Special issue: Reimagining teacher education for the future – global perspectives at the intersection of change, hope and crisis
Introduction
This article presents a qualitative study conducted within an international volunteering programme involving 39 Italian volunteers aged 19–30 in four countries in Latin America, Africa, Northern Europe and Central Europe, as part of a project called Universal Civil Service Abroad, managed by an Italian non-government organisation (NGO). Within this framework, international volunteering is understood here as a potential learning context for global citizenship education (GCE), offering opportunities for encounters with alterity that may foster reflective and transformative processes.
The researcher carried out an ethnographic study, combining participant observation, field notes, vignettes and informal conversations, and involving extended periods of fieldwork abroad and cohabitation with the volunteers. Within this broader ethnographic design, this contribution focuses specifically on the data emerging from phenomenological vignettes, illustrating how this methodological tool can serve as a valuable means of enquiry for GCE.
The research questions guiding the study are the following: Which tonalities of response to the dilemmatic situations evoked by encounters with alterity emerge within volunteering experiences? And how do these modalities of response contribute to conceptualising transformative processes within GCE?
The article is structured as follows. First, it situates international volunteering within the broader field of GCE, showing how certain configurations of international volunteering can function as transformative learning contexts, conceptualising encounters with alterity and the response modalities they elicit within a theoretical framework. Next, it presents the research context, methodology and method, providing a detailed description of the international volunteering programme and the data-collection tool, the phenomenological vignette. Then, it reports and discusses the findings, organised around three response modalities and examines their significance for GCE. Finally, the conclusion outlines future development perspectives, acknowledges the study’s limitations and reflects on the contribution of phenomenological vignettes to research in the field of GCE.
International volunteering and GCE
International volunteering is defined as ‘a form of immersive voluntary service performed across an international border’ (Lough, 2020, p. 1) and is considered here as a potential learning context for GCE (Baillie Smith, 2014; Bentall, 2020; Brown, 2018; Tiessen and Huish, 2014). According to Lough (2020), international volunteering can take various forms depending on factors such as duration, housing, institutional support, cost and remuneration, education and skills and the degree of mutuality or reciprocity. Based on the combination of these elements, Lough (2020, pp. 4–5) identifies three main types of international volunteering: voluntourism, short-term international volunteering and international volunteering for development. In addition, international volunteering can vary depending on the organisations’ objectives (Strong, 2016) and other local factors shaping the programmes and influencing outcomes (Sherraden et al., 2008).
In this study, the duration of the experience considered, called Universal Civil Service Abroad, lasts over 10 months and volunteers live in shared housing alongside local people. Following an initial selection by the NGO promoting the experience based on their curriculum vitae, young people first complete a one-month tenure that includes both orientation and initial training. After taking part in the experience, they participate in a final two-week training period focused on sharing and reflection. They also receive continuous support from both sending and hosting organisations. Finally, the project’s educational objectives are agreed upon and a contract is signed, which also includes a form of remuneration for the volunteers.
As foreseen by the Universal Civil Service Abroad, the volunteers support specific activities related to the various projects, such as distributing meals in canteens, organising recreational activities for children, assisting in creative workshops with people with disabilities or providing support in dispensaries involved in programmes addressing child malnutrition.
To frame international volunteering as a learning context, it is necessary to clarify the educational perspective adopted in this study. Since this article is grounded in the assumption that international volunteering may foster forms of learning related to global citizenship, the concept of GCE needs to be explicitly defined and theoretically situated.
GCE is defined in the Dublin Declaration as:
education that enables people to reflect critically on the world and their place in it; to open their eyes, hearts and minds to the reality of the world at local and global level. It empowers people to understand, imagine, hope and act to bring about a world of social and climate justice, peace, solidarity, equity and equality, planetary sustainability, and international understanding. (Global Education Network Europe, 2022, p. 12)
In an attempt to operationalise this broad definition of GCE, Tarozzi (2025, p. 18) highlights the specific pedagogical space, which he defines as pre-didactic: it is a transdisciplinary vision that aims to widen horizons, prepare for encounter, develop a holistic perspective, embrace the mind–body and individual–environment unity, and then each culture cultivates this space with specific forms of learning tied to its own tradition.
