Global Citizenship Education: Emancipatory Practice in a New York Preschool

ABSTRACT

By the time many preschool-age African American children enter preschool, they have already been exposed to indicators that inform them of their “place” and their “worth” in the communities they frequent. There is a gap in the literature on the value of global education for African American children. This research is a study of a global citizenship curriculum implemented in a small, community preschool serving a predominantly African American population in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. The questions used to guide this study are (1) What does global citizenship education curriculum look like at Sunshine preschool? (2) How do children at this preschool negotiate their identities as global citizens within this particular curriculum? The research was conducted as a case study, with the researcher serving as a participant observer in the classroom. The study identified four primary themes within the curriculum: lessons in power, membership in a global community, self-esteem development, and teacher intentionality. Most centrally, this study articulates the ways that the enactment of global citizenship curriculum can contribute to countering negative conceptions of self in very young African American children.

KEYWORDS:

• Case study
• children
• classrooms
• critical theory
• cross-cultural
• curriculum development
• diversity
• early childhood education