The emergence of global citizenship education in Colombia: lessons learned from existing education policy

ABSTRACT

Colombia has joined the international movement of countries which, under the impulse of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), are looking to integrate global citizenship education (GCED) into their educational system. However, being a recently emerging initiative, the characteristics and possible effects of GCED have not been discussed sufficiently in academia, nor among policy makers. This paper presents a critical discourse analysis of the most recent antecedents of GCED to be found in Colombian education policy. It thereby contributes to the national and international debate surrounding the integration of GCED in contexts that differ from those of Western and ‘developed’ countries, which have been the main focus of GCED research and interventions to date. It is argued that, in the case of Colombia, educational initiatives that are based on critical approaches to GCED should be recuperated and strengthened, since these initiatives provide powerful clues for a truly transformative integration of GCED in the country.

KEYWORDS:

• Global citizenship education
• Colombia
• critical discourse analysis
• education policy

Introduction

The notion of global citizenship education (GCED) has gained prominence in recent years (UNESCO 2014). Responding to as well as enhancing ‘a popular movement both in schools and among voluntary bodies and many other organisations’ (Arthur 2014, 73), fostering global citizenship became one of the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) key education objectives for the period 2014–2022 and one of the priorities outlined in the United Nations Secretary-General’s Global Education First Initiative (UNESCO 2014). Moreover, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development explicitly mentions GCED under target 4.7, which aims ‘to ensure that all learners acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development’ (UNESCO 2016a, 5).

Despite its prominence in the international education agenda, however, ‘consensus about what global citizenship means exactly, and consequently what GCED should promote, is yet to be reached’ (UNESCO 2014, 5). This lack of conceptual clarity becomes especially apparent when reviewing the academic literature on the topic, in which terms such as international education, education for international mindedness, global education/learning, sustainable development education, human rights education and learning twenty-first century skills are used ambiguously and interchangeably (Standish 2014). As it is often based on the particular beliefs of the author rather than backed by empirical evidence and reflective of its limitations and moral foundations, some of the literature on global citizenship education can be described as ‘both inconsistent and not entirely logical’ (Arthur 2014, 73), and the GCED movement as a movement ‘in pursuit of meaning’ (Standish 2014, 183).

Nevertheless, since 2013 UNESCO has facilitated important steps towards enhancing conceptual clarity regarding GCED, for example through organising technical consultations as well as a bi-annual international forum on global citizenship education (UNESCO 2014). This process has so far led to the identification of three conceptual dimensions of GCED (the cognitive, socio-emotional and behavioural level) (UNESCO 2015a), as well as the following definition of the aim of GCED:

The goal of global citizenship education is to empower learners to engage and assume active roles both locally and globally to face and resolve global challenges and ultimately to become proactive contributors to a more just, peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable world. (UNESCO 2016a, 2)

Despite these transformative intentions which drive the GCED movement, critical scholars (Andreotti 2011; Shultz 2007; Parmenter 2011) have identified the risk of GCED becoming yet another tool for reproducing prevailing power imbalances. Pointing out this risk, recent studies have shown how GCED in concrete contexts (such as the case of South Korea) remains ‘rooted in reproducing and reinforcing global and local inequities’ (Cho and Mosselson 2017, 14). It is therefore of crucial importance to be aware of the deeply political nature of the concept and ask ourselves, ‘Who is this global citizen?’, ‘Whose interests are represented here?’ and ‘Are we empowering the dominant group to remain in power?’ (Andreotti 2006, 44).

Although the body of theoretical literature regarding GCED is growing rapidly, there is ‘a continuing lack of critical discussions within empirical studies and actual policy’ (Goren and Yemini 2017, 180). In this regard, Quaynor (2012) especially highlights the lack of research done on citizenship education programmes in post-conflict contexts, societies in which it is particularly important to assess whether GCED contributes to social transformation rather than reproducing the existing inequalities. Through the case study of Colombia, this paper therefore aims to respond to the ‘need to bridge the gap between the theoretical and critical work within the academy with the practices and policies in the field’ (Hartung 2017, 27).

Concretely, this research aims to identify clues towards a critical and transformative incorporation of GCED in Colombia. To do this, it will use Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a methodological framework. Taking into account the specific socio-political context as well as the academic literature on (global) citizenship education, CDA allows us to analyse existing Colombian education policy by comparing its underlying discourses in the city of Bogotá with those found at the national level. Thereby, CDA helps us to define what is necessary for GCED policy in Colombia to be contributing to discursive, and as a result social, change rather than reproducing the existing order. Moreover, this analysis contributes to the academic debate by focusing on a context which has not been examined so far and differs from Western, ‘developed’ countries which have been the focus of the knowledge production surrounding GCED to date (Parmenter 2011; Cho and Mosselson 2017).

