This article-dialogue addresses current criticisms of global citizenship and challenges frequent misinterpretations of Global Citizenship Education (GCE), while discussing what it means to educate for critical global citizenry in an increasingly multicultural world. It starts by considering the phenomena of globalization and the UN Global Education First Initiative (GEFI), which aims at furthering global citizenship, to highlight the relationship between GCE, "global-peace", global commons, and common good. Building on the assumption that GCE should be about learners' emancipation toward critical consciousness, the dialogue concludes drawing a parallel between the "mission" of GCE in contemporary educational institutions and Paulo Freire's notion of critical consciousness.

This paper presents a remarkable conversation with Carlos Alberto Torres about Global Citizenship Education (GCE) in relation to research, teaching, and learning in the USA. Torres is a Distinguished Professor of Education, UNESCO UCLA Chair on Global Learning and Global Citizenship Education, UCLA and Founding Director of the Paulo Freire Institute (São Paulo; Buenos Aires; UCLA). In this dialogue, he artfully blends together theoretical and practical perspectives on global citizenship focused on the connection between culture and power, the interrelationships of economic, political and cultural spheres in the modern educational institutions in the context of growing internationalization and globalization of education offering an exclusive portrait of GCE as a site of permanent pursuit for social justice. Our tête-à-tête is presented as a pedagogical tool for discussion that invites educators to reflect critically on the possible origins and implications of GCE discourses they are exposed to. It is designed with the intent to contribute toward the possibility of imagining a "yet-to-come" post-colonial, criticaltransformative, and value-creating GCE-curriculum beyond a Westernized, market-oriented and apolitical practices toward a more sustainable paradigm based on principles of mutuality and reciprocity, or as Torres calls it in this discussion "el buen vivir"-a concept that portrays a way of acting in society that is community-centric, ecologically balanced, and culturally sensitive, in the ongoing construction of a more just and peaceful world.

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This article examines how Japanese university educators understand the role of Global Citizenship Education (GCE) in higher education. Data were collected by means of questionnaires and responsive interviews with 22 educators, then analyzed with the use of grounded theory and the constant comparative method. Four notions of GCE emerged from the data. The Japanese educators expressed the opinion that GCE must: (1) foster students’ sense of social efficiency and economic growth; (2) enhance their English-language proficiency to prepare them for work in the global market; (3) encourage overseas experiences to support them in acquiring global consciousness; and (4) develop students’ understanding of different countries. Based on the findings, the study suggests that educators’ approaches to GCE in Japan are generally oriented toward neoliberal notions of GCE aimed at fostering global human resources rather than critical global citizens. In contrast, this paper concludes by proposing a critical framework informed by the values of critical pedagogy ingrained in social justice to teach GCE in Japanese universities. This approach to GCE challenges dominant neoliberal notions of the linkages between globalization and education and orients learners toward social justice.

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