals. Indeed, the literature is highly critical of those who claim that it can (Thomas and Luba 2018; White 2002).

The heart of Kolb’s model is about developing education experiences that lead towards a politics of change by fostering connections between students and place. The question then is whether international experiential learning misses the ability to build this outcome through reflection on the experience of travel and volunteering in itself. The underlying notion of many study-abroad programmes is that passion, presence, positionality and pursuit is enough to qualify as doing good, and that good changes the world. But how does “doing good” impact the consumption of carbon? Or mitigate poor social behaviour during a pandemic? Or dismantle institutional colonial hierarchies? How much do multiple acts of volunteerism and kindness really transform into progressive global change? Later in this article I will speak to how Kolb’s points could be adapted to Anthropocene Activism teaching.

With what is now an interestingly titled article during a pandemic, Woosnam and Jung Lee (2011) argue in “Applying Social Distance to Voluntourism Research” that volunteering abroad does not always increase cross-cultural understanding, and that international experiential learning itself can strengthen cultural stereotypes. Using the “social distance scale”, a method first introduced by Park (1924) to understand the “grades and degrees of understanding intimacy which characterise personal and social relations generally”, Woosman and Jung Lee employ the method for voluntourists and service learners (Park 1924; Woosnam and Jung Lee 2011). They found that social distance (meaning the unwillingness to accept others) between the voluntourist and the community, which is created from deep imbalances in power, can promote cultural or national misunderstandings within the experience itself. Their work suggests that international experiential learning does not guarantee acceptance within or between communities, and therefore creates a social distance that can reinforce personal notions of isolation and homesickness to the tourist which can double down on cultural misunderstandings of the community setting. Now in 2020, with much of the planet encouraged to be socially distant, a great deal of effort is also going into ensuring social connection through various forms of teleconferencing, video meetings and online learning. In a rather timely sense, Woosnam and Jung Lee’s (2011) work becomes a timely contribution in the literature to suggest that the actual experience of being a voluntourist can further social distancing of power dynamics and coloniality, whereas a socially distanced planet may find new forms of connectivity through a more broadly shared experience of physical isolation and available connectivity. And yet, this does not speak to the experience of millions who do not have the luxury of safe domestic accommodations or available connectivity.

The 2019 climate protests, combined with the COVID-19 pandemic, are important benchmarks in understanding the difference between thin and deep forms of global citizenship. As Cameron points out, “neither university administrators nor students associate global citizenship and international experiential learning programmes with global justice” (Cameron 2014). Cameron’s point is that in higher education, administration has approached global citizenship “thinly” in the sense that the experiences are about the ability to enjoy free movement, give volunteer time, report back and even speak on behalf of others who may be marginalised. Through this lens it is inherently a self-serving process meant at its best to stimulate career opportunities down the road (McGloin and Georgeou 2016). At its worst, it directly reinforces neocolonial tendencies through both formal and informal representations of people and place (Langdon and Agyeyomah 2014). Cameron suggests that global citizenship education should take on a “thick approach” that aligns with John Rawls’ concepts of cosmopolitanism, and ultimately build skills of solidarity towards others. The “thick” approach recognises the deeper political economy of global inequality, and emphasises complicity in the suffering of others, which makes global citizenship less of a lifestyle choice and more of a moral obligation to be concerned for the suffering of others (Cameron 2014).

A deep, cosmopolitan experience of global citizenship would be concerned less about the actual mobility of the individual, but rather the ability to conceptualise, discuss and take action upon pressing global issues that respect multiple perspectives and viewpoints. As Cabrera suggests, “global citizenship is fundamentally concerned with individual moral requirements in the global frame” (Cabrera 2008, 84). Since there are no truly global institutions that could establish a shared agreement on individual duties, morals or obligations, the challenge then is to understand “individual obligations of justice” as they develop and unfold pressing global challenges (Cabrera 2008). A great deal of global citizenship education approaches the deepening of obligations of justice through an individual’s spatial and cross-cultural understanding in the contemporary. This thereby encourages the pursuit of international travel, and contemporary volunteerism as a basis for community connectivity.

