Global citizenship education discourses in a province in northern Italy

Introduction

In the past decade, global citizenship education (GCE) has ‘taken on the status of a “global” or “travelling” educational policy’ (Oxley and Morris, 2013: 301–2). Mannion et al. (2011: 443) talk about a ‘curricular global turn’ characterizing the educational policies of many countries. GCE is increasingly popular, but it is also a complex and ambiguous concept that assumes different meanings. This article addresses the different interpretations of GCE, focusing on the perspectives of policymakers and teachers in the Province of Trento in northern Italy. Drawing on empirical research, the article analyses these different perspectives on GCE using Biesta’s (2009) categorization of the purposes of education: qualification, socialization and subjectification. It shows elements of convergence and divergence between the perspectives of the different local actors and illustrates how in the discourses the three purposes of GCE are deeply intertwined and overlapping. The article ends by stressing that, while synergies are possible and can provide a comprehensive approach to GCE, policymakers and teachers should also be cognizant of the potential for conflict between the three dimensions, particularly between qualification and socialization, on the one hand, and subjectification, on the other.

Global citizenship education: Diverse purposes and pedagogical frameworks

GCE is a complex and ambiguous concept that ‘emerges from a nexus of interrelated discursive fields, each of them contested as well as marked by particular histories, challenges, and possibilities’ (Pashby, 2016: 69). The words ‘global’, ‘citizenship’ and ‘education’ represent narratives that, although apparently neutral, natural and unquestionable, are, in reality, contested discursive fields; therefore, when understood discursively, GCE ‘becomes a complicated idea that is infused with various meanings’ (Pashby, 2016: 71). It operates as a ‘nodal point in policy discourse – a floating signifier that different discourses attempt to cover with meaning’ (Mannion et al., 2011: 443).

Dill (2013) underlines that, in certain discourses, GCE is about fostering global competences, i.e. the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve prosperity in the highly competitive global marketplace; in others, it is about nurturing a cosmopolitan global consciousness, i.e. a vision of oneself as part of a global community of humanity, as a moral conscience to act for the good of the world and with an awareness of other perspectives. Bourn (2015) understands GCE as a pedagogy for global social justice, grounded in a global outlook, a recognition of power and inequality in the world, a belief in social justice and equity, and a commitment to reflection, dialogue and transformation.

As the ideas behind theoretical conceptualizations, policy initiatives or educational programming are never a neutral endeavour, the discourses of GCE are being engaged in ways that establish particular meaning and practices (Shultz et al., 2011). Drawing from Biesta’s (2009) work, Sant et al. (2018) relate GCE to three purposes of education: qualification, socialization and subjectification. These should not be seen as entirely separate. On the contrary, in both policy and practice, they are often deeply intertwined and overlapping (Biesta, 2009).

Methodology: Constructivist and informed grounded theory

Considering the diverse discourses constructing different meanings of GCE, this article explores how GCE is conceptualized in the Province of Trento in northern Italy. In 2015, this province adopted the concept of GCE and initiated policy changes to integrate it within the curricula. The article draws on the findings of qualitative research that was undertaken to study the processes through which GCE was constructed by local policymakers and teachers. It used grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Corbin and Strauss, 2008), in particular the constructivist interpretation promoted by Charmaz (2014) and the informed version suggested by Thornberg (2012). As GCE emerged as a new educational discourse in this province, grounded theory (GT) enabled learning about the participants’ meanings without imposing a pre-existing GCE pedagogical framework.

The main data-gathering method was intensive interviews with provincial decision-makers, key informants and teachers. A flexible attitude characterized the data-gathering process as ‘in the midst of the research, questions may arise that impel researchers to construct new data-gathering methods and to revise earlier ones’ (Charmaz, 2014: 28). Intensive interviewing was hence complemented by a thematic analysis of relevant provincial policy documents on international development cooperation and education.

Intensive interviews were conducted in 2017 with five provincial decision-makers and key informants representing the International Development Cooperation Office, the provincial Education Office, and two centres involved in providing research and training on education and international development. Four of the five interviewees were members of a provincial Expert Group on GCE, which included representatives of the province, civil society and schools. An additional decision-maker provided a written response to the interview questions. In the same period, 21 teachers from nine lower secondary schools (where the age of the pupils ranges from 11 to 14) were interviewed. The schools were located in both the main urban centres and rural valleys, had both a low and a high percentage of students with migrant backgrounds and were both included and not included in a provincial project aimed at integrating GCE into the curriculum.

