Preservice teachers’ views of global citizenship and implications for global citizenship education

ABSTRACT

Global citizenship (GC) is becoming increasingly significant as a desirable graduate attribute in the context of increasing globalisation and cultural diversity. However, both the means and ends of GC education are influenced by a divergent range of conceptualizations. The aim of this research project was to investigate preservice teachers’ understandings of global citizenship, with a particular focus on cultural diversity. Pre-service teachers (PSTs) participated in interviews, and findings indicated that they were uncertain about the idea of global citizenship, sought harmony and a desire for sameness in culturally diverse relationships, and held ethnocentric, paternalistic and salvationist views about the ‘Other’. Drawing on these findings, we present a framework incorporating technicist, humanistic and postcritical conceptions as a tool for analysis of GCE approaches, their means and ends.

KEYWORDS:

• Initial teacher education
• global citizenship education
• cultural diversity
• knowledge societies
• postcritical

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Chris North http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4849-8496

Notes

1 Universalism is defined here as a belief in universal ideals/ideas; that is, regardless of context, there is a right way of knowing and a right way of being and acting.

2 The majority world is often referred to as the third world, the developing world, or the global south. We prefer use of this term as it refers primarily to the idea that the majority world has a much larger population. Thus as a minority world inhabitant, we find it serves as a reminder that our ways of being and knowing are not superior, majority, nor complete.