Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Critical Global Citizenship Education

Carlos Alberto Torres

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780367194345
• eBook ISBN: 9781315452555
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

In the first volume in the Critical Global Citizenship Education series, Torres combines theoretical and empirical research to present an original perspective on global citizenship education as a vitally important way of learning in a globalized world. In examining the requirements for effective global citizenship education and education reform, he investigates pathways to citizenship-building at the local, national and global levels and urges development of teaching methods, teacher education, and curriculum within a social justice education framework. Taking into account post-colonial perspectives, political realities at play, and practical implications, Torres provides a succinct but comprehensive understanding of how global citizenship education can expand the concept of civic education in a global society and interrupt inequality.

This volume considers the ways that global citizenship education has been incorporated and is used by international institutions, governments, and the academy, and provides a clear framework for anyone struggling to make sense of the tensions and complexities of global citizenship education today.

1
The Realpolitik of Global Citizenship Education¹

Introduction

One could trace the current developments in global citizenship education at two different levels. The first one is well articulated in the opening chapter of William Gaudelli’s book speaking about Diogenes of Sinope, “the ancient Greek cynic who once declared ‘I am a citizen of the world.’”² This narrative strategy situates the beginnings of the conversation about global citizenship in the context of a traditional history of philosophical thinking hundreds of years ago. In other terms, the realpolitik of the concept can be traced back academically centuries ago and through diverse philosophical currents, traditions and thinkers. This strategy, as valuable as it is, will not be followed in this book.

There is another way to trace the realpolitik of the concept and how it reached its current development, and it is to trace the emergence, definition of the main phases of implementation and its relevance in the international system, in the United Nations and its specialized institutions, specially UNESCO. To trace these developments, we will be well served if we focus on the 1990 Education for All initiative and its aftermath.

1990—EFA, Thailand

The contemporary origin of the movement was a global commitment to provide basic education for children, youth and adults; it was above all an attempt to increase access. It was launched at the World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien, Thailand, on March 5–9, 1990. Sponsored by key educational stakeholders including UNESCO, UNDP, UNICEF and the World Bank, the conference was attended by delegates from 155 countries and representatives from 150 governmental and non-governmental organizations. As a first attempt to connect donors with operative institutions, this conference may be considered the first global education initiative in the last decade of the 20th century. The goal was to define an expanded vision of learning and to pledge to universalize primary education, massively reducing illiteracy by the end of the century. The focus was on access, and these lofty goals were adopted in a World Declaration on Education for All urging the countries to adopt the Framework for Action to Meet the Basic Learning Needs.

As articulated by Dr. Soo-Hyang Choi, Director of the Division for Inclusion, Peace and Sustainable Development Education Sector at UNESCO: “All means and modes of delivery, including formal, non-formal and informal, were advocated to expand learning opportunities. The scope of basic education was broadened to start from birth. Equity was the paramount policy principle, and stakeholders were urged to reach the unreached. Major global investment in education was directed to the universalization of primary education, which was also one of the millennium development goals.”³

EFA Revisited: 2000—Dakar, Senegal

Table 1.1 Education for All Goals

Goal l

Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children.

Goal 2

Ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to, and complete, free and compulsory primary education of good quality.

Goal 3

Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life-skills programs.

Goal 4

Achieving a 50 percent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults.

Goal 5

Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls’ full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality.

Goal 6

Improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills.

A decade later, at the beginning of the 21st century, it was clear that the goals had not been met in many countries of the world. The Dakar Framework for Action, Education for All: Meeting Our Collective Commitments, which included six regional frameworks for action, was adopted by the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, April 26–28, 2000. In this meeting, the stockholders reaffirmed their commitment to achieving Education for All by the year 2015, but they added a new focus that was not previously evident: quality of education as crucial to achieve learning opportunities. In addition, the focus shifted from the system providers to the receivers, the learners.⁴

UNESCO as the lead agency was mandated to coordinate the educational efforts to reach Education for All. While the EFA goals were seen as contributing to the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), adopted by 189 countries and leading development institutions in 2000, the Dakar meeting identified six key education goals to meet the learning needs of all children, youth and adults by 2015.

2012 Global Education First Initiative (GEFI)

Putting every child in school, improving the quality of learning and fostering global citizenship are the three principles of the Global Education First Initiative (GEFI) launched by the United Nations in 2012. The three principles are intimately interrelated, and constitute the soul of the post-2015 development model advocated by the United Nations and its specialized agencies, particularly UNESCO, to be implemented until 2030.

