Global citizenship education, new nationalisms and curriculum policies

• In Event: Contested citizenship and curriculum: Navigating diversity, nationalism, and censorship in global education policy

Proposal

Over the last few decades, there have been parallel and arguably contradictory processes of inclusion/exclusion of global citizenship education in national curricula worldwide. While this ideal has recently been included in various national policy documents (e.g., Gaudelli, 2009; Peterson et al., 2018), countries –under both Left and Right-wing governments– have also increasingly embraced nationalistic rhetorics in their curriculum policies (e.g., Yemini et al., 2021). These paradoxical processes, however, have not received the attention they deserve by educational scholars. Partly because the focus has either been on the educational impact of the global –under what Tröhler calls “the spell of globalisation” (Tröhler et al., 2021, p. 7)– or on extremist forms of nationalism, such as authoritarian populisms, that have exalted national identities and vehemently rejected any project related to cosmopolitanism (e.g., Author/s, 2024; Sant, 2021). Both of these phenomena, however, have obscured the role of more subtle forms of nationalisms (Billig, 2023) that have adopted a more ambivalent position with regards to the global.
In this presentation, I explore recent curriculum policies under two novel forms of nationalisms (‘progressive’ and ‘cosmopolitan’) and their strategic positioning of global citizenship education in such policies. The ideology of ‘progressive nationalism’ (Author, under minor revisions) refers to the promotion of national identities based on progressive ideals and a disregard of the global in the name of such ideals. This form of nationalism has been charasteristic of several Left-wing governments in Anglophone countries, from Canada and the US to Australia and New Zealand (e.g., Crump et al., 2023; Smith, 2021). In contrast, ‘cosmopolitan nationalism’ (Yemini et al., 2021) describes forms of nationalism that incorporate globalist ideologies to reinforce national narratives. As Yemini et al. (2021) examine, this form of cosmopolitan nationalism has been reflected in the national curricula of countries as diverse as South Korea, Israel and the US.
In the presentation, these policies and ideologies are explored in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand. This country has recently witnessed a substantial curriculum reform initiated by the former Left-wing Labour government (2017-2023) and then continued by the current conservative National-led government (2023-present). This reform has served as a ground for an open political struggle over the national curriculum (see Rozas, 2024).
After locating the two forms of nationalism explained above in historical perspective, I examined the curriculum policy texts released by both governments, including drafts released for consultation, final documents approved and official press releases. Following Billig’s work (2023), the qualitative analysis of these policy texts considered that nationalist ideologies are reflected in both the presences and absences of texts, as often “what is not being spoken about [is] because it is accepted as ‘natural’” (p. 187). The following questions were used to frame the analysis of these ideologies: How is the nation being portrayed in this document?, Which symbols, traditions, stories, emblems, etc. of the nation are being used?, How is the nation presented in relation to the local/global?, Under which rationales are the local/national/global being invoked?,What assumptions underpinned each of these notions?, What is taken for granted when invoking the local/national/global? These set of questions allowed me to distinguish the nationalistic ideologies that have permeated these curriculum reforms.
The findings show how national/global boundaries and narratives become key sites of ‘curriculum wars’ (Kliebard, 1987). Disputes around the emphasis and definition of the global, national and local reflect shifting political ideologies and nation-building projects. For Labour, the focus on the national (and move away from the global) under progressive nationalism is presented as a pathway towards decolonialisation and identity politics. For the National-led government, the embracement of the global and cosmopolitan nationalism is seen as key to move away from the so-called ‘tribalism’ and as a means to increase the economic competitiveness of the nation. In both cases, the nation is elevated “to a place beyond critique” (Andreotti, 2016, p. 102) and is presented under narratives of exceptionalism and uniqueness. This case study shows how nationalisms morph, in creative ways, to sustain the sovereignty of the nation (Hobsbawm, 1992) and use curriculum policies to mould adapted national identities.
The presentation concludes with a reflection on the problematic implications of these new nationalisms for critical global citizenship education, including the development of rationales and feelings of superiority that exclude the ‘other’ (i.e., the migrant, foreigner) and hinder the creation of global solidarities.

References
Andreotti, V. (2016). The educational challenges of imagining the world differently. Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue Canadienne d’études Du Développement, 37(1), 101–112.
Billig, M. (2023). The national nature of globalization and the global nature of nationalism: Historically and methodologically entangled. Theory & Psychology, 33(2), 175-192.
Crump, J. A. et al. (2023). Health nationalism in Aotearoa New Zealand during COVID-19: Problems for global health equity. Nature Medicine, 29(8), 1887–1889.
Gaudelli, W. (2009). Heuristics of Global Citizenship Discourses towards Curriculum Enhancement. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 25(1), 68–85.
Hobsbawm, E. J. (1992). Nations and nationalism since 1780: Programme, myth, reality. Cambridge University Press.
Kliebard, H. M. (1987). The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893-1958. Routledge.
Peterson, A., Milligan, A., & Wood, B. E. (2018). Global Citizenship Education in Australasia. In I. Davies, L. Ho, D. Kiwan, C. L. Peck, E. Sant, & Y. Waghid (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Global Citizenship and Education (pp. 3–20). Palgrave Macmillan.
Sant, E. (2021). Political Education in Times of Populism: Towards a Radical Democratic Education. Springer.
Smith, D. (2021, August 21). ‘America first’ again? Is Biden echoing Trump on Afghanistan and vaccines? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/21/biden-trump-america-first-progressive
Rozas, C. (2024). How to Win a Curriculum War. New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies.
Tröhler, D., Piattoeva, N., & Pinar, W. F. (2021). Education, nationalism and the ordering construction of the world. In D. Tröhler, N. Piattoeva, & W. F. Pinar, World Yearbook of Education 2022 (1st ed., pp. 1–6). Routledge.
Yemini, M., Engel, L., Lee, M., & Maxwell, C. (2021). Cosmopolitan nationalism and global citizenship rhetoric. In D. Tröhler, N. Piattoeva, & W. F. Pinar, World Yearbook of Education 2022 (1st ed., pp. 219–234). Routledge.

Author

• Marta Estellés, The University of Waikato