Instructional and Teaching Practices for Global Citizenship

• In Event: Dissertation workshop session
  In Special Session: Global Engagement

Proposal

I am a doctoral student at UCLA, with Dr. Carlos A.Torres as my faculty advisor. I am in the dissertation proposal stage, developing my theoretical/conceptual framework and instrument for my research method.

The objectives of my research are in two folds; first, to identify and develop pedagogical approach to be used in assessing instructional practices and teaching practices on Global Citizenship Education, second, apply the developed assessment tool to conduct a comparative studies between teachers education program in US and in South Korea.

My overarching research question is: 1) What are the limitations and challenges of current practice of GCED? 2) What is the gap in the resources available and expected outcome of GCED? 3) How should GCE look like in classrooms and what qualities and competencies should the teachers have to teach GCE effectively? 4) To what extent are pre-service teachers being prepared to create inclusive classroom to foster Global Citizens?

Global Citizenship Education proposed by UNESCO “aims to empower learners to assume active roles to face and resolve global challenges and to become proactive contributors to a more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive and secure world” (2016). While UNESCO states the objectives of GCED, there lack a clear definition, theoretical approach, and practical strategies that different nation-states can use to implement GCED. While this provides flexibility for contextualization, it allows for gap in the efficacy of its practices. In order to achieve the objectives of GCED, I argue that GCED should be grounded in social justice oriented theoretical foundation, and build upon necessary curriculum that includes pedagogical approach and appropriate assessment to better understand the effectiveness in the classrooms, and its impact as a program within a global agenda.

Policy efforts could result ineffective if it does not tackle the root cause (Bensimon, 2005; Harper, Patton, & Wooden, 2009; Harris, 1993). I see the limitation in the current practice of GCED in both theoretical and empirical approach, that it serves to bandage the existing inequity and inequalities without dismantling the root causes. The aims of GCED is a behavioral change that requires not only knowledge but the knowledge that can be transformed into an action for the sustainable future; both the theoretical foundation and practice in the classrooms should contain the value of transformative education in its elements.

Global citizenship models are fundamentally based on the idea of “post-nationalist consciousness” (Ignatieff, 1993) or “the cosmopolitan ideal” (Kingwell, 2000), or the development of a “global moral community” (Dower, 2003) to posit the idea that “individual’s awareness, loyalty, and allegiance can and should extend beyond the borders of a nation to encompass the whole of humankind” (Pike, 2008). The aims of GCED is similar to that of constructive multiculturalism where it “seeks to establish fair rules for living together, based on cultural exchanges that require a rethinking of the notion of citizenship” (Tarozzi and Torres, in progress). Although the theoretical foundations fo GCED attempts to empower the marginalized by bringing equality to the table, many of these fore practices still resulted in inequity caused by and associated with one’s cultural identity. The problem with the current practices that celebrates diversity and asks for tolerance is articulated in the Cognitive Frameworks developed by Bensimon (2005). To operate in the Equity Cognitive Framework (Bensimon, 2005), GCED must address issues of systematic privileges embedded in current practice of identity labelings. Without tackling the structured unequal power dynamics at the global level, GCED would become another tool for social reproduction rather than social transformation.

The first part of the research is to be done in theoretical research method to develop my own conceptual framework based on existing theories and practices on instructional/teaching evaluation. The second part of the research uses empirical research method to collect qualitative data for comparative analysis to explore how different societies are implementing GCE in Teachers Education Programs, and also to examine how applicable the developed assessment tool would be. This research intends to shed light on how the current practice of TEP in its effectiveness to build capacity for GCE, and what the measurement of GCE in instructional and teaching practices should look like.

Author

• Debbie Shin, UCLA