Global Citizenship Education (GCE) in Post-Secondary Institutions: What is protected and what is hidden under the umbrella of GCE?

Abstract

In this article, we examine how educating for global citizenship has increasingly become a shared goal of educators and educational institutions interested in expanding their own and their students’ understanding of what it means to claim or to have global citizenship in the twenty-first century. While this trend may be considered a uniform response to urgent global issues and contexts, through document analysis of various policies and programs of Global Citizenship Education (GCE) in North America, it is evident that global citizenship is far from a uniform idea and, in fact, is a much contested term. There is a general consensus, however, that higher education institutions have a role to play in preparing citizens who are informed and able to participate in our complex globalized and globalizing world. Post-secondary institutions join other social institutions in working toward understanding their role in addressing social, economic, and political issues of our times. As global citizenship educators grapple with and respond to the global unevenness of internationalization, the legacies of colonialism, and ideologies that support a system that benefits the few at the expense of the many, educators look to global citizenship education efforts to open educational spaces for working for a more just and peaceful world.