Global citizenship education (GCE) in internationalisation: COIL as alternative Thirdspace

ABSTRACT

In the current scenario of dispersed knowledge authorities and uncertainty brought by the Covid-19 pandemic, a critical reflection on the nationalist and anti-global climate is necessary to support the promotion of alternative ways of Global Citizenship Education (GCE). This paper addresses some of the criticism raised at the concept of GCE to discuss Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) as an alternative Thirdspace for promoting intercultural encounters in the internationalisation of higher education, in order to cope with local, national and global tensions in this process, with a ‘glonacal’ view that accounts for the role of individuals, local/national governments and higher education in it.

KEYWORDS:

• Global citizenship education
• internationalisation
• COIL
• Thirdspace
• glonacal view

Acknowledgements

This study was supported in part by the Centre of Studies in International Relations of the Federal University of Espirito Santo (NERI-UFES) for authors 1 and 2; and by CNPq Productivity Scholarship (PQ) for author 2.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 More information at: https://en.unesco.org/themes/gced/definition.

2 More information at: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/education/.

3 More information at: http://coil.suny.edu/index.php/page/brief-history-suny-coil-center.

4 We use this concept as a way to encompass global, national and local aspects of higher education activities and accountability.

5 More information at: https://www.periodicos.capes.gov.br/.

6 More information at: https://www.sketchengine.eu/.

7 More information at: http://coil.suny.edu/.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico: [Grant Number PQ-2].