The Colombian case: socio-political background and existing education policy

The socio-political characteristics of Colombian society do not allow us to understand it as a post-conflict society in which GCED is incorporated to overcome divisions between social groups (as opposed to the case of Northern Ireland presented by Reilly and Niens [2014]). Nor, however, should Colombia be seen as a conflict-ridden country in which even the Ministry of Education does not seem interested in promoting dialogue between diverging groups (as in the case of Israel analysed by Goren and Yemini [2017]). On the contrary, Colombia has gone through a post-conflict process since the 2016 signing of the peace agreements between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo, or FARC-EP guerrillas). At the same time, however, the country continues to face profound conflicts between different social and armed forces: guerrillas (dissidents of the FARC as well as insurgent groups who have been present in the territory for over 50 years); criminal gangs involved in narco trafficking; and neo-paramilitary groups that oppose the restitution of land to displaced farmers, and who are responsible for the murder of social leaders and human rights defenders on a daily basis.

Colombian education has directly and indirectly suffered under half a century of violent conflict. Children were at risk of being recruited by the FARC and other military groups while at school (Villar-Márquez 2011, 1). Their teachers, on the other hand, risked falling victim to the ‘dirty war’ waged by the paramilitary on unions and social movements which cost the lives of 808 educators between 1991 and 2005 (Novelli 2010). Indirectly, instances of school-based violence, such as corporal punishment and bullying, increased because of the normalisation of violence in society (Chaux 2009). Moreover, Colombia is faced with one of the most unequal societies in the world, which is reflected in severe inequalities between urban and rural education (González Bustelo 2006) and in the state’s inability to guarantee the right to education for Colombia’s internally displaced children (Vega and Bajaj 2016; Villar-Márquez 2011).

As a response to these great challenges, there have been several governmental efforts aiming to overcome discrimination and strengthen social cohesion through (citizenship) education (Vega and Bajaj 2016). The 1991 constitutional reform and following 1994 General Education Law strongly emphasise human rights and participative democracy, effectively decentralising education governance and ending the Catholic monopoly on moral education while promoting citizenship education as a core subject (Jaramillo and Mesa 2009). This decentralisation had been promoted in the 1980s by the Movimiento Pedagógico (Pedagogical Movement), which advocated for greater autonomy and recognition of teachers, thereby leaving room for more alternative and contextualised pedagogical approaches (Aguilar-Forero and Velásquez 2018).

A decade later, in 2004, the Ministry of Education published its so-called Citizenship Competencies Program, proposing standards for ‘good citizen behaviour’ based on three categories: peaceful coexistence (convivencia); democratic participation and responsibility; and plurality, identity and enrichment with differences (Jaramillo and Mesa 2009). Through these initiatives, combatting violence and promoting peaceful relationships through education became an explicit government priority (Chaux 2009). This Citizenship Competencies Program was followed in 2013 by the so-called Ley 1620 (Law 1620), which created the national system for peaceful coexistence at school, human rights education, sex education and the prevention and mitigation of school-based violence.

In 2014 and 2015 respectively, Law 1732 and Decree 1038 were issued, introducing the so-called Cátedra para la Paz (Peace Chair) as a mandatory subject ‘in all educational institutions of preschool, elementary and secondary education, public and private’ (Decree 1038 2015, 2). In 2016, the National Ministry of Education published a document with general orientations for the implementation of the Peace Chair as well as a more specific proposal for curricular guidelines and classroom activities. These documents divide peace education into the following six categories: (1) peaceful coexistence; (2) citizen participation; (3) diversity and identity; (4) historical memory and reconciliation; (5) sustainable development; and (6) ethics, care and decisions (Ministerio de Educación Nacional 2016a, 15). Moreover, they introduce a global perspective in the Colombian school curriculum by discussing ‘peace building and post-conflict processes around the world and coexistence and peace challenges in a globalised world’ (Camargo 2016, 8).

Since Colombia has one of the most decentralised education systems in Latin America, however, the Ministry of Education is not in the position to directly impose these guidelines (Chaux 2009). Instead, local Education Secretaries and schools have the authority to ‘design their own curricula and choose their own pedagogical practices’ (Chaux 2009, 88). In this light, in 2015 the Education Secretary of Bogotá (Secretaría de Educación del Distrito, or SED) developed its own citizenship and coexistence education project (Proyecto de Educación para la Convivencia y la Ciudadanía, or PECC). When developing the PECC, Bogotá’s Secretary for Education looked for community organisations that shared their vision and could offer the necessary expertise to implement the project. For developing and testing the teaching materials, the SED chose the Colombian office of Fe y Alegría, an international network of locally based organisations providing education to the most disadvantaged members of society, as its implementing partner. Like the Peace Chair, the PECC included conceptual and pedagogical considerations associated with GCED.

This growing commitment to GCED was taken a step further in 2016 when Colombia, together with Uganda, Cambodia and Mongolia, became one of the four countries worldwide which pledged to make GCED a cornerstone of its curriculum (UNESCO 2016b). To achieve this, the Ministry of Education of Colombia is currently developing guidelines to support universities and Secretaries of Education in training future teachers in the field of citizenship and GCED.