However, volunteerism in itself loses sight of the historical legacy dynamics of cosmopolitanism, which is to pursue obligations of justice positioned as the colonial present. The challenge with education programmes seeking to pursue thick global citizenship is how to make meaning of an experience of cross-cultural travel, or to make meaning of critical exploration of the colonial present. The spatial experience offers opportunity to a few, specifically those who can afford it, to cross borders for service and education, but in doing so may only build complicity for suffering, which does not assure a sense of action or change-making. Meanwhile, educational experiences that address the construct of the colonial present may be able to reach a wider range of students and require less travel.

How then can global citizenship education embrace action-oriented learning through experiential learning, while being mindful of cosmopolitan justice and the colonial present? An important step is to recognise the importance of going beyond “passing on past knowledge” and instead actively innovate and address contemporary challenges as they emerge. By no means should this be rendered as a critique against the value of past knowledges. Lessons from Aristotle and the Stoics can be of rich value in any era, as can indigenous knowledges. Rather, the means and methods of “the passing” are open for interpretation and adaptation, so that ideas are exchanged rather than just consumed and then repeated through didactic forums. It is about going beyond the removal of a “veil of ignorance”, towards exchanging realities and perspectives towards change-making (Cameron 2014).

It is why curricula for change-making in the Anthropocene requires some thought and conversation. Berlant (2016) refers to the Anthropocene as an era when even the most affluent in the world experience “glitches” in the infrastructure of their daily lives (Berlant 2016). The idea is that human impact is so widespread across the earth, that even minor economic, social or climatic disruptions can cause serious impacts on a global scale. Challenges abound in every society in ensuring human security and well-being vis-à-vis clean water, untainted air, good food and viable health care. Within global society it will be “the young, the poor, the colonised and marginalised [that] bear the greatest burden of the fall-out from these glitches” (Brennan 2017). Volunteering as knowledge production is unable to fully understand the structural origins and coloniality of such glitches, and it fails further in providing definitive pathways towards security, assurance and betterment. Indeed, service knowledge is in itself a past knowledge for contemporary challenges, one that may provide some immediate benefit at the local level and may venerate student volunteers for “doing good”, but it may do little to address structural challenges that further inequities.

Anthropocene Activism is therefore a means of connecting action to contemporary global challenges, and in doing so create new spaces for education and meaning. It is a process that takes on new ways of direct action and change-making that moves beyond street-level activism to also include the virtual. It recognises that impacts can be made without necessarily travelling, that technology can allow activists to be more inclusive to a broader representation of voices, and from there build experiences that are rooted on listening, mindfulness and decolonial processes. This indeed speaks well to Kolb’s six propositions (Kolb 2014).

Greta’s global citizenship

The 2019 global youth climate strikes were about demanding change towards good, but not necessarily about “doing good”. Hundreds of thousands of students in dozens of countries went on repeated Friday strikes to protest the lack of action by world leaders on climate change (Harvey and Watts 2018). Admittedly, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the moment of the youth climate movement seems to have waned. However, it provides important foresight into Anthropocene Activism. The underlying notion of a strike is to challenge, or to disrupt, a normative system of capitalist production. While the motivations for climate change activists may vary between counter-hegemonic aspirations to that of cleaner capitalism, the tactical method of using a “strike” to disrupt normative systems is important. The objective of a strike goes beyond a forum for a political message as, according to Gramsci, it is meant to disrupt systems of power (Gramsci 2006). In as much as twentieth-century factory strikes were meant to disrupt and hurt the capitalist system, school strikes also create a disruption to broader structures of power. In particular, a walkout from classes challenges any notion of students “doing good”, albeit “being good”, to that of “causing disruption”. This puts educators and institutions in a difficult position to support such actions, or to create learning objectives and outcomes from them. Can educators ethically encourage students to miss class time in order to strike? Is it possible to create learning scenarios that coincide and compliment strike actions?