It is therefore an education of the gaze (Tarozzi, 2025, p. 18), understood as a transdisciplinary and experiential space that aims to broaden one’s worldview by expanding cultural and personal horizons through meaningful encounters with the world and with alterity. Within this perspective, GCE seeks to foster integrated, non-dualistic ways of thinking, overcoming dichotomies consolidated by Western rationalism, such as mind/body, individual/society and culture/nature. At the same time, it promotes dialogue and relationality, cultivating embodied and intersubjective forms of awareness that nurture empathy, the recognition of difference and the development of egalitarian intercultural relationships, cultivating a questioning mindset in which the subject strives not to take the world and others for granted, but to interpret them consciously, critically and openly (Tarozzi, 2025, p. 19).
It is by positioning ourselves within this perspective that international volunteering can be considered a context for GCE. In this regard, Matt Baillie Smith (2013) highlights the importance of considering the link between GCE and international volunteering, identifying it as a space for reflection and study of great interest. Additionally, Brown (2018) emphasises that few studies have examined how these two areas intersect and relate to each other.
Simpson highlights how international volunteering has attracted growing interest among young people, leading to the emergence of numerous organisations offering such experiences in various forms, including the ‘gap year between school and university’, which ‘covers a broad spectrum of possibilities, from the domestic to the international, from industrial work placements to voluntary work’ (Simpson, 2004, p. 681). Similarly, Lough and Tiessen (2018) state that ‘international volunteering has become a multibillion-dollar industry … In the USA alone, nearly 1 million people volunteer abroad through an organization each year’ (p. 104).
Regarding GCE as defined above, international volunteering seems to offer an opportunity to experience being a citizen in a practical and evolving dimension, connected with a dynamic notion of citizenship that highlights its continuously evolving process, influenced by experiential and relational connections throughout life (Osler and Starkey, 2005; Staeheli, 2010). Citizenship, in fact, can be interpreted as a practice requiring self-awareness in relation to others and expressed through active participation in society and the ability to collaborate to achieve common goals, whether political, social, cultural or economic (Osler and Starkey, 2005). This perspective implies creating links between legal status and personal identity, as well as with the lives of others with whom a sense of community is shared. This study argues that global citizenship should be intrinsically inclusive, recognising and valuing differences within a framework that both integrates and enhances them, while taking into account the multiple local and global identities of citizens. For this reason, it has been chosen to consider an international volunteering programme that includes North–North as well as North–South experiences, while acknowledging the limitation of not including South–South initiatives.
On an educational level, international volunteering distinguishes itself for its transformative potential in the process of constructing citizenship. As highlighted by Baillie Smith et al. (2013, 2016), citizenship is conceptualised as an ‘endlessly negotiated process of change and transformation’ (p. 129), built through shared practices and relationships that make it inherently unstable and continuously evolving (Staeheli, 2010). However, these transformations do not follow linear paths: the subjectivities and citizenships that emerge in the context of volunteering can be multiple, intermittent and sometimes contradictory. Research in this field shows how volunteers develop several types of ‘global subjectivities’ (Baillie Smith et al., 2013, p. 126), meaning perspectives, skills or dispositions that reflect the complexity of lived experiences.
Considering international volunteering as a learning context for GCE, the hypothesis guiding this research is that it may represent a transformative experience from a global citizenship perspective. Scientific literature highlights the transformative potential of international volunteering, especially concerning the concept of citizenship and its intersections with bodily and cognitive aspects (Faggioli, 2023). The mind can be transformed through a process of deconstructing one’s personal and cultural baggage, thanks to the pivotal role experience plays in stimulating critical reflection capable of motivating social change (Langdon and Agyeyomah, 2014). However, this process is often intense, and from an educational perspective, it must be considered that ‘dissonance, discomfort, and reimagination in the name of global citizenship are not experiences to be navigated alone’ (Hartman et al., 2018, p. 107).
