Putting the International Youth White Paper on Global Citizenship to Work: Participatory research with teachers

• In Event: "Global citizenship must change as the world changes": Applying, theorizing and researching critical global citizenship

Proposal

The International Youth White Paper on Global Citizenship (IYWPGC) (2017) recommends “Addressing complexity and root causes of global issues …; exploring how different perspectives and worldviews originate…; and, making transparent global power relations, colonial history and oppression...”. The youth’s work presents a strong rationale for an ethical global issues pedagogy that explicitly takes up difference and diversity and acknowledges the inequalities inherent to who is most impacted and who can take responsibility for creating a sustainable future for all. This paper shares finding from participatory research with teachers asking to what extent teachers in three countries in Europe are resourced for such an approach. The project brings together the fields of global citizenship education (GCE) and environmental and sustainability education (ESE) to mobilise concerns raised about extant approaches to teaching global issues into pedagogical application. ESE scholars argue that currently mainstreamed approaches implicitly reinforce existing North–South inequities and support individualism and competition (e.g., Sund & Öhman, 2014). Similarly, critical GCE scholars find that approaches to global education avoid complex ethical issues thereby contributing to the reproduction of colonial systems of power (e.g., Shultz & Pillay, 2018; Pashby, 2012).

The project chose Andreotti’s (2012) work applying postcolonial analyses as a bridging framework. Her HEADSUP tool responds to the recommendation of the IYWPGC. It can be applied pedagogically to identify seven historical patterns of thinking reproduced by educational initiatives: hegemony, ethnocentrism, ahistoricism, depoliticisation, salvationism, uncomplicated solutions and paternalism. In winter/spring 2018, we shared HEADSUP with upper/secondary teachers (n= 26) in a workshop (n=5: Helsinki, Stockholm, Manchester, Birmingham, and London). Participants were teachers of upper/secondary (age 14-18) subjects with direct curricular links to global issues and ranged in years of experience. Six teachers volunteered to apply the framework in their class with a researcher observing. Data sources include surveys asking about enabling factors and barriers to taking up ethical global issues in classrooms, transcripts of group discussions from the workshops, transcripts of classroom visits and interviews with teachers reflecting on their use of the framework in their classroom, and written texts produced by teacher participants and students in classrooms.

Across the contexts, teachers linked the HEADSUP tool to their current teaching and considered ways to deepen their engagement. While teachers were very interested in treating global issues with complexity, many wanted to focus on helping students arrive at solutions. Conversely, some teachers found that teaching for complexity and raising difficult issues about power was fulfilling in and of itself and inspired in students a deep feeling of connection to others in the world. Teachers also expressed both struggle and opportunity in engaging with global power relations in their classes through the lived experiences of the students. Applying a global ethical dimension in education is both complex and contentious; yet, it, as the IYWPGC asserts, it is arguably at the heart of an education that takes up and responds to issues contributing the earth’s shared crises. The findings of this research raise important implications for how to support such work in classrooms.

Authors

• Karen Pashby, Manchester Metropolitan University

• Louise Sund, Örebro University