Students’ understanding and appropriation of Global Citizenship education

Introduction

Global Citizenship Education (GCE) is a key target to be achieved by 2030 as part of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. It is claimed to have the potential to transform education systems, empowering learners to build more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, and secure societies, while fostering mutual understanding, especially in interactions between indigenous and migrant populations. Many education systems now expect students to appropriate GCE in their day-to-day.

Research Challenges

Extant research has addressed challenges in developing GCE, examining capacity building (teachers’ readiness to teach GCE) or mapping inconsistencies in theoretical approaches. However, with no systematic baseline research to show how GCE is understood and appropriated by students, there is little hope of real progress by 2030.

Project Overview

STUDACT starts afresh, hypothesising that students are not mere passive recipients of learning – they differ in their desire to engage with GCE, based on personal traits or context. It will explore and contextualise how students receive, understand, and appropriate GCE, treating them as core partners and agentic participants.

Data Collection

Data will be collected in:

• Russia
• the US
• Italy
• Australia
• Germany
• the UK

These countries all have a high migrant influx. Four work packages give students a voice to develop meaningful GCE, using group discussions, photovoice activism, and social media analysis. Policies and curricula on GCE at various levels of governance will be analysed.

Research Questions

STUDACT will answer four questions to ensure a strong foundation for GCE to deliver on its promise of educating the next generation:

1. How do students of different backgrounds understand GCE?
2. How do students appropriate GCE?
3. How do understandings differ within and between countries, curricula, contexts, student characteristics, and education systems?
4. How are student attitudes aligned with those inferred by international organisations, teacher training programmes, curricula developers, or teachers?