Despite this momentum, GCED is a recently emerging initiative in Colombia and consequently has not been discussed sufficiently. This absence of a national debate is an important limitation, since a situational analysis conducted in 2016 (Camargo 2016) pointed towards mixed feelings surrounding GCED among teachers and education communities in different parts of the country. Similar to the findings obtained in other countries (Reilly and Niens 2014; Goren and Yemini 2017), Colombian teachers do not only associate GCED with new opportunities for citizenship and peace education, but also with the risks related to certain processes that generate discomfort and insecurities: neoliberal globalisation; free trade agreements; the extraction of resources; or the loss of national identity (Camargo 2016). That is why we consider it necessary to analyse in more detail the most recent antecedents of GCED in terms of education policy and propose some clues for a critical and transformational integration of this educational strategy in Colombia.

Theoretical framework

Citizenship education: what’s in a name?

During the past decades, several authors (McLaughlin 1992; Veugelers 2007; Westheimer and Kahne 2004) have attempted to provide conceptual clarity within the deeply fragmented and political domain of citizenship education. Since citizenship can be understood to refer both to the formal political level as well as to the interpersonal level (e.g. daily interactions in schools), for example, a conceptual distinction has been made between civic and civil dimensions of citizenship education (Veugelers 2007). Whereas the civic dimension ‘focuses on knowledge and understanding of formal institutions and processes of civic life (such as voting in elections)’, civil education refers to ‘learning to live together’ with those beyond the extended family (Schulz et al. 2010, 22).

More than simply being a conceptual distinction, these two dimensions have been developed and promoted by different academic fields. In Colombia, civil education (referred to as convivencia or ‘peaceful coexistence’) has traditionally been the ‘comfort zone’ of psychologists and received the most attention during the past years. Political scientists, on the other hand, have tended to stress the importance of democratic participation, arguing that the civil dimension of citizenship education in and of itself (e.g. fostering responsibility for one’s actions, honesty and good-neighbourliness), is not sufficient to create the conditions needed for a democratic and just society (Westheimer and Kahne 2004; Luschei 2016).

Westheimer and Kahne (2004, 243) stress that the emphasis on individual character and behaviour in many citizenship education programmes can be criticised for obscuring ‘the need for collective and public sector initiatives’. Those programmes might end up distracting attention from a more systemic analysis of the causes and solutions of social issues, as they put forward ‘volunteerism and kindness […] as ways of avoiding politics and policy’ (Westheimer and Kahne 2004, 243). We therefore need to be aware of the political and ideological interests embedded in different conceptions of citizenship education: ‘There is a politics involved in educating for democracy – a politics that deserves careful attention’ (Westheimer and Kahne 2004, 263–4).

To examine the interest behind different conceptions of citizenship education, several authors have distinguished between different ideals of ‘the good citizen’, starting with McLaughlin’s (1992) distinction between ‘minimal’ and ‘maximal’ citizenship (Johnson and Morris 2010, 84). Whereas the minimal citizen is ‘essentially obedient to government: “law abiding” and “public spirited”’, with limited autonomy, the maximal citizen ‘“actively questions” and has achieved a “distanced critical perspective on all important matters”’ (Johnson and Morris 2010, 84).

Both Westheimer and Kahne (2004) and Veugelers (2007) further complicate this categorisation by distinguishing between citizenship aiming for personal emancipation and citizenship aiming for a more collective emancipation respectively. They end up with the following typology, which we will employ in our analysis: (1) the adaptive or personally responsible citizen, who acts responsibly and obediently; (2) the individualistic/participatory citizen, who participates in society from an individualist perspective within the given structures; and, finally, (3) the critical-democratic/justice-oriented citizen, who is motivated to change society and concerned for social justice (Veugelers 2007; Westheimer and Kahne 2004; Johnson and Morris 2010).

Global citizenship education discourses

Based on this categorisation of citizenship education, three conceptions of GCED can similarly be distinguished from the literature, referred to as the neoliberal, humanistic and critical-transformative discourse (Shultz 2007; Veugelers 2011; Aktas et al. 2017; Hartung 2017; Cho and Mosselson 2017). Following the economically focused neoliberal discourse, which emphasises individual responsibility and entrepreneurship, ‘a global citizen is one who is a successful participant in a liberal economy driven by capitalism and technology’ (Shultz 2007, 249). Globalisation is seen as an essentially positive force and the underlying idea is that ‘by serving one’s own self-interests, one is serving the interest of the planet and all its inhabitants’ (Andreotti and Pashby 2013, 428).

The more culturally focused humanistic discourse, on the other hand, is based on moral ideals such as equality, universal human rights and a celebration of diversity. It promotes awareness of global issues and advocates a humanitarian responsibility to strive for a world in which everyone receives equal chances for development (Andreotti 2006). The human rights discourse is summed up in the idea of ‘a common humanity heading toward a common “forward”’ (Andreotti and Pashby 2013, 425). Despite these clear differences between the neoliberal and humanistic discourse, they share some key assumptions which we will turn our attention to next.