The simple answer is “yes”, even despite the disruptive nature of the action. Strikes are nothing new to school campuses, and professors supporting the solidarity of students is old hat. The climate strikes in 2019 witnessed not just students hitting the streets, but teachers and parents as well (Isham and Smithey 2019). Even the Queen’s annual Christmas address in 2019 praised the “sense of purpose” that youth activists took on in 2019 (BBC News 2019). Indeed, many world leaders and media outlets complimented the sense of purpose as well in terms of peaceful, collaborative expression of youth solidarity. The narratives of disruption were quickly accompanied by notions that real leadership was emerging on a crisis that many world leaders felt powerless to address, or to accept (Brennan 2017).

To this point higher education could serve a role, in what Brennan (2017) calls education in the era of the Anthropocene. As she says, it is about going beyond passing on past knowledges, and instead developing curricula that escapes the “standardization syndrome”, to develop learning opportunities that can keep up and problematise current challenges in the Anthropocene, such as those related to climate change and pandemics. This challenges the dismissive assumption of today’s youth merely being tomorrow’s powerful voters. It requires thoughtful education planning to recognise that skills, experience, confidence and collaboration will be needed in order for change-making in the Anthropocene, to which students can be part of now. Circular reflection may indeed be part of this experience, but so too are change-making skills needed.

The story of Greta Thunberg’s ascension to celebrity status in the 2019 youth climate strikes is a good case in point of where learning opportunities can be developed for “Anthropocene Activism”. Thunberg was personally committed to climate change and environmental issues as a high-school student. She took up “upcycling”, a term used for transforming used goods into higher value items, and encouraged her parents to cease all air travel – a difficult consideration for her mother, who is an internationally recognised opera performer (Tapper 2020). Thunberg made the decision to boycott the beginning of her school year in August 2018, and instead took to the steps of the Swedish parliament, holding a sign reading “Skolstrejk för Klimatet” – Strike for Climate (Aronoff 2019). She posted a photo of Day 1 of the strike on social media, which was picked up by high-profile youth activists. As a result, she was joined by other youth activists on the steps of the Swedish parliament (Fridays for Future 2020). High-profile Twitter accounts began to retweet her posts, and within a day, local reporters added to the coverage.

Thunberg’s activism contains many moments for learning and reflection. The choice of tactics, the preparation needed, the social media engagement and mainstream media engagement are all part of this activist experience. As Shaw argues, one of the most important tactics of activism is to “jump scales”, meaning that the message and movement takes on a broader geographical scope than the individual or local level. Jumping scales can be both a mix of skill and luck (Shaw 2001). Tactics and coordination are essential to get clear messages out in order to attract attention; the second step is then to encourage distant populations to care about the cause. Thunberg’s case is telling of this. Once a movement has jumped scale, it then becomes an issue of controlling the message, and of bracing for harsh rebukes from political opponents. In Thunberg’s case, it was US President Donald Trump who challenged both her message and her character (Levin 2020).

The 2019 Youth Climate strikes came amid a broader background of long-standing and on-going climate change activism. Notably, the group Extinction Rebellion staged multiple protests and bridge blockings around the world between 2018 and 2019, with the bridges of London being the particular focal point. The movement is global, decentralised and explicit in its call to identify as a “rebellion against our government and the corrupted, inept institutions that threaten our future” (Extinction Rebellion India 2019). The call is about disruption and refusal to accept a lack of governance on climate change matters. In the movement’s goals of “aiming for radical change, through nonviolent resistance in order to advert climate breakdown”, groups in Canada, the United States and Europe focused on blocking bridges in 2018 and 2019 (Extinction Rebellion India 2019). Meanwhile in the global South, notably in Hyderabad, India, school walk-outs, die-ins and traffic-blocking protests took place in demand of climate justice (Extinction Rebellion India 2019).

Those who participated in the climate strikes did so to demand action on a crisis many people felt powerless to address (Brennan 2017). It was a chance to explore new ways of approaching learning in schools and universities that serve the current and future needs of humans and ecosystems. The question will not only be whether educators see this as an opportunity for global citizenship education, but also of whether communities themselves will accept disruption, strikes and direct engagement actions as legitimate methods of forward teaching. Or will the appetite for business as usual remain as a grounded structure for higher education? Amid a global pandemic when universities are distanced and social gatherings are discouraged if not banned, it is all very uncertain.

