Book review: Education for Sustainability and Global Citizenship: Intercultural, ethical, and justice-based approaches, by Namrata Sharma

Book review: Education for Sustainability and Global Citizenship: Intercultural, ethical, and justice-based approaches, by Namrata Sharma

Bloomsbury Academic, 2025, 221pp.; ISBNs: 9781350414600 (hbk); 9781350414594 (pbk)

Namrata Sharma’s Education for Sustainability and Global Citizenship: Intercultural, ethical, and justice-based approaches offers practical suggestions to help educators nurture students as planetary beings – individuals who embody ecological values and are connected to their humanity and local communities. In recent years, global citizenship education (GCE) has gained traction due to globalisation and the increasing frequency and severity of global challenges such as climate-related disasters and war-induced suffering. Advocates of GCE note that it has the transformative power to help learners develop the skills and consciousness needed to thrive in a globalised, interdependent, complex and fragile world (Gaudelli, 2016; Golden, 2025). Notwithstanding its growing popularity, GCE remains relatively new. Its scholars have historically focused on defining key concepts in the field (see Appiah, 2008; Banks, 2008) and exploring how people in different cultures interpret and use the concepts (Akkari and Maleq, 2020; Gaudelli, 2016). However, in recent years the focus has shifted towards addressing a persistent gap in the literature on how to implement GCE principles (see Bosio and Waghid, 2023; Golden, 2023; Watson et al., 2025). Sharma’s work is part of this new wave of scholarship in the field.

What sets her work apart is an intentional effort to combine key insights from education for sustainability and GCE to enhance implementation and outcome. Her rationale for integrating insights from education for sustainability into her work is that being a global citizen is no longer enough for thriving in the twenty-first century. An Earth-centred worldview of education, she asserts, is not a choice, but a necessity. Such a worldview requires educators to help learners develop healthy relationships with their natural and social environments, expose them to alternative perspectives and equip them to balance personal and societal interests and values effectively. Put simply, her approach is an Earth-centred perspective, akin to the perspectives advocated by the United Nations forum Harmony with Nature (UN HwN) and Earth Charter International (ECI), which take the need to live in harmony with nature and the Earth as its key starting point (86–7).

The book consists of eight chapters, divided into three parts. Part I, which comprises the first three chapters, outlines the theoretical and conceptual framework that guides the work. Sharma’s main theoretical approach is value-creating GCE. Like many emerging GCE theories (Bourn, 2020; Scheunpflug, 2010; Torres and Tarozzi, 2020), value-creating GCE is intercultural in its approach, enabling Sharma to integrate lesser-known non-Western perspectives, such as those of Mahatma Gandhi, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, Josei Toda and Daisaku Ikeda, into GCE discourse. Value-creating GCE aims to empower learners to develop six key attributes (24–7):

1. a sense of interdependence, common humanity and a global outlook

2. an awareness of climate change as planetary citizens

3. a commitment to reflective, dialogic and transformative learning

4. a commitment to sustainable development through intercultural perspectives

5. a belief in the value-creating capacity for social and self-actualisation, uncertainty and change

6. an understanding of peace and non-violence as being central to the human rights agenda.

Sharma discusses these attributes in detail in Chapter 2 and demonstrates how to implement them as part of a GCE curriculum in Chapter 3. She structures the discussion on each attribute into three parts: (1) a brief explanation of the key point, (2) an examination of how the attribute challenges prevailing epistemic assumptions and (3) practice recommendations. For instance, on the theme of developing ‘a sense of interdependence, common humanity and a global outlook’, she asks educators to help learners examine existential questions and contest colonial perspectives. In the subsequent section, she draws on the work of Andreotti (2006) to problematise the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) GCE approach, which she argues focuses narrowly on the need to empathise with others and take action to remove inequality. She then calls for going beyond the UNESCO approach by integrating insights from other cultures to foster a mutually beneficial, equal relationship. She argues:

A core concept within Buddhist humanism is the understanding of jihi or compassion that emerges from the Indian terminologies of metta and karuna, which is a combination of ‘true friendship,’ ‘unconditional love,’ and ‘empathy’ (Ikeda, 1999; see glossary for jihi, metta and karuna). That which draws us to the world of the other, as viewed through this Asian perspective, includes empathy (often advocated in praxis within GCE) but also incorporates the aspect of friendship. (50)

According to Sharma, compassion, viewed from the Asian perspective, creates a condition that benefits both the doer and the recipient of the action. As such, it does not dehumanise the other. She explains in the ‘Suggestions for practice’ section that enacting this theme requires educators to provide opportunities for learners to study abroad and participate in international exchange programmes, allowing them to explore and engage meaningfully with their local communities.