Both the neoliberal and the humanistic discourse are arguably soft approaches to GCED (Andreotti 2006), often promoted by Western media, celebrities, international corporations and international development organisations. The ideal citizen according to these discourses acts responsibly and obediently and participates in society from an individualist perspective within the given structures. In distinct ways, both the neoliberal and the humanistic discourse present globalisation as an irreversible reality which students should adapt to economically and/or culturally, while risking neglecting the political implications (Mannion et al. 2011; Hartung 2017). It is exactly this gap which the third perspective on GCED, the critical-transformative discourse, aims to address.

The critical-transformative discourse on GCED proposed by critical scholars (Shultz 2007; Andreotti 2011; Veugelers 2011; Truong-White and McLean 2015; Nieto 2017)¹, challenges the neoliberal and humanistic discourses by recognising the so-called ‘darker side of modernity’, specifically the idea that globalisation leads to structural inequalities. Respectively labelled the justice-oriented citizen and the critical-democratic citizen by Westheimer and Kahne (2004) and Veugelers (2007), a global citizen according to the critical-transformative discourse acknowledges that globalisation is an unfinished, changeable process and aims at transforming unjust socio-political relations (Veugelers 2011).

Rather than promoting adaptation to the new economic order and/or projecting normative, universalist visions based on Western ideas of progress and humanity, transformative GCED is ‘designed in ways that acknowledges complexity, contingency (context-dependency), multiple and partial perspectives and unequal power relations’ (Andreotti 2010, 241). Such a critical perspective promotes recognition of complicity based on a political responsibility and requires dealing with the ‘uneasy feelings’ this might provoke (Andreotti and Pashby 2013, 425).

Drawing on critical pedagogy, Andreotti (2010, 236) proposes a discursive pedagogical turn, which acknowledges that ‘our stories of reality, our knowledges, are always situated (they are culturally bound), partial (what one sees may not be what another sees), contingent (context-dependent) and provisional (they change)’. Like critical GCED and critical discourse analysis, critical pedagogy is a container term bringing together a broad variety of authors – notably the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire – and approaches (McLaren 2009). What unites these approaches is their aim ‘to provide a means by which the oppressed (or “subaltern”) may begin to reflect more deeply upon their socio-economic circumstances and take action to transform the status quo’ rather than adapting to a static reality as it is (Johnson and Morris 2010, 79). As will be argued in the following methodology section, critical discourse analysis can help us answer the main question following from the presented literature: what is necessary for GCED policy in Colombia to be contributing to discursive, and as a result social, change rather than reproducing the existing order?

Methodology

This research draws on discourse analysis as an analytical framework. Jørgensen and Phillips (2002) stress that discourse analysis starts from the social constructivist/poststructuralist assumption that our concrete language use, rather than reflecting a pre-given social world, shapes the social world as it is the arena in which different discourses compete for being accepted as ‘common truth’. As different discourses lead to different forms of action, this competition has real social consequences. According to this anti-essentialist view, all knowledge is contingent: our worldviews are historically and culturally specific and could always have been different. Importantly, discourse analysis aims to be critical, that is, to contribute to social change by investigating and critiquing taken-for-granted assumptions and power relations (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002).

Specifically, this research draws on critical discourse analysis (CDA) as proposed by Fairclough (2001). Compared to other approaches to discourse analysis, CDA is particularly useful because of its emphasis on social as well as discursive change. Fairclough’s approach distinguishes itself by insisting that discourse, encompassing spoken and written language as well as visual images, ‘is just one among many aspects of any social practice’ (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002, 61). By analysing the dialectical relationship between discursive and broader, non-discursive social practices, CDA aims to explore critically the socio-political consequences of the discursive practice under examination (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002).

According to Fairclough (2001), every text or ‘communicative event functions as a form of social practice in reproducing or challenging the order of discourse’ (70). Order of discourse here refers to a certain structuring of which discourses are more dominant or alternative in a certain field (Fairclough 2001). CDA allows us to answer our main research question by analysing the order of discourse underlying existing local and national education policy within its specific socio-political context and in dialogue with the literature on GCED.

Methodologically, Fairclough (2001) proposes the following five steps:

(1) Define research problem and question;

(2) Collect and prepare data;

(3) Analysis (I): Identify obstacles to the problem being tackled;

(4) Analysis (II): Identify potential ways forward;

(5) Critical reflections.

He argues that, since CDA aims to be both problem-based and emancipatory, it should shed light on a certain social issue faced by the less well-off in society, as well as providing possible ways of tackling the problem at hand (Fairclough 2001). The first step (defining the research problem) is a controversial undertaking for which the researcher needs to go ‘outside the text, using academic and non-academic sources to get a sense of its social context’ (Fairclough 2001, 129). For this research, we draw on the academic literature on (global) citizenship education to argue that examining existing education policy, to promote a critical and transformative incorporation of GCED in the Colombian social order marked by structural violence, is a relevant research problem.

The second step consisted of selecting the relevant texts for analysis. This particular CDA included the following documents associated with the Basic Citizenship Competencies Standards at the national level, the PECC at the local level and UNESCO’s vision on GCED at the international level, allowing us to analyse the national and local documents in their broader discursive context (Table 1). These documents were selected because they are the political base for the implementation of (global) citizenship education at the national, local and international levels respectively.

