scholarly journals Advancing global citizenship education in Japan and China: An exploration and comparison of the national curricula

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sicong Chen

The literature widely reports that national citizenship remains the focus of citizenship education in Japan and China, despite the emerged global elements in both cases. Yet the literature stops short of exploring how to advance the agenda of global citizenship in the dominant national citizenship education under the centralized education systems in Japan and China. With a list of global citizen attributes derived from a particular conception of citizenship, this article identifies and compares the pedagogical capacity and potential for global citizenship education in relevant Japanese and Chinese national curriculum guidelines, many of which have been recently revised. It is found that many attributes are indeed supported in the Japanese and Chinese guidelines, which, furthermore, leave pedagogical potential for the development of unsupported others. The findings at the policy level bear practical and research implications for global citizenship education in Japanese and Chinese schools.

2021 ◽  
pp. 174619792199963
Author(s):  
Dalila P Coelho ◽  
João Caramelo ◽  
Isabel Menezes

This paper makes an empirical contribution to the debate about the pluralism of global citizenship. This is considered a crucial aspect for research, not only because charity and social justice standpoints coexist, but also in the light of growing examples of neoliberal understandings about global citizenship education and the global citizen. Informed by critical and postcolonial thinking and with a special focus on Andreotti’s discursive orientations, this paper analyses discourses of practitioners of global citizenship education who work in development NGOs in Portugal. Findings suggest that humanist views are predominant, although intertwined with neoliberal and postcolonial perspectives. They also point to an archetypical vision of the global citizen and a prevalence of the responsible citizen-consumer as an agent of social change.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 73-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela Freire Oliveira Piccin ◽  
Kyria Rebeca Finardi

The present paper provides a reflection on global citizenship education (GCE) in the internationalization agenda. With that aim, the internationalization of higher education (IHE) is discussed from a critical perspective, mainly informed by postcolonial and decolonial studies. More specifically, the paper addresses GCE issues related to criticisms that have been raised against it in terms of (1) its different educational approaches, (2) its cosmopolitan bias with its (3) ideological frame of the so-called “global citizen”. Some alternatives to mainstream approaches to GCE and IHE are offered in the conclusion, based on the contributions of Stein (2017), Andreotti (2015) and Fiedler (2007), who advocate for the otherwise approach and/or postcolonial learning spaces.


Author(s):  
Vaida Žegunienė

The paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the concept global citizenship education. Global citizenship education is defined as democratic and sustainable education that pursues to educate a global citizen who is able to perceive the processes of the modern society, to demonstrate a positive attitude and to adapt to the global environment.It is emphasised that global citizenship is a factor ensuring development of a global citizen and his/her functioning within the global context. The analysis of the European and Lithuanian documents revealed that global citizenship education has to be initiated at the pre-primary school because children aged 5- to 7-years are capable to form/construct new global skills. Thus, to have global citizenship education integrated into the pre-primary school education is a must, but still gaps and obstacles exist.The objectives of the research are to investigate how the parents of pre-primary school aged children perceive the concept global citizenship. Data for this research were collected using the qualitative method - an interview. A major advantage of an interview is that this method allows to investigate parents' individual perception of global citizenship education.The most interesting aspect of the data gathered is that parents do not demonstrate complete understanding of global citizenship education and majority of them are not completely familiar with this phenomenon. They relate global citizenship education to travelling and living abroad, to knowledge of other countries/cultures and specific social issues such as pollution, discrimination, poverty.  Taking into consideration the complexity of this process the parents’ perception is insufficient. Therefore, further study has to be initiated regarding teachers’ attitude to initiation and implementation of global citizenship education into the curriculum of the pre-primary school. 


2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marianne Larsen ◽  
Lisa Faden

This paper presents the results of a study, which was a part of a broader project to develop and pilot test a global citizenship education (GCE) teaching kit. This study involved examining a group of typical teachers’ perceptions, attitudes and beliefs about becoming global citizen educators. The study posed the question, “Can providing teachers with global citizenship education resources and supporting them in the implementation of these resources improve their capacity to be effective global educators?” We can infer from our study that there is mainstream appeal amongst social studies teachers for GCE. However, there are a number of limitations and barriers that prevent even those committed to global citizenship education from implementing GCE in their classrooms. Therefore, we argue that it is critically important to provide teachers with sustainable supports such as curriculum aligned teaching materials and professional development opportunities to become global citizenship educators.


2020 ◽  
pp. 174619792097181
Author(s):  
Sicong Chen

Against the contemporary background of international and national commitments to citizenship education for social justice, this paper examines and compares the subject, aim and extent of social justice in citizenship education behind official rhetorics in Japan and China. It develops a three-dimensional framework of social justice to analyse, through mixed methods of text analysis, a set of selected authoritative documents, including official policies, national curriculum guidelines and government-authorized textbooks. The results reveal discursive divergences and convergences between the Japanese and Chinese cases. Social justice in the Japanese discourse tends to be constructed as recognitive injustice eliminable through identical treatment towards one another by individuals. By contrast, social justice in the Chinese discourse tends to be constructed as distributive justice achievable through differential treatment by the party-state. Common to the two cases is that both pay scant attention to collective actions for and the global bearing of social justice. The paper argues that the two cases similarly stop short of promoting comprehensive, transformative and global social justice education.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document