Covid-19: shelter in place/learning in place

Few could imagine that 2020 would see most of the world under shelter-in-place orders, quarantines and self-isolation. The economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic will be great and profound for years to come. Universities were among the many victims of COVID-19’s economic fallout. The pandemic struck in the middle of semesters in North America too far into coursework to prepare accordingly, and not far enough along to cancel classes and requirements outright. Like welcoming a wooden horse into Troy, for many professors, the orders were given to take classes online, and to cancel any educational activity that required travel (Walcott 2020). In Australia and New Zealand, the semesters were just beginning, and many took the initiative to go entirely online from the onset. Although some university educators were both prepared and well versed for this teaching platform, many others approached it with apprehension or disdain. Some even suggested that colleagues set up distance learning environments “poorly” in order to discourage more commonplace use of the online environment (Barrett-Fox 2020). Even administrators encouraged faculty to keep things “simple”, do only the necessary, and if faculty proposed classes that would now require distance learning, to cancel them outright, and instead increase the numbers of students in classes that were already equipped for online learning needs. In the midst of the pandemic, international experiential learning opportunities were cancelled, full stop.

The timing of, and response to, COVID-19 by cancelling all international study programmes raises questions as to how essential such programmes were in the first place. Considering that many of the students in the youth climate strikes movement called for a rejection of unnecessary international travel, and now seeing the vulnerability to disease transmission through international travel hubs, the question then is whether or not international study programmes are indeed essential, or whether they can be substituted. And if so, is this a moment to uncover hidden opportunities for educators in using online platforms for deeper postcolonial global citizenship education, particularly in expanding the global scope of the learning environment to learners abroad, and even to the general public?

Distance learning may actually do well to further Anthropocene Activism, and nurture thick global citizenship values of solidarity, cooperation and compassion for others. The COVID-19 outbreak effectively put millions upon millions of persons at home and required an increased level of digital engagement and literacy. Technologies like Zoom were quick to take hold of meeting spaces, and other connectivity software became part of daily life. Can virtual spaces have a place in international experiential learning, or will the online environment effectively rob the learner of a sense of place? Indeed, this may be the case. Doing so may deny an individual from engaging in learning with all five senses and require them to effectively adapt into virtual cross-cultural learning spaces. It also denies the opportunity for struggle, stress and coping with cross-cultural spaces to effectively building resilience skills through time abroad (Boateng and Thompson 2013). All of these skills are widely praised as important attributes that come with international experiential learning.

That said, the dedicated connectivity and ability to generate person-to-person contact may actually have positive effects on global citizenship education. As Cameron argues, thick global citizenship aims “not to produce ‘little developers’, but rather to encourage the acquisition of attitudes and skills related to political struggles for global social and environmental justice” (Cameron 2014). The challenge in delivering thick, decolonial education content by “Zooming” each other is twofold. First, access to connectivity technology may represent and privilege certain narratives of place over that of others. This is to say that the ability to engage in deep exploration of social and environmental justice in order to understand, draw and interpret different narratives can be compromised in an online setting. Bearing that in mind, it becomes the responsibility of the instructor to ensure that lessons and teaching goals are mindful of any “representative narratives”, meaning that participants attempt to speak on behalf of others rather than within their own experiences that may emerge in connecting via distance.

Another important factor is to consider the profitability of online learning (Schneller and Coburn 2018). In as much as international experiential learning has been heavily critiqued over the capitalist tendencies and profit motives that it brings to learning experiences, the same could be said about the platform basis in which educators and learners engage (Chau 2010). A connection tool that is behind the paywall and is funded through institutional subscriptions may translate into increased tuition costs, or it may lack important features, or it may simply be a clunky platform. Digital connection software and other readily accessible media may be free and perform functions better than institutional services, but they may be generating profit from deceptive means, such as data mining for algorithm and advertising design. This can raise some ethical questions about the confidentiality of students and of the learning process itself.