Table 1. Analysed documents.

Name	Year	Issued by
Basic Citizenship Competencies Standards	2004	National Ministry of Education
Basic Competencies Standards in Language, Mathematics, Sciences and Citizenship	2006	National Ministry of Education
Framework Document: Education for Citizenship and Peaceful Coexistence	2014	Secretary of Education of Bogotá
Education for Citizenship and Peaceful Coexistence. Fifth Cycle: Youth for Empowerment and Transformation	2014	Fe y Alegría/Secretary of Education of Bogotá
Global Citizenship Education: Topics and Learning Objectives.	2015	UNESCO

Considering that relying solely on the texts without any further context might lead to incomplete and/or distorted results, Fairclough stresses the importance of examining the production and consumption conditions of the text (something only few critical discourse analysts manage to do in practice) (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002). That is why we conducted five semi-structured interviews with the policy makers involved in writing and/or implementing the selected local and national policy documents. The interviewees included professor Enrique Chaux, one of the main authors of the Citizenship Competencies Program and Peace Chair guidelines, as well as three staff members of the popular education non-governmental association (NGO) Fe y Alegría who were involved in developing the PECC in Bogotá.

Step three – the main analysis – consists of (a) analysing the discourse itself, both regarding interdiscursivity and linguistically; and (b) analysing the social order the discourse is located within in order to understand why the problem persists (Fairclough 2001). At the level of interdiscursivity, the competing discourses within a single order of discourse, in our case the discourse surrounding GCED as described in the theoretical framework, are examined (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002). This way, ‘it is possible to investigate where a particular discourse is dominant, where there is a struggle between different discourses, and which common-sense assumptions are shared by all the prevailing discourses’ (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002, 142). The linguistic/interactional level, on the other hand, draws on systemic functional linguistics (Halliday 1994) to examine the function linguistic choices (e.g. words, grammatical structures and so on) play in constructing a particular discourse.

The analysis of the social order considers possible reasons why the current social order ‘needs the problem at hand’ (Fairclough 2001, 134). In other words, it examines the social context in which the order of discourse situates itself to understand why this order came to be the way it is and, importantly, what exactly in this social order is preventing the research problem at hand being tackled. This requires the researcher to move beyond discourse analysis and ‘draw on other theories – for example, social or cultural theory – that shed light upon the social practice in question’ (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002, 86). The description of the Colombian context set out in the introduction provides a basis for answering these questions in the following analysis and discussion.

Moving beyond a mere description of the status quo and its possible criticisms, however, ‘stage 4 of the analysis moves from negative to positive critique – identification of hitherto unrealised or not fully realised possibilities for change within the way things are’ (Fairclough 2001, 126–7). Finally, ‘Stage 5 is the stage at which the analysis turns reflexively back on itself, asking for instance how effective it is as critique, whether it does or can contribute to social emancipation’ (Fairclough 2001, 127). These two final stages will inform the conclusions and recommendations provided at the end of this article.

Findings and discussion

Analysing the order of discourse: comparing language and interdiscursivity

At the international level, UNESCO (2015a, 15) distinguishes among three conceptual dimensions of GCED: a cognitive dimension concerning ‘learners’ acquisition of knowledge, understanding and critical thinking’; a socio-emotional dimension referring to ‘the learners’ sense of belonging to a common humanity, sharing values and responsibilities, empathy, solidarity and respect for differences and diversity’; and a behavioural dimension which ‘expects the learners to act responsibly at local, national and global levels for a more peaceful and sustainable world’. Within the framework proposed by Westheimer and Kahne (2004), the type of citizenship promoted by UNESCO can be described as participatory (someone who participates actively in society within the given structures).

The recent introduction of ‘combatting violent extremism’ into UNESCO’s GCED discourse, however, indicates that this discourse is changing. A review of the UNESCO publications on GCED reveals that, before the end of 2015, violent extremism was not used by UNESCO in relation to GCED. A news article published on the UNESCO (2015b) website on 6 November 2015 explains the role of the United States in putting violent extremism on the UNESCO agenda and explicitly linking the promotion of GCED to the anti-terrorism and international security discourse. This is a clear example of how the boundaries of UNESCO’s GCED are shifting through new combinations of discourses, a phenomenon labelled interdiscursivity by Fairclough (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002, 73).

The violent extremism discourse frames young people as the problem rather than the solution, thereby attributing societal issues to individual irresponsibility and risking promoting government surveillance and the targeting of specific groups (Nieto 2017). In terms of citizenship, the emphasis on preventing violent extremism encourages personal responsibility (Westheimer and Kahne 2004) focused on compliance, value transmission and socioemotional anger management (Nieto 2017). As argued by Novelli (2017, 848): ‘The security logics of interventions in education […] reflect a broader reluctance on the part of its architects to openly engage in discussion and debate as to the root causes of conflict.’