The teachers were identified through personal contact, recommendation by the provincial Education Office and snowball sampling. All the teachers interviewed had some exposure to GCE through in-service education or their interest in GCE was known within and beyond their school. The majority of the teachers interviewed were female (85 per cent), taught humanities (62 per cent) and had between 11 and 20 years’ teaching experience (47 per cent).

During the interviews, a flexible guide shaped an open and in-depth conversation. Particular attention was paid to deconstructing the idea of the researcher as an expert working with established theoretical and pedagogical frameworks. This made uncertainty and openness possible. The teachers shared their ideas and experiences, and were forthcoming about doubts and difficulties. The interview became ‘a space, time – and human connection’ (Charmaz, 2014: 80) for reflection and clarification.

All the interviews were recorded and then transcribed verbatim. Following GT, initial line-by-line coding was used to open up the data and explore fragments of text to reveal all the possible meanings that the text could generate (Tarozzi, 2008), generating more than 300 codes. Focused coding was then used to identify and develop the most salient codes, which were then put to the test with large batches of data. It advanced the theoretical direction of the research.

Iterative strategies between data collection and analysis were used to continually focus the data collection on the ideas that were emerging from the analysis. Once tentative categories were constructed, theoretical sampling was used to seek pertinent data to ‘elaborate and refine the categories’ (Charmaz, 2014: 193). It meant going back into the empirical world to collect additional data through three methods: (1) ‘theoretical thematic analysis’ (Braun and Clarke, 2006: 12) of the provincial curricular guidelines, in particular the areas of history with citizenship education and geography; (2) intensive interviews with two additional key informants from the provincial Education Office; and (3) a meeting with the teachers already interviewed (nine teachers from four schools).

The conceptual categories constructed from the empirical data were combined and placed in dialogue with theoretical concepts, in particular the types of global citizenship outlined by Oxley and Morris (2013), and the categorization of the purposes of education developed by Biesta (2009) and applied to GCE by Sant et al. (2018). A certain level of resonance was found, which led to the use of these theoretical concepts to enhance the abstraction of the empirical categories and construct a coherent ‘analytic story’ (Charmaz, 2014: 150). Hence, in line with constructivist and informed GT, the findings of the study are ‘thoroughly grounded in data by GT methods while being informed by existing research literature and theoretical frameworks’ (Thornberg, 2012: 249).

Institutional context: Dominant discourses in the provincial policies and perspectives

The literature highlights that the institutional policy environment plays a crucial role in the integration of GCE in formal education. Tarozzi and Inguaggiato (2018) underline the important role of policymakers in promoting GCE through the issuing of policy documents that establish a normative framework for teachers’ action and the provision of funding for activities in schools.

In the Province of Trento, the local government promoted the integration of GCE into the curriculum. The fact that the province enjoys special autonomous status within the Italian regional system was key as it allowed the local government to initiate changes more easily. A few timid modifications were introduced into the provincial education law to include a reference to global citizenship in the article listing the objectives of the schooling system. This was considered a key step that could lead to a subsequent modification of the curricular guidelines, which currently do not include a global citizenship perspective.

However, the province is not a monolithic entity that embraced GCE and cohesively pursued its integration within school practice. Rather, two key offices played different roles and, equally, displayed divergent priorities and agendas. The International Development Cooperation Office initiated the legislative change and managed a European project supporting the integration of GCE in schools. The provincial Education Office took a backseat role in the project and, more generally, in the promotion of GCE. The European project provided an opportunity to mobilize a local constituency of representatives of the province, civil society and schools that supported GCE. But it also revealed the tensions within the administration between its different visions and policy priorities as well as the difficulties in developing coordinated and coherent actions on GCE:

The difficulty I believe is primarily lived within the administration, in the sense that it discovers itself internally multiple and therefore not as a monolithic block that decided a direction and is following it, but rather as being made up of one hundred heads that pull in different directions. So, the fact that the province is actually on board means that one Office is on board, a portion of this mammoth being is on board, and it makes an extreme and enormous effort to dialogue with other offices ... So, this is probably, the biggest challenge to manage. (Member of expert group 2)

The different positions and priorities that emerged were clearly in relation to how the concept of GCE was viewed and used by the different provincial offices.

The marginality of GCE in the curriculum

GCE has marginal status within the provincial education policies and the formal curriculum. Analysis of the curricular guidelines highlights that there are some references to concepts and topics related to GCE in the citizenship education curriculum, and in the subjects of geography and history. A global citizenship perspective is virtually absent from other subjects: the focus is on traditional subject-specific knowledge and skills. Overall, in the curricular guidelines, the concepts of global citizenship and GCE are not explicitly adopted and used to provide a global perspective to citizenship education and the other subjects.

