This paper reports on a reflexive exercise contributing a meta-mapping of typologies of GCE and supplementary analysis of that mapping. Applying a heuristic of three main discursive orientations reflected in much of the literature on GCEneoliberal, liberal, and criticaland their interfaces, we created a social cartography of how nine journal articles categorise GCE. We found the greatest confluence within the neoliberal, greatest number within the liberal, and a conflation of different 'types' of GCE within the critical orientation. We identified interfaces between neoliberal-liberal and liberal-critical orientations as well as new interfaces: neoconservative-neoliberal-liberal, criticalliberal-neoliberal, and critical-post critical. Despite considerable diversity of GCE orientations, we argue GCE typologies remain largely framed by a limited range of possibilities, particularly when considered as implicated in the modern-colonial imaginary. In a gesture toward expanding future possibilities for GCE, we propose a new set of distinctions between methodological, epistemological, and ontological levels.
In the last two decades, global citizenship education (GCE) has become a catchphrase used by international and national educational agencies, as well as researchers, to delineate the increasing internationalisation of education, framed as an answer to the growing globalisation and the high values of citizenship. These developments, however, have created issues, due to the presence of two conflicting discourses. While the discourse of critical democracy highlights the importance of ethical values, social responsibility and active citizenry, a neoliberal discourse privileges instead a market-rationale, focused on self-investment and enhanced profits. These two discourses are not separated; they rather appear side by side, causing a confusing effect. This article aims to analyse GCE as an ideology, unveiling not only its hidden (discursive) content but also the role played by non-discursive elements in guaranteeing the coexistence of antagonistic discourses. It will be argued that not only the critical democratic discourse does not offer any resistance or threat to the neoliberal structuring of higher education, but also this discourse can function as an apologetic narrative that exculpates all of us who still want to work in universities, notwithstanding our dissatisfaction with their current commodification.
ARTICLE HISTORY
In the last two decades, global citizenship education has become a catchphrase used by international and national educational agencies, as well as researchers, to delineate the increasing internationalisation of education, framed as an answer to the growing globalisation and the high values of citizenship. These developments, however, have created issues, due to the presence of two conflicting discourses. While the discourse of critical democracy highlights the importance of ethical values, social responsibility and active citizenry, a neoliberal discourse privileges instead a market-rationale, focused on self-investment and enhanced profits. These two discourses are not separated; they rather appear side by side, causing a confusing effect. This article aims to analyse global citizenship education as an ideology, unveiling not only its hidden (discursive) content, but also the role played by nondiscursive elements in guaranteeing the coexistence of antagonistic discourses. It will be argued that not only the critical democratic discourse does not offer any resistance or threat to the neoliberal structuring of higher education, this discourse can function as an apologetic narrative that exculpates all of us who still want to work in universities, notwithstanding our dissatisfaction with their current commodification.
This article extends and expands a nuanced unpacking of conceptualisations of critical global citizenship education (GCE) in typologies of GCE (Pashby, K., M. da Costa, S. Stein, and V. Andreotti. [2020]. "A meta-review of typologies of global citizenship education." Comparative Education 56 (2): 144-164.). It finds approaches to critical GCE can be described in broad terms that conflate quite distinct agendas; critiqued as unpragmatic, idealistic, and morally-relativistic; and fail to engage substantively with their complicity within the systems they seek to transform. It then explores what a selection of empirical research on secondary schools in 'global North' contexts that draws on critical GCE analyses contributes to illustrating the possibilities and tensions of critical GCE in practice.
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