Whereas the words ‘transformative’ and ‘transformation’ are used multiple times in the pedagogical guidance offered by UNESCO, the prevalent message that ‘we can all be global citizens’ is problematic from a critical perspective because it ignores the ‘dark side’ of modernity. As stressed by Andreotti (2006): ‘Globalisation is […] an asymmetrical process in which not only its fruits are divided up unequally, but also in which the very possibility of “being global” is unbalanced.’ UNESCO, however, suggests that global challenges affect everyone around the world equally and we are therefore equally responsible for solving them, thereby failing to recognise the power imbalances and oppression which often caused these challenges in the first place. As argued by Pais and Costa (2017), by not taking an explicit stance against the neoliberal discourse on GCED, the ‘critical’ discourse of international organisations like UNESCO ends up promoting ‘transformative’ and neoliberal ideas simultaneously, thereby denying the contradiction between them.

Similarly, VanderDussen Toukan (2017, 62) concludes that the breadth of UNESCO’s approach to GCED leaves the extent to which it can be considered transformative largely ambiguous, ‘either to invite educators and policy makers to create space for critical engagement with social justice issues or to fill in their own agendas for neoliberal market competition’ (VanderDussen Toukan 2017, 62). Thus, to assess to what extent GCED is being ‘hijacked’ by the existing social order and, as a consequence, whether the neoliberal/personally responsible, human rights/participatory or transformative/justice-oriented discourses are stressed in practice, it is crucial to examine the citizenship and GCED discourse at the national and local levels.

In Colombia, then, comparing the language used in the national citizenship competencies standards with the Coexistence and Citizenship Education Project (PECC) developed by the former Secretary of Education of Bogotá points to important differences between the two documents. The citizenship competencies standards outline the learning outcomes individual students need to possess (what they need to ‘know and know how to do’) to be considered ‘good citizens’. The PECC, on the other hand, prefers Marta Nussbaum’s term capabilities to stress that these personal competencies do not exist in a vacuum. It thereby explicitly situates the individual within a political, social and economic environment which can facilitate or obstruct the practice of these competencies. Its learning objectives are divided into three levels: the relationship with oneself (personal); the relationship with others (interpersonal, societal); and the relationship with the wider social world (systemic).

The main authors of the PECC and the citizenship competencies standards recognise this, albeit subtle, difference in emphasis between competencies and capabilities:

What we see is that the citizenship competencies standards tend to emphasise the individual whereas capabilities implies a stronger emphasis on context. But in the citizenship competencies we do mention the importance of the environment, just like they also discuss individual capabilities within the capabilities approach. (Chaux 2017, personal communication, November 29, 2017)

The comparison between the mentioned documents, however, suggests that this distinction is more profound than a mere difference in emphasis. As it turns out, the language used in the citizenship competencies standards predominantly promotes responsible, obedient behaviour and citizen participation within the given structures, what Veugelers (2007) and Westheimer and Kahne (2004) have labelled adaptive/personally responsible citizenship and individualistic/participatory citizenship respectively. The PECC, on the other hand, ends up promoting a more critical-democratic/justice-oriented citizenship.

Comparing the respective verbs used by the citizenship competencies standards and the PECC illustrates this claim. The citizenship competencies standards stress the importance of knowing, respecting and positively valuing the law, which applies to everyone equally, even if one disagrees with some of the ruling norms. Students are required to understand that, in order to guarantee peaceful coexistence, the state has to count on a monopoly on the administration of justice and the use of force. Furthermore, students are expected to ‘express empathy towards groups or persons whose rights have been violated’ and ‘understand that acting corruptly and using public goods for personal benefit affects all members of society’ (Ministerio de Educación Nacional 2004, 25). Analysed through the framework proposed by Westheimer and Kahne (2004), underlying this discourse is the idea of personally responsible citizenship which assumes that ‘to solve social problems and improve society, citizens must have good character; they must be honest, responsible and law-abiding members of society’ (240).

To get their voices heard and avoid abuses, the citizenship standards also expect students to be participatory citizens who make use of the democratic participation mechanisms granted to them by the constitution and participate in initiatives or projects which promote non-violence, human rights and protection of the environment. Finally, the citizenship competencies standards encourage students to critically analyse and debate current events, policy decisions and omissions, cases of discrimination and exclusion as well as the general human rights situation (an indication of justice-oriented citizenship). In short, the citizenship competencies standards predominantly promote personally responsible citizenship. Simultaneously, however, they acknowledge justice-oriented and participatory citizenship by promoting critical thinking and actively participating within the established normative system respectively.

The PECC similarly aims for citizens who take responsibility for their actions and actively participate in democratic spaces. Starting from the premise that democratic participation is necessary but insufficient, it argues that personal socio-emotional development (e.g. learning to accept what is different) is a prerequisite for social transformation and empowerment. Social transformation is described as the awareness that history is not predefined but rather actively shaped through dialogue and collective action (Fe y Alegría 2014). Empowerment, then, is understood as the capacity to understand yourself as a social and political agent who has the responsibility to speak up rather than conforming/submitting to the status quo (Fe y Alegría 2014). Besides this need for personal development, however, the PECC explicitly proposes societal and systemic citizenship practices. Contrary to the citizenship competencies standards, these practices are formulated in first-person plural (e.g. we discuss …) rather than singular (e.g. I participate in …), thereby stressing co-responsibility and collective action rather than personal responsibility towards the state.