In this context it is not surprising that, in the schools studied, GCE is a marginal presence. It is invisible and characterized by the personal and self-made efforts of a few motivated and committed teachers. GCE is not an educational imperative, but rather a sporadic occurrence. Three broad strategies are used by teachers in relation to GCE: (1) avoidance; (2) pioneering; and (3) building communities of peers (Franch, 2020).

GCE in teachers’ discourse: Reproducing, ignoring or challenging the provincial policies

The teachers interviewed showed significant confusion and hesitancy around GCE. Many of them were not familiar with the concept and said that they hardly use this term in their classrooms. The terms they generally use are ‘citizenship education’ and ‘intercultural education’. The teachers acknowledge that in today’s global world, citizenship education needs to assume a global perspective. They feel comfortable with the term ‘GCE’ and believe it captures the importance of adjusting citizenship education to the realities of a global world:

Citizenship education, that is, to educate young people to be citizens, and, in a global world, it goes without saying that citizens means citizens of the world. We are not educating them to something that is not there, we need to overcome nationalisms, we are connected, interconnected ... we educate them to be in this globalized world. (Teacher 7, school A, humanities)

However, they generally find it difficult to define what GCE is and what it entails in terms of teaching practice. Similarly to the findings of the study by Rapoport (2015), the teachers interviewed interpreted GCE through familiar discourses and paradigms, namely the concepts of citizenship education and intercultural education.

They see GCE as a natural extension of citizenship education and do not fully acknowledge the tensions that exist between GCE and citizenship education. The latter is, in fact, a nation-state-centred concept and therefore potentially in conflict with a global citizenship perspective. Moreover, the teachers added the global dimension to an already overstretched conceptualization of citizenship education, which includes everything that teachers cannot neatly fit into a particular subject. It also includes what can be more aptly referred to as promoting discipline and good behaviour.

In the teachers’ discourse, citizenship education has a socialization function. It is consistent with the provincial education discourse centred on promoting democracy, rights and legality, and the moral and social development of students. Teachers stressed fostering respect for the rules of civil behaviour, starting from the rules that should be obeyed in the classroom and, more broadly, the school. Citizenship education is essentially about fostering respectful and responsible students. The assumption is that if young people learn to be respectful, well-behaved and cooperative students in the school environment, they will develop into good citizens in society. This perspective permeates the provincial curricular guidelines for citizenship education and clearly informed the way teachers conceptualize citizenship education:

and then the main thing, citizenship is experienced daily, in the classroom, all the dynamics that take place in the classroom, more or less consciously, are part of a citizenship education journey. Relationship dynamics, mutual respect. Here it’s a training ground for your whole life, for the workplace, for any context. (Teacher 3, school I, humanities)

The dominant discourse with the provincial education policies rejects the concept of global citizenship and embraces a vision of citizenship that is aimed at fostering a sense of belonging to a clearly defined local and cultural identity. This vision was resisted by the teachers interviewed. Their ideas and practices were predominantly located within a vision of citizenship rooted in a cosmopolitan perspective. The latter was articulated in terms of fostering a cosmopolitan identity in line with moral global citizenship (Oxley and Morris, 2013). Strong emphasis was given to universal human rights, a sense of belonging to a common humanity and the similarities between humans that transcend differences and impose moral obligations towards distant others. This socialization perspective was reconciled with the qualification imperative of preparing young people for work in the global economy. While some teachers openly criticized the provincial focus on trilingual schooling, overall they did not challenge the provincial policy of shaping the schooling system to prepare young people for the global economy while also supporting the economic development and internationalization of the province.

The conceptualization of GCE through the intercultural education lens is consistent with the provincial education policies on the integration of migrant students into schools and with the focus on promoting respect for cultural diversity, active tolerance and peaceful coexistence in the curricular guidelines for citizenship education. Teachers’ work centres on cultural global citizenship (Oxley and Morris, 2013). Similarly to citizenship education, their perception is that school can be a training ground for life in today’s multicultural society, as it provides a space for relating to the ethnically and culturally diverse:

Today’s big citizenship issues ... interculture, understood as the encounter of cultures, mutual knowledge, and the possibility of giving spaces of expression to everybody ... a great resource is the class, that is, in the classroom there is a large multicultural presence. Our classes, because of their composition, help. This, in my opinion, is the winning card, to make people understand that there are eyes, there is a name and surname ... because the migrants, they have them as classmates, that is, she is the migrant, the migrant is not an evil entity. (Teacher 13, school D, humanities)

Some of the teachers were aware of the complexity of working in multicultural classes and displayed a high level of reflexivity in relation to their own perceptions of students with a migrant background, or the attitudes of these students towards being identified as culturally diverse or foreign. The approach of many teachers, however, was quite uncritical, with intercultural education being more of an aspiration than a reality of their practice. Accepting and respecting the ‘other’ presupposes a deep engagement with the concept of identity; however, the teachers did not clearly outline a multiple, fluid, dynamic concept of identity. They also did not seem confident in helping students to critically reflect on their identities, nor to exploring their values in an open, transparent and critical manner.

