Strategies and Pedagogies in Global Citizenship Education: Implications for Higher Education Practitioners

• In Event: Education for global citizenship

Abstract

A growing number of North American colleges and universities embark on a wide range of initiatives to promote global citizenship education as integral to the holistic development of college students. However, the actual implementation and impact of many programs is often hindered by a lack of a deeper understanding and comprehensive approach to the multifaceted nature of the concept of global citizenship regarding the entire population of today’s undergraduates. The failure to embrace this complexity leads to two further challenges, pertaining respectively to the design of systematic and multiple-level reforms and to the development of adequate expertise in higher education practitioners who directly impact college students. This paper seeks to address some of the challenges inherent in teaching global citizenship in college through proposing a global perspective model informed by prior research as well as educational practice and reflecting on the major strategies and pedagogies that are instrumental in cultivating such a perspective in a holistic way, throughout the entire undergraduate experience. The model discussed here rests upon some foundational attributes of the cosmopolitan mindset that the undergraduate experience should be promoting, such as other-orientedness, inclusiveness and empathy, oneness in diversity, and a critical worldview. It is a two-level model comprised of three equally important components: intercultural awareness, social and ethical responsibility, and social agency. Intercultural awareness is the ability to understand, appreciate, and critically examine multiple cultural perspectives, including one’s own. Social and ethical responsibility is the ability to understand and critically reflect on the meaning and consequences of global dynamics for the future of humanity (i.e., issues such as inequality and poverty, migration, human rights, global health, sustainability, and environmental conservation).Social agency focuses on the need for students to demonstrate an active ethical commitment to intercultural communication and cooperation and an active engagement with global issues within different communities and across cultural boundaries. These three global perspective constituents should be translated into specific objectives for administrators, instructors and advisers to follow when designing and implementing different programs and initiatives in higher education. The current study suggests that education practitioners consider the implementation of several specific strategies to facilitate the accomplishment of these objectives. Among the strategies discussed are incorporating a comprehensive approach to building global knowledge, ensuring ethical proximity to “Others”, promoting critical self-reflection and deliberation, and a focus on student agency—in and out of the classroom. Ultimately, the message this conceptual paper seeks to convey is that global citizenship education should be implemented as a comprehensive institutional effort reaching out to all undergraduate students across different curricular and co-curricular areas. The mission of global citizenship education could best be fulfilled through transformative, ethically and emotionally rich encounters with issues of global concern, such as social inequality, cultural pluralism and intercultural cooperation, and protecting human rights in different regional and cultural contexts. These encounters can happen at multiple points during the entire college experience: through general education courses, capstone projects, majors and minors, research experiences and internships, student organizations conducting service projects, as well as enhanced and deliberative communication on issues of mutual significance with people from different cultural backgrounds from inside or outside the United States. Higher education practitioners are the main engine behind the dynamics of global citizenship education, and as such they need to develop their own global identities in order to best guide students in discovering their personal stakes in global citizenship and in constructing globally competent, responsible, and engaged lives.

Author

• Elena Galinova, The Pennsylvania State University