Research on international volunteering also emphasises the importance of addressing one’s privilege related to a postcolonial culture, where the ‘colonial desire’ for power and control ‘prevents us from relating to the world in its full complexity, plurality, movement, entanglement and indeterminacy. For this desire to be interrupted, it first needs to be identified within ourselves’ (Andreotti, 2021, p. 7). Bryan (2013) and Andreotti (2011) describe this process as laborious and sometimes painful, as it requires a crisis that makes one aware of one’s complicity in unequal global power dynamics. This transformation, therefore, involves multiple dimensions: citizenship, experienced in contradictory ways; the body, often subject to discomfort (Tiessen and Huish, 2014); and the mind, engaged in a process of unpacking privileges (McIntosh, 1989; Tiessen, 2018).
Although discomfort and crises are considered intrinsic and essential for change, uncertainties remain regarding the specific mechanisms that trigger these, particularly given that there is no evidence that the volunteering experience in itself can automatically initiate such transformation (Tiessen, 2018, p. 59).
Le Bourdon’s research highlights how informal spaces expand learning opportunities through cultural experiences, daily practices and recreational activities, emphasising how informal micro-level interactions constitute crucial moments of transformation from a GCE perspective (Le Bourdon, 2018, 2020). Such interactions promote the creation of authentic relationships that establish deep bonds between people: what makes these spaces particularly relevant for GCE is the possibility of sharing emotions and experiences, thus fostering a sense of belonging through shared experiences (Le Bourdon, 2020). Le Bourdon (2019), therefore, invites us to focus on ‘micro-level encounters … and how personal the learning journey is when considering the “doing” of global citizenship’ (p. 16).
GCE and transformative learning
As Tarozzi (2021) points out, referring to UNESCO (2014), GCE represents a ‘framing paradigm’, capable of reworking and enhancing knowledge, skills, understanding and experience. Yet GCE presents interpretative complexity due to the multiple meanings attributed to it. This complexity carries the concrete risk that GCE remains a vague, idealistic and undefined concept – one that is therefore often contested (Sant et al., 2018). On the one hand, GCE is by nature ‘a semantically indefinite concept: it is informative only when you look at it from afar. The more you approach it, the more its definitory power decreases’ (Tarozzi, 2024, p. 10). On the other hand, there is a clear need to define its positioning more precisely, an effort that Tarozzi (2024) addresses by identifying four main approaches: critical, transformative, market-oriented and cosmopolitan. This article situates itself within the transformative approach to GCE.
GCE is recognised as a profoundly transformative approach, capable of promoting global justice and sustainable development through learning. Since the launch of the Global Education First Initiative in 2012, GCE has been defined as a twenty-first-century educational priority, emphasising the need for education that not only develops technical skills but also transforms the way people think and act, enabling them to contribute to the creation of more just, peaceful and inclusive societies.
UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) (2015) reinforced this approach with documents such as the report Global Citizenship Education: Topics and learning objectives, which highlights the importance of holistic learning based on interconnected cognitive, socio-emotional and behavioural dimensions to foster values and skills essential for change.
The transformative power of GCE was reaffirmed in the recent Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights, and Sustainable Development (UNESCO, 2024), which outlines 14 guiding principles for transformative education. Similarly, the Dublin Declaration (Global Education Network Europe, 2022, p. 2) emphasises the importance of global education as a key tool for critically reflecting on one’s role in the world and acting in favour of social justice, planetary sustainability and respect for human rights. The document underscores GCE’s transformative potential in integrating formal, non-formal and informal learning, thus strengthening international institutions’ commitment to an education oriented towards change, justice and global solidarity.
Drawing on the Dublin Declaration (Global Education Network Europe, 2022), Larcher Carvalho and Wegimont (2024) highlight the central role of transformative education in GCE, defining it as a process that not only transforms students but also the world and education itself.
In addition to the suggestions contained in the international reports, one of the most significant references for transformative education is undoubtedly the work of Jack Mezirow. His theory of transformative learning conceives of learning as a profound process of critical reflection aimed at reinterpreting the meaning attributed to experiences. Mezirow (1991) claims that learning is not limited to acquiring new knowledge but involves a reinterpretation of experiences to overcome expectations anchored to pre-existing meanings. In this process, past or present experiences are reassigned a new meaning, transforming the perspective from which reality is observed.