UNESCO provides the following definition of global citizenship: “Global citizenship refers to a sense of belonging to a broader community and common humanity. It emphasizes political, economic, social and cultural interdependency and interconnectedness between the local, the national and the global.”⁵

Global Citizenship Education (GCE) is one of the three pillars of the 2012 UN Global Education First Initiative (GEFI),⁶ promoted internationally by the support and work of UNESCO. The aims and ambitions are set high: “Global Citizenship Education aims to equip learners of all ages with those values, knowledge and skills that are based on and instill respect for human rights, social justice, diversity, gender equality and environmental sustainability and that empower learners to be responsible global citizens. GCE gives learners the competencies and opportunity to realize their rights and obligations to promote a better world and future for all. GCE builds on many related fields such as human rights education, peace education, education for international understanding and is aligned with the objectives of education for sustainable development (ESD).”⁷

The previous point is well argued by Dr. Soo-Hyang Choi: In 2012, the UN Secretary-General launched the Global Education First Initiative (GEFI). Introduced before the dawn of the era designated “post-2015,” GEFI aimed to give a boost to the EFA frameworks, goals of which were set to be achieved before 2015. Access and quality of education, emphasized in the Jomtien and the Dakar frameworks for more than two decades, were reiterated as two of the three priorities. The long-lasting impact of GEFI, however, has to do with its third priority, global citizenship education, which was mentioned in neither of the two EFA frameworks. Many pondered the addition of this particular thematic area, the importance of which was elevated to that of access and quality, the two supreme policy agendas of EFA. The message the UNSG wished to convey by introducing the GEFI that included global citizenship education was clear. He said: “Education is about more than literacy and numeracy. Education must fully assume its essential role in helping people to forge more just, peaceful and tolerant societies.” The implications of this simple statement are not negligible. No longer is it sufficient to speak of the benefits of education only in terms of realizing individual rights or fulfilling national aspirations. With GEFI, the world education community entered an era in which education is expected to contribute also to the wellbeing of humanity and the global community. The perspective on the utilitarian role of education remains unchanged, but the idea of what education should aim to achieve has clearly evolved.⁸

Dr. Choi offers a frank analysis, arguing: “The advocacy for learning to live together existed for a long time, even before the announcement of GEFI. UNESCO itself was created in 1947 with the mandate of ‘since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.’ In the past, the idea was expressed through such concepts as international understanding, international cooperation, tolerance, etc. Peace education or education on the culture of peace also shares many conceptual properties with global citizenship education. The concept of global citizenship itself is thus not new.”⁹

2015, Incheon

In Incheon, Republic of Korea, the World Education Forum took place on May 19–22, 2015. This conference pointed to linking education with the Millennium Development Goals, connecting as well with Education for Sustainable Development, which was the key motif of the UNESCO development decade.

The meeting had two parts. The first one was a discussion of NGOs that I attended as president and representative of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES), an NGO associated with UNESCO, and a second part with the participation of government representatives—I participated in this second meeting as invited expert.

The Education 2030: Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action marks an important departure from the previous declarations, with a strong emphasis on gender disparities, and emphasizing that post-secondary and tertiary education play a major role in lifelong learning. The unfinished business of EFA was revisited critically and the commitment reaffirmed. Yet:

… the place for a newest development vis-à-vis the two previous EFA frameworks is reserved for its Target 4.7, devoted to specific thematic areas, such as education for sustainable development, gender, human rights, cultural diversity and global citizenship, etc. Inclusion of the Target 4.7, which is often referred to as one of the “messy” targets when it comes to measuring and monitoring, changes the kinds of question we are to pose on education. Questions about school attendance or learning achievements are no longer considered sufficient to address the emerging challenges of the world. The questions on access and quality now need to be complemented with our question about content.¹⁰

The new trends that are identified focus on what is termed “soft” skills, or to put it in the traditional analysis of the Delors Report’s proposal, “learning to live together.”¹¹

All these developments translate into a number of trends: a trend marked by an effort to complement the discourse of access and quality with that of content; an effort to complement the discourse of cognitive skills with that of socio-emotional skills; a trend to complement the discourse of skills and competencies for employment and job market with that of skills and competences for learning to live together; and a trend to complete an education that measures with an education that matters. The fact that the Republic of Korea, a country which has seen education from the economic perspective of human resources development, is now requiring, by legislation, that schools teach soft skills of learning to live together, as an effort to counter the rising violence in schools, is one telling example.¹²

2015 Sustainable Development Goals

The conclusion of the decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005–2014) was celebrated in 2014 with the 2014 UNESCO Wor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The Realpolitik of Global Citizenship Education
• 2 Why Global Citizenship? An Intervention in Search of a Theory
• 3 Global Citizenship Education: Competitiveness versus Solidarity? Liminal: Education and Citizenship
• 4 Global Citizenship Education Confronting Hyper-Globalist, Skeptic and Transformationist Agendas
• 5 Global Citizenship Education and the Role of Universities: Seven Iconoclastic Theses about Public Universities and Neoliberal Common Sense
• 6 Global Citizenship and Global Universities: The Age of Global Interdependence and Cosmopolitanism
• 7 Multiculturalism in the World System: Towards a Social Justice Model of Multicultural Education
• 8 Global Citizenship Education and Global Peace Vive la liberté!
• 9 Adult Learning and Global Citizenship Education
• 10 Global Citizenship Education: A New Global Social Movement?
• 11 Implementing Global Citizenship Education: Challenges
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index