In this spirit, the PECC takes justice-oriented citizenship a step further than the citizenship competencies standards by inviting students to collectively question, reinterpret and propose alternatives towards the prevalent norms instead of relying on the law/state to decide what is just and what is not. As they ‘discuss the relation and tension between law and justice’ and learn to ‘differentiate between the legitimate expression of civil disobedience and delinquency’, students are not expected to act within the established systems and community structures. On the contrary, they are invited to actively change these structures by resisting the norms and laws they consider to be unjust through acts of civil disobedience. In this context, defending human rights is not just understood as an individual responsibility, but also as a collective claim and a fundamental responsibility of the state. Likewise, conflict is seen as desirable and an opportunity for change: a ‘manifestation of the pluralism of ideologies and worldviews, unequal power relations and diverse interests’ rather than a problem to be managed (Fe y Alegría 2014, 36).

These discourses of personal responsibility in the citizenship competencies standards versus collective action and justice-oriented citizenship in the PECC are strengthened by the imagery used in both documents. Whereas pictures in the citizenship competencies standards refer to knowledge/understanding (books) and peaceful coexistence (holding hands) (Ministerio de Educación Nacional 2006, 148, 153, 158), the PECC portrays a diverse group of youngsters organising and mobilising for action and uses street art, a symbol of civil disobedience, as a recurring theme throughout its material (Fe y Alegría 2014, 280, 289).

These discursive differences also affect the way both documents approach the idea of global citizenship. The citizenship competencies standards introduce the global perspective by expecting its students to link global issues to their local environment and participate in local, national or global initiatives which defend human rights and the environment. They have a thematic and arguably soft (Andreotti 2006), humanistic connection to global citizenship, as they introduce war and peace, protection of the environment and human rights as global issues.

The PECC, on the other hand, introduces the global perspective by acknowledging the problematic effects of globalisation: it discusses the structural inequalities and global power relations (income inequality, racism, discrimination of women and so on) within their historical context (e.g. colonialism). Moreover, to denounce these injustices and demand universal human rights, the PECC invites students to ask the questions ‘What do I have to do myself? What do I have to do together with others? What do I have to do with those further away?’ (Fe y Alegría 2017, personal communication, September 29, 2017). This explicitly systemic view on global citizenship is summarised by the following quote from the lesson materials: ‘Constructing a more just and equitable social order is a task that can and should be done locally, but it will not be sustainable unless it is developed from a systemic and global perspective’ (Fe y Alegría 2014, 292). Coherent with its justice-oriented approach to citizenship education, the discourse on GCED found in the PECC can thus be described as critical-transformative.

Analysing the discourses within their social order

In order to understand where these differences between the citizenship competencies standards and the PECC come from, it is crucial to analyse the conditions in which these documents were produced. The citizenship competencies standards were written in 2003 under the right-wing government of Álvaro Uribe and his minister of education Cecilia María Vélez, who had formerly been Bogotá’s Secretary of Education. They were the result of a short, intensive process led by prominent academics in the field of civil education. The citizenship competencies standards are being evaluated nationally through standardised multiple-choice tests (the so-called pruebas SABER or ‘knowing’ tests). Due to Colombia’s decentralised education system, however, the way in which these standards were to be implemented was left entirely up to the regional Secretaries of Education. The PECC, then, was brought into being by Secretary of Education Oscar Sánchez to fulfil this task in Bogotá during the period 2012–2015.

In stark contrast to the somewhat rushed, top-down creation of the national citizenship competencies standards, the PECC materials were developed by Fe y Alegría through an extensive consultation process involving hundreds of teachers and rooted in a well-funded project which included comprehensive, school-based strategies to combat violence and promote active citizenship (Fe y Alegría 2017, personal communication, September 29, 2017). The educational approach underlying the PECC, Reflection – Action – Participation (RAP), is explicitly based on Freire’s critical pedagogy (Secretaría de Educación del Distrito 2014). In terms of evaluation, the PECC promotes alternative forms of assessment which take into account the school context (Secretaría de Educación Distrital 2014). In this spirit the Sánchez administration created a complementary evaluation method in Bogotá (the pruebas SER or ‘being’ tests) (Fe y Alegría 2017, personal communication, September 29, 2017).

At the time the PECC was being developed in Bogotá, the city was governed by the progressive, social democrat mayor Gustavo Petro. Although Juan Manuel Santos had by then taken over the presidential office from Uribe, the teachers’ unions vividly remembered their tensions with Vélez’s former administration. Moreover, Uribe’s government had left a bitter aftertaste, notably his ties with paramilitary groups and involvement in various human rights violations (e.g. illegal interception of opposition members). Santos’ peace talks with the FARC clearly differentiated him from his predecesor in political terms, but Vélez’s legacy in terms of educational policy (including the citizenship competencies standards) was left surprisingly intact. In this light, the PECC can be seen as an ‘act of resistance’ by which the Petro administration wanted to differentiate itself from the national governments.

