Unmentionable GCE? Teaching Global Citizenship as Dis/Empowering Environmentalism and Sustainable "Development" in India

• In Event: 45.065 - Exploring the Complexities in Global Citizenship Education: Hard Spaces, Methodologies, and Ethics

Abstract

Like elsewhere in the world (Parmenter, 2011), GCE in India is laden with expectations, and multiple theoretical interpretations, contexts and methodologies, and has generated a vast multitude of conceptualizations and concerns. The authors analyze some key reasons why GCE can be viewed as disempowering within the contexts of India, with focus on environmental pedagogies and development. India’s witnessing a time when textbooks and media are misrepresenting history and diversity of the country, when there are signs of modern articulations of authoritarianism in the guise of religious, sectarian and ethnic fundamentalisms, and when environmental issues are being side-lined in favor of development-oriented agendas.

This necessitates a critical view on the possibilities of practical-ness of GCE within education in India and specifically to environment pedagogies and to the aspects of the hard-ness of GC/E practice and research.

The paper will utilize research conducted by both the authors in environmental pedagogies, GCE, and globalizations, as well as firsthand experiences of the second author from New Delhi, as well as the location of the scholar’s work on the topic. With the plural wording of GCEs indicating many coinciding and conflicting models of GCE, the authors will explore frameworks and accompanying processes that lead to negative arguments to GC/E and, in turn, lead to difficulties in both its practice and research, both directly and indirectly. Utilizing the various typologies of GCEs, they will analyze the arguments for and against varying models as they coincide or conflict with various aspects of Indian epistemologies and social structures. The analysis will focus on critical environmental pedagogies, inside and outside constructs of sustainable development, especially within both authors’ extensive work on Freirean-based ecopedagogy.

Ecopedagogies, as grounded within popular education, have the key tenet of contextualized philosophies/theories that lead to localized learning and understanding is essential for transformational teaching leading to praxis (Self, 2012, 2015, 2018; Gadotti, 2008; Gutiérrez & Prado, 2008; Kahn, 2010). Education to critically understand centering on praxis to end social and environmental violence (e.g., socio-environmental violence) grounds the analysis, from various spheres of citizenship (e.g. the pluralized citizenships) from local to global to planetary, with the paper focusing on how global citizenship (and its education) de-/aligns with local to national citizenships within India and nature overall as planetary citizenship, outside of anthropocentric citizenships (First author, 2015, 2018). The suggestions of the authors will focus on how, if epistemologically appropriate locally, the grounding of GCE might be appropriate within many contexts of India’s diversity, and how do such frameworks coincide or conflict with environmental well-being, and what are the suggested needs for educational practice and research for GCE in India. As Parmenter stated, “any research that combines all three of these topics (global, citizenship and education) into one package is bound to be partial, controversial and unfinished” (Parmenter, 2011, p. 370). Nonetheless, the authors will present this research to actively engage in dialogue with those whose voices are represented and not in the global discourse on GCE.

Authors

• Greg William Misiaszek, Beijing Normal University

• Nitas Iftekhar, Beijing Normal University