Living Across Discourses: A Reflexive Inquiry into the Framework of Glocal Citizenship

• In Event: Constructing Citizenship through Education: Textbooks, Competencies, and Democratic Practices Across Contexts

Proposal

This study provides a retrospective self-reflection on the evolution of the idea of glocal citizenship within transnational and translational discourse. The analysis will draw from the researcher's experiences as a national curriculum-making expert, an international curriculum program participant, a school-based curriculum designer, and a scholar and principal investigator in global citizenship education between 2016 and 2025. The specific data will include meeting memos, policy documents, readings notes, and written reflections. It examines how researchers navigate different discourse traditions of global citizenship education in China, U.S., Europe, and international organizations, how key terms and ideas of global citizenship have been contextualized based on the perspectives of policymaking, practice, and research, and how scholars choose among these traditions while advancing diversity, equity, and social justice. This study may provide insights into the subjectivities of researchers, the complexities of transnational discourse, and the necessity of navigating multiple roles to promote equity and justice in educational policymaking and practice.
Navigating Transnational Discourses: Framing and Reframing Global Citizenship Education
One of the core findings of this retrospective reflection is the dynamic nature of global citizenship education as it moves across transnational discourses and institutional frameworks. Global citizenship education nested with different scholarly traditions, including education for international understanding (UNESCO, 1977), humanistic education (Appiah, 2007; Nussbaum, 2019), competency-based education (OECD, 2019), and multicultural and comparative education (Banks, 2004; Sue, 2001; Berry, 2002). Each tradition offers distinct epistemological foundations and policy orientations. When returning from the U.S. to Chinese academia in 2016, the first challenge was that terms of “citizen” and “citizenship education”, widely used among North Americans and Europeans, were not preferred and even tabooed by the Xi administration and therefore not widely used in academia and school practice. Instead, what social studies stands for in the U.S. was other terms such as “ideological education”, “moral education”, and “political education” that were rooted in the Chinese curriculum system.
Interestingly, the Chinese government still borrows from international discourse, such as the concept of "international understanding" from UNESCO, an international organization that the Chinese government has recognized and heavily invested in. “International understanding” has gained prominence and was further listed as one of the 18 core suyang (competence) in the national competence framework in 2016. Researchers and practitioners often align their discourse with the official and national discourse of "international understanding" in official documents, yet select trending and appealing terms in the unofficial meetings and materials. With the import of international terminologies, there was also resistance from the local government. The concept of Renlei Minyun Gongtongti (The Community of a Shared Future for Humanity) was reinforced in 2017 during the annual conference of the Chinese Communist Party and presented as a Chinese discourse that counters the notion of "global citizenship." These discursive shifts highlight how the terminological and ideological reframing of GCE often happens to gain legitimacy within different cultural and political landscapes. The researcher’s years of searching and contextualizing global citizenship were a process continually negotiated through language, power, and institutional traditions.
The Politics of Implementation: Balancing Scholarly Ideals, National Interests, and Local Realities
A second key finding concerns the complex negotiations required to implement global citizenship education at different levels. Drawing on Goodlad's (1979) curricular framework, my work as a researcher and practitioner revealed discrepancies between the ideal, formal, and operational curricula. While national policy documents may adopt the language of international understanding, actual classroom practices vary, especially among elite international schools, top public schools, and the remaining public schools. As mentioned, the multiple scholarly traditions of international education have their own spaces in school practices. Elite international schools often align with the tradition of competency-based education and select terms such as "global citizenship," "global leadership," and "global competence" to connect students with their future higher education and reflect global trends. Private schools, such as YK Pao School in Shanghai and the Keystone School in Beijing, all incorporate international perspectives and intercultural skills into their mission. Top public schools would adopt terms of international understanding in line with the national discourse. In other public schools, particularly in rural or socioeconomically disadvantaged areas, the concept of global citizenship can appear abstract or irrelevant and might be integrated into moral and political education.
Along with the national campaign for an independent discourse system in recent years, schools implementing GCE have strategically chosen the official terms of "international understanding" and "Renlei Minyun Gongtongti," and have shied away from embracing global citizenship and global leadership. Teachers and administrators often face tensions between nationalistic imperatives and established educational goals in their international curriculum. Several private schools have approached me since 2018 and consulted about localizing their educational goals to reflect national discourses and integrating the national curriculum into the international curriculum framework (such as the International Baccalaureate Curriculum, Advanced Level Curriculum). This pragmatic balancing act, which I frame as “glocalization," is critical for embedding GCE in a way that respects both global connectiveness and local distinctiveness.
Co-Constructing Knowledge Across Roles: Researcher, Policymaker, and Practitioner Perspectives
The third key finding highlights the value and complexity of engaging multiple professional identities in advancing global citizenship education. My positionality as a researcher, policy advisor, and curriculum practitioner offered unique vantage points from which to examine the lifecycle of GCE discourse, from policy formulation to classroom enactment. These overlapping roles facilitated the co-design of research-informed policies and practice-grounded scholarship. However, they also required me to navigate discursive tensions constantly: reconciling academic ideals with political feasibility, or translating scholarly critiques into actionable recommendations. Using the lens of “discursive institutionalism” (Schmidt, 2008; Nordin & Sundberg, 2018), I argue that institutional change is contingent on the strategic use of language where philosophical, policy, and programmatic ideas are negotiated within specific cultural and historical contexts. While reflecting on my engagement with school practices, I further question my perspectives, mainly as a curriculum researcher. I debated within myself how to navigate the relationship between practicum-oriented (Schwab, 1983), separating theory from practice (Pinar, 1995), and awareness of the power dynamics and hierarchical nature (Popkewitz, 2012) in making curriculum.

Author

• Tao Wang, University of North Dakota