According to Mezirow (1991), transformative learning is often triggered by disorienting dilemmas or situations that challenge deeply held beliefs. These dilemmas, arising from external events or personal experiences, stimulate a process of critical reflection that leads to the re-evaluation of values, identities and meaning structures: ‘A disorienting dilemma that begins the process of transformation also can result from an eye-opening discussion, book, poem, or painting or from efforts to understand a different culture’ (p. 98). Such moments, though complex and often painful, catalyse a reformulation of one’s understanding of reality and orient individuals towards new actions.
For Mezirow (1991, p. 74), the primary goal of adult education is to facilitate this type of transformative learning, encouraging individuals to become aware of their structures of meaning and to reformulate them when necessary.
Similarly, German philosopher Bernhard Waldenfels (2007, 2011, 2016) associates self-transformation with an event that emotionally and qualitatively engages an individual, bringing forth something that suddenly manifests and transforms into something new and different. This process can be described as a phase of experience that Waldenfels (2022, p. 130) defines as the development of meanings or the development of rules.
A key concept in his reflection, closely linked to transformation and the way of relating to the unfamiliar and the world, is responsiveness. Waldenfels (2011) emphasises that our experiences are never autonomous or isolated actions but rather responses to something that calls us from the outside. The Other (alien) is not simply something different but constitutes a real appeal that disrupts our order, demanding a response. It is an experience that escapes total control and cannot be fully integrated into one’s system. There is always a moment when one is touched or struck by something, which Waldenfels (2011) defines as the new, the unfamiliar, the extraordinary, an experience perceived with strong bodily and emotional involvement.
Waldenfels (2022) identifies in this experience the origin of creative and transformative inspiration: that which breaks the routine and stands out as a significant difference. To this ‘Wovon’ (from which), that is, the source of the otherness that calls us, the ‘Worauf’ (towards which), that is, that which has been perceived and reacted to, is added (Waldenfels, 2022, p. 15). This is the very moment when the attention shifts towards the reaction in response to what has been perceived, implying an active interaction with otherness. Therefore, human beings are always engaged in a dialogue with something other than themselves and the response cannot be regulated by universal laws but is always unique and singular. Responsiveness occurs in what Waldenfels (2011) defines as the ‘in-between sphere’ (p. 76), a space between the self and the Other, the liminal space where the tonalities of response take place.
This in-between sphere constitutes a place that simultaneously connects and separates, as it belongs neither to the self nor to the Other; it is a ‘no-man’s land’ (Waldenfels, 2011, p. 71) and it is in this space that transformation can occur: responding to the unfamiliar implies transforming the self and facing a challenge that changes us. The appeal of the Other destabilises us, questions our boundaries, our sense of belonging and our order. It is an experience that ‘happens to us’ and that can profoundly affect the foundations of our identity as citizens.
The ideas of transformation proposed by Waldenfels and Mezirow find a crucial application in GCE, which is configured as a process where responsiveness is activated, allowing engagement with otherness and critically revising one’s way of thinking and acting. GCE, in its transformative dimension, prompts experiences that challenge established patterns, much like the disorienting dilemmas described by Mezirow or the appeals of the unfamiliar in Waldenfels. The contact with different perspectives and new forms of knowledge, and the challenge of global complexity, create a condition of openness in which the self is tested and transformed. In this perspective, Waldenfels’ theorised in-between sphere can be understood as the educational space where this transformation takes place: a space of confrontation, tension and identity redefinition, in which dialogue and relationships with others become experiences of learning and transformation.
Research context, methodology and question
Building on the conceptual framework of GCE, with its emphasis on encounter, alterity and transformation, this article addresses the following research question: Which tonalities of response to the dilemmatic situations evoked by encounters with alterity emerge within volunteering experiences, and how do these modalities of response contribute to conceptualising transformative processes within GCE?
The methodological choices of this study are based on a qualitative research perspective, which allows for the analysis of phenomena in their natural context, emphasising people’s experiences and the meanings they attribute to them (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011). In this article, we present and discuss data collected by means of phenomenological vignettes. We analysed 10 of these collected by the researcher within a broader ethnographic study that involved long periods of staying abroad and living with the volunteers and that also employed other data-collection methods. The vignette is a brief narrative description that synthesises a significant moment of lived experience, paying particular attention to perceptions, bodily expressions, atmospheres and social interactions in a given context (Agostini et al., 2024). Each vignette requires prolonged co-experience in the field, extensive drafting and redrafting and multiple cycles of intersubjective validation and analytical discussion. Consequently, the number of vignettes included in this study reflects not only the breadth of field experiences but also the considerable amount of time dedicated to the rigorous processes of data collection, processing and analysis.