Global citizenship, activism, audacity and screen time

As I have argued elsewhere, the moral foundations of travel, study and volunteering are all important values to pursue (Tiessen and Huish 2014). When educators combine the three together in order to pursue academic credit, ethical challenges emerge. Typically, this has been critiqued in terms of reproduced coloniality between the learner and the communities in which they serve. The 2019 youth climate protests and the educational response to COVID-19 present new ethical challenges around the health and climate risks associated with extensive travel. This new era provides a compelling moment to rethink why global citizenship education has taken a strong dependence upon global travel in order to fulfil educational requirements.

First, making meaningful experiential activities can take place in a variety of forms that go beyond service-learning. This includes curriculum about structural change-making in addition to circular reflection. Building on the 2019 youth climate strikes, global citizenship educators would do well to explore the tactics, philosophy and history of activism (Shaw 2001). Specifically, educators can explore the learning moments from the climate strikes to discuss how cooperation and communication of message mattered for global youth to have such a prominent say on political power in 2019. Several activist handbooks exist that provide important learning moments and dialogue on tactical activism, including Extinction Rebellion’s (2019). Looking at current decolonial movements, Black Lives Matters, climate activism, freedom of information activism and other movements that are having a deep impact on policy would be a starting point for educators. Constructing virtual lessons that build understanding and dialogue on these issues can serve as an important process of experiential learning in that these movements are meant to achieve change-making that impacts everyone. How students interpret this change-making, respond to it and build upon it is incredibly important for fostering thick global citizenship education. The challenge of “teaching activism” is to structure learning opportunities that can build skills and deep thought about change-making independent of a particular activist movement, while still offering critical experiential reflection upon the movement itself. The closer the politics of the issue are to the class and to the local community, the greater the risk of polarisation within the class itself, and distraction away from the skills component. Indeed, ensuring distance has been one of the greatest challenges of teaching activism through experiential methods, but online learning may help to refocus on the skill-building and minimise the fervour of politics (Huish 2013).

Second, technology can be inclusive and work towards decolonial processes. Before COVID-19, the demand for international experiential learning and study-abroad opportunities were showing decline.¹ Thomas and Luba (2018) call for greater inclusion of critical race theory in order to prepare students “to grapple with systemic racism”. DiAngelo suggests that “white fragility” abounds in classroom settings when “even a minimal amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves” (DiAngelo 2011, 54). The reactions can range from anger, guilt and fear, and escalate to direct confrontation. As a result, “white fragility can prevent white people from engaging in meaningful anti-racism work” (Thomas and Luba 2018, 186). A common critical race theory suggests that universities often normalise white perspectives on campus, often over-emphasising Eurocentric curricula. But is the campus itself a representative space that also normalises a dominant narrative? In what ways does campus life itself, from architecture to social expectations, produce and reproduce structural invisibility of whiteness? Can online learning better promote the tolerance of discomfort associated with race? Can it be used to better understand the realities of people of colour, and can action be taken against racism (DiAngelo 2011)? Online tutorials and programmes abound for addressing issues of systemic racism (University of Victoria 2020; University of Waterloo 2020). Building on this work, instructors have a unique opportunity to bring decolonising curricula into the online classrooms and offer more horizontal spaces of dialogue that can move beyond any structures of normative racism that are engrained on physical campus environments.

And, third, in order to create knowledge and to make meaning, learning skills of tactical activism for global issues like climate change or decolonialisation requires thoughtfulness about the relations between the individual and their environment. Land-based pedagogy is certainly one of the best opportunities for this: a pedagogy that views “land as a source of knowledge and understanding” with the objectives of building relationships to land to inform and order the way humans conduct relationships with each other and other-than-human beings. Settler-colonialism has functioned through the establishment of institutions “that undermined indigenous knowledge”, including experiential learning abroad. Land-based pedagogy works within frameworks of Indigenous intelligence to “find ways of reinserting people into relationships with and on the land as a mode of education” (Wildcat et al. 2014). In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues forward, land-based education may be challenging. But once the pandemic subsides, the moral problems associated with international experiential learning, and carbon footprints from jet travel, will remain. Taken together, it is now an opportune time for International Development Studies to find a place for land-based pedagogy. The excuse of “not having space in the academic timetable” should no longer hold, as courses dedicated to international service-learning could be transitioned to land-based pedagogies. What’s more, as Simpson (2014) argues, land-based education has stayed off many academic timetables in part due to the low levels of institutional energy and resources dedicated to them.