As usual in Colombia, however, the end of Petro’s term as mayor did imply a sudden change in the capital’s educational policy and the end of the PECC as a comprehensive project (Fe y Alegría 2017, personal communication, September 29, 2017). Traces of the project are still visible on the city’s website, but the political views of current mayor Enrique Peñalosa, who has been criticised for criminalising urban art forms such as grafitti, in many ways oppose Petro’s. As the previous political comitment to the project has not been continued, the PECC risks becoming yet another guideline added to the, to some degree inconsistent, pile of documents Colombian teachers and educational institutions have to navigate.

Conclusion: potential ways forward and critical reflections

The analysis of international, national and local policy documents showed that the current social order in Colombia, characterised by a lack of political continuity and an outcome-oriented push for standardisation, favours the ‘soft’ (Andreotti 2006) kind of GCED discourse promoted by UNESCO and the National Ministry of Education. This kind of education does not challenge the status quo, as political responsibility is largely ignored and students are held individually responsible for succeeding within the given structures, rather than encouraged to reflect on and change injustices through collective action. Arguing that discourse has the power both to reproduce and to change unequal power relations, Fairclough’s fourth step explicitly aims to move beyond a mere description of the status quo and its criticisms. Once it is established how discourse is used to reproduce inequalities and how the existing structures limit possibilities for change, this awareness should be used to inform social transformation towards more social justice.

In this spirit, the PECC shows what a citizenship education project based on critical pedagogy can look like, providing us with powerful clues for going beyond the apolitical civil education projects prevalent in Colombia by integrating GCED within the national curriculum in a truly critical and transformative fashion. Firstly, it explicitly assumes the current social order and norms as contingent and debatable, rather than stable and unquestionable. Starting from the interdependence between the personal, the interpersonal and the systemic rather than global issues, it introduces GCED as the possibility to reimagine and change the unjust social order through collective action. Importantly, the PECC materials are part of a coherent, well-funded strategy which was created through an elaborate consultation process with teachers which took several years, rather than hastily imposed ‘top down’. Finally, the learning process of the students is evaluated through alternative evaluation methods which take into account the learning process and context, rather than standardised multiple-choice tests aimed to measure learning outcomes. We consider that initiatives which, like the PECC, take a critical-transformative approach should be recuperated and strengthened because they allow for a relatively straightforward integration of GCED which goes beyond the soft approaches found in other contexts (Aktas et al. 2017; Engel, Fundalinski, and Cannon 2016) that might generate resistance among teachers and educational institutions in Colombia.

Eventually, however, how education policy is put in practice largely depends on the educator and local context. As argued by Andreotti (2011): ‘Between enunciation (e.g. of a neoliberal educational agenda) and interpretation in a specific context (e.g. teachers “on the ground”) lies a space of negotiation and creative opportunity that is always pregnant with (risky) possibilities’ (395). This might be problematic, as education systems around the world are requiring ‘fast, predictable and easily measurable outcomes that provide a sense of immediate reward and satisfaction to client-learners’, which are not easily compatible with the more time-consuming and ambiguous critical approaches to GCED (Andreotti 2011, 396). Combined with a lack of political continuity in Colombia, this makes promoting more alternative and critical educational approaches particularly challenging.

One especially interesting direction for future research, then, would be to attempt to open the ‘black box’ between policy and practice through comparing and contrasting the analysis provided in this paper with the actual, observed outcomes of GCED in the classroom. In this regard, Schrøder (2007, 84) stresses that

critical discourse analysis will have to face the challenge of exploring empirically both the encoding and the decoding discourse practices that mediate between media texts and sociocultural practices, if they wish to be able to contribute in a genuinely critical manner to the debates.

Since Critical Discourse Analysis is an explicitly emancipatory undertaking aiming to contribute to social change, only by examining how these policy documents play out in practice will we truly be able to judge to what extent and under which circumstances GCED manages to live up to its transformative potential.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. The authors of this article have not been involved in the development of either the Education for Coexistence and Citizenship Project (PECC) or the Basic Citizenship Competencies Standards.

Notes

1. It is important to note that the boundaries between these competing GCED discourses are constructed in order to create a framework for study rather than ‘found’ in reality (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002). This categorisation risks homogenising the diversity within the three discourses. For example, within the critical-transformative discourse on GCED at least three distinct approaches can be distinguished: firstly, an approach based on critical pedagogy and popular education (Veugelers 2007; Reilly and Niens 2014; Truong-White and McLean 2015); secondly, a decolonial approach which also draws on critical pedagogy, but more importantly on critical Latin American thinkers such as Mignolo, Escobar, Quijano, Grosfoguel, Dussel, Maldonado-Torres and Castro-Gómez, as well as other academics such as Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Catherine Walsh, who think from the global South (Andreotti 2011; Balarin 2011; Nieto 2017); and lastly, a total critique, including of GCED as a concept and strategy (Watson 2013; Pais and Costa 2017; Jooste and Heleta 2017).