Developing a global citizenship education toolkit

Richard Harris, Pam Birtill & Madeleine Pownall (School of Psychology)

Project overview

A global citizenship education equips students with skills that allow them to contribute to global problems in a responsible, informed, and ethical way. However, there are challenges associated with embedding a global citizenship education. For example, the methods for effectively embedding global citizenship into the curriculum are unclear.

In this fellowship, we’ll first investigate where global citizenship sits within accreditation standards across the university. We will then identify best practice in global citizenship education across the HE sector, and assess stakeholder perceptions.

This fellowship will create a toolkit that will facilitate the implementation of a global citizenship education at a programme and module level. The toolkit will inspire, provide practical guidance, and pedagogical evidence for global citizenship approach to education, and assist educators in implementing a global citizenship education.

Key findings

Attributes associated with global citizenship education are relevant for every discipline,
but it is a widely contested term.
• Only 12.87% of students in our study were familiar with the term "global citizenship
education” explicitly, but many were sympathetic to its goals and principles
• Both staff and students recognise potential issues with the language of “global
citizenship”, including the tension between local and global problems, connotations of
white saviourism, and the need to balance disciplinary knowledge with broader global
goals

Implications for practice

Practitioners can identify and highlight elements of global citizenship education
already present in their programmes by aligning them with QAA subject benchmark
statements and embedding them explicitly in a way that suits their discipline.
• There may be value in explicitly integrating and surfacing the global citizenship
attributes. This can be achieved through, for example, introducing and exploring
ethical issues relevant to each subject area, supporting students to critically analyse
the societal and global impacts of their work, and promoting responsibility and
encouraging ethical behaviour.
• Critical and evidence-based thinking should be emphasised across disciplines,
encouraging students to engage with broader aspects of global citizenship
education, such as social justice and sustainability
• Themes such as sustainability, social justice, and intercultural perspectives should be
woven into the curriculum. There is value in addressing issues such as environmental
and organisational sustainability, equity, diversity, the intersection of privilege and
power, to support students’ understanding of global challenges
• However, our research also showed how global citizenship education is a contested
term, and this should be considered in interventions that aim to explicitly surface
this to students. Working with students to discuss and clarify language may be thus
important.

If you want to find out more details about this fellowship or what the next steps were upon completion please read the full snapshot or contact Richard (R.J.Harris@leeds.ac.uk), Pam (P.Birtill@leeds.ac.uk) or Maddi (M.V.Pownall@leeds.ac.uk).

Project start date: January 2022