Taken together, these steps could help to reapproach Kolb’s experiential learning cycle of concrete learning, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and active experimentation. New volunteer opportunities, including virtual volunteering, will emerge out of the pandemic, and this certainly warrants further discussion about the place it will have in global citizenship education (Lachance 2020). Still, Anthropocene Activism, when grounded in decolonial pedagogy, can be a potentially important learning process within international development studies toolkits, rather than a learning outcome, which means that the process must be continuous, even long after the course ends. Part of that process is to develop the skills and mindfulness necessary to resolve conflicts and to maintain active listening. With more voices able to contribute to conversations in the on-line world, and certainly more so than would be through traditional international experiential learning opportunities, learning becomes more holistic and adaptive to varying perspectives. Already some programmes, notably at St. Francis Xavier University, the University of Ottawa and Dalhousie University, have all offered conferences, certificates and classes on youth advocacy and activism. These are important foundations to build the virtual components going forward.

Anthropocene Activism should not be understood as land-based pedagogy, but land-based pedagogy should be a key component of it. If International Development Studies is to continue furthering decolonial education, then let the climate emergency and a global pandemic be the impetus to begin this transformation deep into the curriculum by relegating international service-learning to the past, and looking towards local land-based pedagogy as a key component in the future of global citizenship education and Anthropocene Activism.

Final thoughts

Globalisation and global citizenship may never get back to business as usual. Educators in global citizenship education would do well to prepare for changes both in terms of the practicality of delivering classes, but also in terms of the deeper existential challenges of offering study-abroad opportunities when students demand skills in activism, when distance work and learning is a new norm, and when the climate and health risks of air travel are called into question. This article is meant to serve as a starting point for a longer conversation about the place of new pedagogies of activism in International Development Studies, including land-based pedagogies that not only adapt to new realities, but find ways to thrive within them.

Today’s youth will hold this era of globalisation accountable for immeasurable cost both in terms of the health of the climate and the health of people. In many ways, a great deal of International Development Studies curricula engaged in the critical reflection that confirms this reality. By engaging in Anthropocene Activism, new pedagogies of global citizenship education, and land-based pedagogy, the discipline would do well to serve as a forum for dialogue while fostering much needed skills in change-making. The discipline could emerge so that young people can communicate directly with those in power not just for credit, but to connect to deeper understandings of the processes and connections that shape the future of the planet which they are going to inherit. Volunteerism has been a dominant process within global citizenship education. In the wake of the pandemic, and the global climate protests, Anthropocene Activism can have an important role in the process. Doing so poses the immediate risk of corporatising the experience through expensive online learning environments, trivialising it through critiques of “clicktivism” or “slacktivism”, or Anthropocene Activism may morph the idea of experiential learning into something entirely different. A curriculum around Anthropocene Activism must also avoid the individualistic celebration of “activists” as change-makers, and instead focus on the deep work, struggles and dynamic processes involved in collaboration. All of this can be found in land-based pedagogy. Thunberg herself has repeatedly called for a wider recognition of actors in the climate movement, and has argued that the personification of the movement on to her is highly problematic.

The thrill of large lectures, and the richness of intense seminars will not be replaced outright. Rather, it is about seeing that online learning will become a larger part of our pedagogy, and that study-abroad opportunities will become a lesser part of the curriculum. In rebalancing this equation of the place of experiential learning in IDS curriculum, in a post COVID-19 world, educators would do well to find opportunity in an era of changing youth politics, changing pedagogical technology and the value of local land-based education. Hoping that everything goes back to business as usual is not only wishful thinking, it is completely unhelpful for the challenges that our globally connected world faces today.

Acknowledgement

A sincere thanks to everyone at the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria, and everyone in the Department of Geography at the University of Otago, for great chats that helped to build this article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert Huish

Robert Huish is Associate Professor in International Development Studies at Dalhousie University. He was a visiting fellow at the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria in 2020. He is also the host of the GDP: Global Development Primer Podcast.

Notes

1 Based on calendar enrolments in select International Development Studies programme universities.