The scholarly literature highlights that often GCE is characterized by the behavioural dimension, i.e. to provide opportunities for students to be active and do something about the global issues they are addressing in school. This is considered problematic because it reinforces notions of the Northern student being able and capable of making a difference, while the Southern poor person is portrayed as a passive victim to be assisted (Bryan and Bracken, 2011; Blackmore, 2014; Jefferess, 2008). It also detracts from learning about the complex causes of poverty and encourages ‘simplistic thinking’ and ‘quick-fix solutions’ (Blackmore, 2014: 158). The emphasis on encouraging students to be active and do something to ‘help’ or ‘solve’ global issues did not emerge as a prominent feature of the way the interviewed teachers conceptualize GCE. Their perspectives reveal a strong focus on the concept of personal responsibility, with importance placed on encouraging students to engage in ethical and sustainable behaviours at the individual level. Fundraising and charitable work did not feature prominently in teachers’ accounts. The marginality of the action agenda in the schools studied is a welcome departure from the paternalistic, ethnocentric and solution-focused perspectives that characterize GCE in some contexts. It opens spaces for teachers and students to engage critically with issues without the anxiety associated with finding solutions to global issues or crafting opportunities for students to ‘make a difference’ in the lives of distant others. Indeed, elements of criticality emerged from teachers’ narratives. A few teachers talked about creating spaces where single stories can be challenged and different perspectives can find expression. They stressed the importance of questioning the assumed objectivity and truth of our knowledge, and of discussing with students the fact that history is not objective but is told from different points of view:

in history we talk about invasioni barbariche [the Migration Period during the decline of the Roman Empire around the 4th to 6th centuries ad] and then we discover that the Germans do not call them invasions but call them Völkerwanderungen, so migrations of peoples, so there is an ideological aspect that we begin to perceive and so we understand how history is interpreted by each people according to the own perspective. (Teacher 15, school D, humanities)

One teacher explicitly referred to the importance of cognitive decentralization to move beyond an ethnocentric vision of the world:

work on cognitive decentralization, to simply make it clear that the way we have studied the world, and history, is a Eurocentric view, even simply projecting planispheres, as they are depicted in other countries: this above, this below, the fact that you can’t find Europe anymore because it is in a little corner because maybe at the centre there is /... this displaces them [pupils] ...You can also make them reflect on how the European, even historically, has always assessed with its own meter, without valuing what was there, what he was finding. (Teacher 13, school D, humanities)

These elements of criticality are not necessarily in opposition to a discourse that focuses on activism. Indeed, they can be reconciled with a perspective that supports students to become democratic subjects, as suggested by Biesta (2014). Educators, as Mannion et al. (2011) underline, can focus on the kind of global citizenship practices that are possible within schools and society more generally and what and how students might learn from them. Yet, in the schools studied, this is not the case. The collective social and political dimensions of being citizens did not feature prominently in the way GCE is conceptualized. While a few teachers acknowledged that it is an important aspect to develop, for most of them, being a political citizen was somehow postponed to the future. The students are not yet considered citizens and are rather seen as citizens-in-the-making. Being active democratic subjects in society is hence seen as something they will do when they get older.

Conclusions

The education policies of the Province of Trento shape a schooling system that is aimed at preparing young people for the global economy while also supporting the economic development and internationalization of the territory. An emphasis on global competences is reconciled with a socialization conception of citizenship education which aims to foster the respectful and responsible local citizen. The main focus is not global citizenship, but rather a traditional idea of citizenship, interpreted as civil virtues, and a sense of belonging to a clearly defined local and cultural identity. The provincial international development discourse emphasizes the interdependence that characterizes the globalized world and the interconnectedness of people. GCE is considered a new framing paradigm for international development and a priority for education. In line with a cosmopolitan perspective and a socialization approach, GCE is about fostering the respectful global citizen, one who understands this interdependence and moves in the world in a responsible and sustainable manner. While the qualification discourse is dominant in educational policies, through narratives that focus on excellence, competitiveness and internationalization, it also permeates international development policies.