The data analysed in this contribution illustrate how young volunteers respond to issues or questions that arise in dilemmatic situations when encountering otherness and the Other. The study involved 39 young Italian volunteers, 14 of whom the researcher co-experienced fieldwork activities with, during extended periods abroad across four different destinations: seven in Latin America, four in Africa, two in Northern Europe and one in Central Europe. The participants ranged in age from 19 to 30 years with an average age of 26.5 years. Their educational background was particularly high, as most of them were university graduates, and they generally came from high socio-economic backgrounds. The volunteers were selected based on their CVs and an interview. During their volunteering experience, they stayed, together with members of the local community, in facilities belonging to the host organisation. The study received ethical approval from the review boards of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano and complied with all relevant data protection regulations in accordance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.
Data collection, processing and analysis
To answer the research question, we adopted the phenomenological vignette as a method because it allows for strong contextualisation and paves the way for a broader and more diversified vision of social reality. Its philosophical foundation lies in Husserlian phenomenology, which ‘seeks the traces, clues, and signs that allow us to delineate, observe, and describe not absolute truths, but the evident (or hidden) manifestations of “things”, “emotions”, “circumstances”, “experiences”, “symbols”’ (Demetrio, 1990, p. 52).
The phenomenological vignette was first defined and applied at the University of Innsbruck in Austria (Schratz et al., 2012) and has since been progressively adopted by an increasing number of research groups within European universities, achieving international dissemination in various research fields (Agostini and Peterlini, 2023; Agostini et al., 2024; Peterlini, 2020).
This method, along with the specific analytical approach known as phenomenological ‘reading’ (Lektüre), bases the understanding of phenomena on descriptive approaches that emphasise prolonged and detailed attention to the faithful representation of lived situations. This allows for the recognition not only of the meanings people attribute to their experiences but also of situated knowledge and exemplary elements that emerge from such experiences (Zadra and Agostini, 2024).
The use of phenomenological vignettes in this study allows privileged access to the pre-reflective, embodied and sensory dimensions of experience. These are elements often overlooked in traditional narrative and discursive analyses, whether based on observation or interviews. This approach makes it possible to capture more accurately the situated and affective tonality of the volunteers’ responses when confronted with alterity.
Such modalities of response are not limited to conscious or intentional choices; rather, they are also expressed through gestures, postures, silences and emotional resonances that reveal the complexity and frequent ambivalence of engagement. It is precisely this openness to the aesthetic and embodied dimension of experience that enables an inquiry into whether, and how, transformative processes are activated in the ‘in-between sphere’ (Waldenfels, 2011, p. 76), where the subject is called to respond to what addresses them without being able to rely on pre-established rules or familiar interpretative frameworks. Before analysing the characteristics and writing processes of the vignette in detail, a concrete example collected by the researcher in the field is presented. This vignette was documented outside a large European railway station, where a group of about 15 volunteers, including Noé, the protagonist of the narrative, was distributing food and hot drinks to homeless individuals exposed to the advancing evening and biting cold. The vignette, presented below as an example, was collected in a European port city, but it forms part of a broader corpus of data gathered within an international volunteering programme involving diverse geographical areas, ranging from Africa and Latin America to Northern Europe. Its inclusion in this contribution does not stem from the specificity of its geographical context, but rather from its strong exemplificatory power in relation to the research question under investigation.
