Typology of typologies of global citizenship education: Methodological, epistemological and ontological implications of the descriptive imperative

• In Event: Highlighted session: Rethinking global citizenship education within macro and micro levels

Proposal

As indicated by its inclusion in UNSDG 4.7, global citizenship education is a key element of Agenda 2030. It is also the source of substantial scholarly and empirical research, particularly over the past 15 years. A key concern has been both a lack of a clear definition of GCE (Mannion et al, 2011) and how the term itself is connected to overlapping ideologies of schooling, justice, and globalisation (Schattle, 2008). A significant amount of literature has supported a critical approach (e.g. Andreotti, 2006; Pashby, 2013; Martin, 2011). Consequently, there has been a proliferation of typologies of GCE, each describing different conceptualisations of GCE based on moral, political, and ideological distinctions (e.g., Shultz, 2007; Schattle, 2008; Gaudelli, 2009; Marshall, 2011; Oxley and Morris, 2013). In this paper we present findings of a social cartographic (Paulston, 2009) mapping of 11 such typologies of global citizenship education. We draw on a heuristic to make intelligible the overlaps, conflations, contradictions and tensions within and between typologies of GCE [2 publications redacted for anonymity]. The heuristic identifies 3 major discursive orientations: neoliberal (market imperative, commodification), liberal (intellectual enlightenment, individual development, international relations), and critical (social justice, interrogating and changing the status quo). Importantly, and responding to the concerns of a false dichotomy between neoliberal and liberal social justice (e.g. Marshall, 2008, 2011) approaches in the GCE literature as well as calls for more critical approaches, the heuristic also maps the interfaces of these orientations: neoliberal-liberal, liberal-critical, neoliberal-critical, and all four.
We draw on Paulston’s (2009) approach to social cartography as a means to figuratively map current typologies, and to help generate prefigurative imaginaries for pluralizing possibilities for future ‘types’ of GCE (Nandy, 2000). We follow his suggested process: select the issue to be mapped, select a range of texts addressing that issue, identify the positions of each text and how they intersect and overlap with other texts, and finally, test and adjust the map with those communities that are mapped.
Our early findings suggest that it is important to go beyond description of types of global citizenship. Unpacking the conflations and contradictions within and between different typologies demonstrates that, despite a consensus as to the dangers of neoliberal orientations to GCE resulting in reductive approaches, many of the liberal orientations interface with neoliberal in reinforcing rather than significantly challenging ways. Similarly, the proliferation of liberal orientations draw attention to potentially relatively superficial distinctions of cultural and political aspects, failing to engage with the deeply rooted ways such approaches serve to mask deep issues of equity. Many typologies identify critical GCE, but they too represent a conflation of key debates regarding the extent to which structural change should focus on changing existing structures or forging entirely new ways of relating. In addition to the three primary GCE orientations and their varied interfaces, the emerging neo-conservative and post-critical orientations suggest that there is a need to continue to revise and refine existing typologies of GCE, at least if the intention is to be more comprehensive and thorough in our mappings of existing discursive configurations.
In our approach as situated cartographers, our intention is to not only map the existing conversations with the GCE field, but also to open up different kinds of conversations about GCE. In an effort to do so, we will conclude the paper by offering a supplementary analysis of the GCE typologies we have reviewed. This discussion neither negates nor replaces our ‘typology of typologies’. We offer a rethinking of inherited distinctions and divisions within the study and practice of GCE. In particular, we draw attention to how interventions into GCE nonetheless remain largely framed by a limited range of possibilities. We raise the possibility that they are closed off from imagining viable alternatives. We propose that an analysis of such limits is essential to considering the extent to which GCE can be mobilised to addressing the complexities, paradoxes and intense conflicts that characterize today’s interdependent world.
The supplementary analysis draws on a metaphor [reference redacted for anonymity] of an olive tree. There are three different layers of analysis and intervention with regard to social change: methodological (the level of doing); epistemological (the level of thinking); and ontological (the level of being). The metaphor of the tree provides a supplementary reading of the cartography of typologies. It assists us to identify that many mainstream approaches to GCE are articulated from within perspectives on global education and social change that exhibit significant distinctions at the methodological level (fruit/flowers: ways of doing) and consider a degree of consensus regarding a way forward. We find that many other approaches to GCE intervene at the epistemological level (branches: ways of thinking), whereby normalized assumptions and power relations are challenged. These knowledge-based approaches propose a deeper historical and systemic analyses of global problems. Significantly, we find there is the diversity of leaves and flowers, and of branches of knowledge characterizing the GCE field; however, we propose that such approaches are ultimately based within the same “trunk” and “roots”. In other words, they are rooted in a shared modern ontology (way of being): existence defined by knowledge, humans separated from nature, and where one (Cartesian, teleological, logocentric, allophonic) rationality prevails . What does not fit the codified discursive categories of this ontology – what is unintelligible – is beyond what Sousa Santos refers to “abyssal thinking” and subject to “epistemicide” (Sousa Santos, 2007). Therefore, we propose that the GCE questions one would ask from a different ontological standpoint may not be legible for those over-socialized within a modern ontology. Indeed, they have been largely absent from GCE conversations (see also Ahenakew, 2016). Conversely, GCE approaches that could support learners in sitting at the edge of the modern ontology could be productive.
This paper will offer an important contribution to the scholarship on GCE, providing both an analysis of the proliferation of typologies and an supplemental reflexive analysis that pushes the field to deeply interrogate the assumptions underlying our on-going desires of and attention to GCE.

Authors

• Karen Pashby, Manchester Metropolitan University

• Vanessa Andreotti, University of British Columbia

• Sharon Stein, University of British Columbia

• Marta da Costa, Manchester Metropolitan University