In addition to value-creating GCE, the author draws on socio-ecological justice, values-based and intercultural approaches, such as those enshrined in the Earth Charter, to develop her framework. The combination of these theoretical perspectives explains why she considers the learner, their funds of knowledge, the community and the school’s social ecology essential ingredients in the education process. She conceptualised her approach to make learners feel validated and empowered, enabling them to develop a strong sense of self and perceive the oneness of their life and the socio-ecological environment without feeling threatened.

Part II of the book, comprising Chapters 4, 5 and 6, presents concrete examples of Earth-centred policies and practices. It draws on case studies from ECI, UN HwN, UNESCO’s Greening Education initiatives and the Soka Amazon Institute. The case studies specifically focus on two of the six value-creating GCE attributes – themes 2 and 5. As Sharma points out, these attributes address ‘humanity’s long-term relationship with Nature and all forms of life’ (83), highlighting the book’s core concern. This part of the book is essential, as its aim is not to develop a theory but to bridge a practice or implementation gap in the field of GCE. These case studies allow Sharma to demonstrate the viability of her approach while also showing that it is not a fringe idea.

Part III, which comprises the final two chapters, provides suggestions and guidelines for implementing the framework. The guidelines make the book a valuable resource for reimagining or developing new GCE programmes. They offer useful roadmaps for replacing educational approaches that overemphasise individuality with frameworks such as Sharma’s that focus on learners’ cognitive, socio-emotional and behavioural development. Her ideas, when successfully implemented, will expose learners to multiple perspectives and values, empower them to perceive new patterns and connections, and adopt new ways of being or seeing things. Furthermore, they could awaken learners to their humanity, enabling them to acknowledge the inherent dignity of life, accept their responsibility to themselves, others and the Earth and choose to see, recognise and honour the humanity of others.

In addition, the book advocates a cross-curricular, whole-institutional approach to enhance the adoption and implementation of GCE. Sharma’s point is that education for sustainability and GCE are foundational knowledge that all humans need to embody their humanity fully and truly and manifest it in the service of the self, others and nature. Given the foundational nature of the knowledge, she cautions educators not to limit it to one or two class periods but to teach these principles and values across the school’s overt and covert curriculum. The benefit of mainstreaming education for sustainability and GCE across the curriculum is that nurturing students to embody these virtues will be the responsibility of all educators, not just a few specialists.

While the idea of mainstreaming education for sustainability and GCE across the curriculum is compelling and sound, there is a potential danger that no one in the field of education will take full responsibility for these aspects. GCE advocates established GCE practices within schools as separate fields of study because education systems have not prioritised them (Grunsell, 2004; Oxfam, 1997).

The backlash against globalisation we are witnessing across the developed world, in places like the UK, the United States and Italy, is another reason we ought to be less bullish about the willingness of all educators to effectively mainstream and implement GCE and education for sustainability ideas at all levels of schooling. While globalisation creates a need for inter- and cross-cultural learning, many people consider globalisation and the changes it brings a threat. Research indicates that the anti-globalisation backlash is partly driven by individuals concerned about preserving their cultural, racial and religious identities (Fitzgerald, 2018; Norris and Inglehart, 2019). This situation implies that not all human beings are currently excited about the encounters between different ways of being and seeing the world. As such, we should not assume that there will be universal acceptance of GCE and education for sustainability. Instead, GCE advocates must work harder to allay people’s fears when promoting GCE and education for sustainability’s core message that diversity and living in harmony with all forms of life are good for humanity, not the other way around.

Anyone who wants to contribute to building a better world by nurturing the full humanity of learners – including academics, researchers, master’s and doctoral-level students, teachers, teacher educators, curriculum development specialists, administrators, educational practitioners, paraprofessionals, policymakers and GCE advocates – will find this book a worthwhile read. Parents alike will benefit from its informative and insightful suggestions.