The teachers conflate GCE with citizenship education and intercultural education. They bring a global perspective to citizenship education, thus challenging the marginality of GCE in education policies and in the curricula. Their perspective is rooted in moral cosmopolitanism and a socialization approach aimed at fostering the good global citizen. Their approach significantly amplifies the dimension of GCE related to preparing students for life in a multicultural society and their perceptions remain situated within the qualification purpose that permeates the provincial education policies. The teachers merge different agendas: the economic (preparing young people for the global economy), the moral (helping others) and the cultural (fostering tolerance). They do not question the assumed naturalness of the global economy, the moral imperative or the emphasis on tolerance, but, similarly to the experience in an English school, they remain deeply situated within these agendas, while simultaneously contributing to their maintenance (Blackmore, 2014).

Elements of criticality in line with a subjectification perspective emerged in the way GCE is conceptualized by some representatives of the international development sector and by a few teachers, who stressed the importance of decolonizing our thinking and questioning the assumed naturalness of certain conventions. However, overall, GCE is conceptualized by both policymakers and teachers as a ‘new moral pedagogy’ that mixes qualification and socialization. As a result, other dimensions are overlooked, in particular those related to a subjectification approach which uses GCE as an ethical and political framework for the critical deconstruction and transformation of global structures of power and domination. GCE in the Province of Trento falls short of being a pedagogy for global social justice. Only a few provincial informants and teachers consider GCE as a pedagogical framework to help learners acquire a critical understanding of globalization, power and inequality in the world and the ways in which they and their nations are implicated in local and global problems (Bourn, 2015). Generally, teachers do not use GCE to critically explore identities and discourses so that learners may develop a dialogical, complex and dynamic understanding of their identities as well as the capacity to understand and interact responsibly with others while being self-critical of their own perspectives and positions (Pashby, 2016).

The findings of this study confirm that it is very challenging for critical versions of GCE that pursue subjectification to move beyond experimentation by individual educators and teachers. According to Marshall (2011: 424), a more systematic translation of critical GCE approaches in curricula may currently be unrealistic and unworkable, given that schools are located in wider societies that are ‘reproducing powerful corporate cosmopolitan ideals entrenched in a set of neo-liberal and knowledge-economy norms’. It is the opinion of the author that policymakers and teachers do not need to situate their policies and practice completely within a qualification, socialization or subjectification approach to GCE, but can rather merge the perspectives. Synergy is certainly possible and can provide a comprehensive approach to GCE. A qualification approach does not necessarily need to focus on the competences to succeed in the global economy, but can build the knowledge, skills and dispositions essential for critical global citizenship, i.e. knowledge and understanding of global systems, structures and issues as well as the skills required for civic literacy and critical inquiry. A socialization conception, with its focus on humanistic and cosmopolitan values, can bring to the fore our common humanity and values rooted in human rights. But GCE demands that teachers and educators also foreground a subjectification approach centred on a critical pedagogy for global social justice (Bourn, 2015). This will facilitate a socio-political analysis of the root causes of global poverty and inequality, and a commitment to social transformation. A political perspective grounded in social justice is in fact necessary if GCE is to take political agency seriously. Moreover, a subjectification conception of GCE is required to facilitate the critical deconstruction of the dominant discourses that shape our understanding and actions.

The author believes that while synergy is possible, policymakers and teachers should also be cognizant of the potential for conflict between the three dimensions, particularly between the qualification and socialization dimensions, on the one hand, and subjectification, on the other. A GCE policy and practice that blindly supports qualification and socialization without analysing the current global dynamic, questioning its tenets, deconstructing dominant narratives and exploring alternative visions, is problematic. It reproduces ethnocentric and paternalistic perspectives and depoliticizes citizenship practices, thereby undermining a GCE approach that pursues subjectification. By foregrounding political knowledge and critical thinking skills (qualification) and human rights (socialization), while also drawing from voices that have been silenced by colonial epistemic violence, GCE can become a space that helps learners to become more autonomous and independent in their thinking and acting (subjectification). GCE can thus open opportunities for thinking otherwise and imagining alternatives to the current modern/colonial global imaginary (de Oliveira Andreotti, 2015).

Notes on the contributor

Sara Franch is a postdoctoral researcher at the Free University of Bolzano-Bozen, Italy. Her PhD research focused on global citizenship education. She has worked for over 20 years in the international development sector, managing programmes in Liberia, Sudan, Burma, Cambodia and Timor Leste, and developing projects and training activities on international development and global citizenship.