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Global Citizenship Education, Solidarity, and Youth Activism in Turbulent Times: Complementary Perspectives

Tue, March 12, 4:45 to 6:15pm, Hyatt Regency Miami, Floor: Third Level, Pearson 1

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

In the light of variously entangled global crises and pushbacks against democracy, human rights, and social justice all over the world, it is perhaps not surprising that calls for solidarity have become increasingly louder in media worldwide (Chouliaraki, 2013; Wallaschek, 2020). While movements mobilizing people have been crossing borders before (della Porta & Caiani, 2009) it is noteworthy that in the current global moment, much solidarity talk involves global rather than local calls for action, leading to what one might refer to as instances of transnational solidarity (Gould, 2014). This form of engagement can be seen as an “act” of citizenship (Isin, 2014) disconnected from the framework of a single nation and instead connecting the individual person directly to the wider world (Soysal, 2015), through common action across borders. While low levels of youth engagement have been highlighted in recent decades, in some contexts youth activism has witnessed significant growth as young people more visibly engage in cross-border socio-political movements and advance transnational ideals of activism and solidarity (Lahusen & Theiss, 2019).
What is the role of education in how a global consciousness and transnational activism is understood and enacted? States promote global citizenship ideals by changing school curricula to include more globally-relevant topics and transnationally-legitimated values such as diversity and social cohesion, human rights, and environmental concerns (Bromley, 2009; Bromley et al., 2011; Jimenez et al., 2017). These are often translated by international organisations and actors into ‘global citizenship education’ (GCE) agendas. At the meso-level we are also witnessing a proliferation of school types and profiles that adopt a more or less explicit international or cosmopolitanising approach, either by offering internationally recognised qualifications (such as the irenical programmes of the Geneva-registered International Baccalaureate and the explicit mission to facilitate respect, intercultural understanding, and global peace through engagement, action, and service) or by purposefully fostering ‘international’, ‘global’ or ‘European’ mindedness (Engel et al., 2019; Hayden, 2011; Hornberg, 2010). Finally, NGOs are active locally and transnationally, sometimes with funds from supranational organizations such as the EU, in offering opportunities to future citizens to become transnationally involved (e.g. European Solidarity Corps initiative).
Nevertheless, recent studies have shown that the transfer from “being taught” to action is by no means straightforward. Using political issues as an example, Stitzlein (2022), demonstrated that even though democratic values are spread among youth (revealing a “mission accomplished”, to some extent), society still struggles with how to teach young people to live as active citizens. Peterson et al. (2022) discuss the same issue in relation to the transformation of educational provision into youth activism and engagement in six countries. Many of the current teaching practices and curriculum content are shown to be less effective and sometimes even counterproductive. Sant et al. (2022) reveal the uneasy relationship between GCE content and emancipatory behavior while McGimpsey et al. (2023) reach a similar conclusion regarding one of the most studied and discussed GCE topics, climate education. Presently, as researchers and as a society we may know how to teach students GCE and make them aware of it, but we do not know what empowers them to take action and thereby actualise the progressive potential of GCE in a critical manner.
In this panel we address the paradox of growing youth activism, global citizenship and solidarity in the context of at best contentious, and at worst failing, “critical global citizenship education” (CGCE) agendas meant to challenge the status quo of global inequalities and injustice (Andreotti, 2014). We specifically interrogate:
(1) what manifestations of youth activism have been documented and examined in education scholarship?
(2) what is the role of schools and other educational programmes in actualising the transformative potential of global citizenship education (GCE)?
(3) what practices of global engagement hold the potential of being disruptive of current systems of oppression and injustice?
(4) whose voices are raised and heard in GCE in various countries, contexts, and student characteristics?
To address these questions, the panel brings together four contributions offering complementary perspectives on the role of schools and of different educational programmes in fostering (disruptive forms of) global citizenship, solidarity, and youth activism either in curricular or extra-curricular forms.
In the first paper, the author offers a theoretical and conceptual introduction to the panel by providing an overview of existing perspectives on social activism in general and youth activism in particular, forms of youth activism, its possible factors, and studies on the link between youth activism and education, including the role of youth activism in GCE.
The second paper presents a comprehensive systematic literature review of existing research on youth activism related to GCE issues in different social contexts, which allows the creation of a map of current knowledge and gaps.
The third paper brings a first empirical approach to the topic as the authors introduce an intensive short course of study run by the United World Colleges (UWC) movement, as an example of an educational programme geared towards promoting international mindedness and global engagement. The paper explores students’ perceptions of the transformative potential of the UWC short course in relation to its aims of fostering collective global engagement and global peace.
The final paper offers a second empirical example drawing on research conducted in several schools in Germany sharing a transnational ethos but representing different segments in the educational system’s opportunity structure (public/private, privileged/less privileged, home/abroad). The author explores cross-border solidarity engagement in curricular and extra-curricular activities and focuses on environmental practices as one case of youth activism practiced in these schools.

By offering complementary perspectives on global citizenship education, engagement, and (transnational forms of) solidarity the panel brings together conceptual, empirical, and practical contributions to the field of youth activism and adds to the current state of research a much-needed dialogue. By focusing on how students receive, understand and appropriate GCE, global engagement, and cross-border solidarity activism in different national, international, curricular and extra-curricular settings, the panel lends a valuable comparative perspective to the power of protest in turbulent times.

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