Noé and the Boy with the Dog
The biting cold contracts the bodies and induces rubbing of hands for warmth. ‘That boy with the dog must be my age!’ Noé whispers to himself as he slowly steps toward a young man sitting on the ground in the centre of the square. The young man is wrapped in a thick blanket, with one hand resting on a dog sitting beside him. He lifts his gaze toward Noé, who approaches without changing his facial expression. Noé crouches, balancing on his feet, and gently asks the young man if he can pet the dog. ‘Yes,’ he whispers hoarsely, nodding slowly. ‘What’s his name?’ Noé then asks, continuing to stroke the dog lightly. The young man looks up again and tells Noé that the dog’s name is Kety. Encouraged by further questions, he shares where he comes from and his name, and with a firm nod, accepts the soup and coffee offered to him. Noé, after swiftly fetching the soup and coffee, kneels and hands them to the young man, who begins to sip the coffee slowly. Suddenly, Noé quickly pulls his wallet from his pocket and, with a trembling hand, offers ten euros to the young man. After raising his head and glancing at the banknote, the young man swiftly grabs it and tucks it into his jacket pocket.
This example clearly highlights the inherently narrative dimension of the phenomenological vignette. It represents a scene co-experienced in the field by a researcher and is characterised by a particularly dense narration, providing a detailed description of events and actions while emphasising elements that convey the atmosphere and aesthetic perception of the situation. Thanks to this structure, the phenomenological vignette emotionally engages even those who did not directly participate in the event, enabling an immersive engagement through subsequent reading.
The vignette does not aim to provide a complete and detailed reconstruction of the situation but rather focuses on a lived experience, capturing its atmosphere, the protagonists’ moods and the emotions manifested through bodily expressions and sensory perceptions. Particular attention is paid to body language, physical sensations, proxemics, facial expressions, gait and minimal gestures, as well as voice tones, moments of silence and atmosphere, dimensions often overlooked in descriptions of social or socio-educational contexts (Agostini et al., 2023) but essential to understand an experience.
The writing of the vignette follows a well-defined methodological process. The researcher is struck by a scene they find significant and quickly notes all the sensory perceptions captured in the moment. The focus is on moments that stood out, fascinated, surprised or, conversely, irritated the researcher or revealed an unexpected development in the situation. In this initial phase, the notes prioritise recording perceptions and emotions while avoiding the attribution of immediate meanings.
Subsequently, the initial notes, including sketches or diagrams, are developed into a first draft of the vignette. This draft encapsulates a brief description of the scene co-experienced by the researcher in the field. The primary challenge in this writing phase is translating sensory perceptions, emotions and bodily articulations into words that convey and describe without imposing interpretation, allowing for multiple layers of meaning to remain open. Indeed, the phenomenological vignette does not aim to provide fixed interpretations or definitive judgements that reduce the complexity and surplus of meanings in the experience but rather seeks to represent it in an aesthetic, resonant and evocative manner (Agostini et al., 2023).
A crucial phase in the process is the intersubjective validation of the vignette, which takes place within the research group to refine the initial draft (Agostini et al., 2024). This step ensures that the meaning of the vignette is not limited solely to the individual researcher’s perspective but can be understood and shared by other research team members with expertise in phenomenological vignette writing. During this phase, the draft is collectively discussed through a process of linguistic condensation, in which team members who did not directly experience the field situation offer questions and suggestions. The aim is to enhance the understanding of the scene described, paying particular attention to the accurate representation of bodily perceptions, gazes, postures and non-verbal aspects that contribute to conveying the complexity of the experience.
After this revision, the researcher further refines the vignette, preparing it for analysis. In our study, we adopted a discursive approach to vignette analysis (Zadra and Agostini, 2024), which unfolds through a careful reading and collegial discussion within the research team.
As in the writing phase, the reading and analysis phase also focuses on descriptive details, the images evoked and the sensations conveyed, with the aim of deepening the understanding of the represented experience. The reading of vignettes is structured on multiple levels:
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literal reading, which focuses on the description of content, details and situations
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contextual reading, which highlights circumstances, relationships and contextual dynamics
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phenomenological reading, which aims to grasp the surplus of meanings embedded in the experience (Agostini, 2016).
Vignettes can be analysed through different approaches (Agostini et al., 2023; Zadra and Agostini, 2024), including scenic, written and discursive modalities. For this study, we adopted a discursive analysis within the research group, documenting its key features. The phenomenological analysis is distinguished by its interpretative openness, allowing for diverse attributions of meaning to emerge from the situation depicted in the vignette. This approach acknowledges the uniqueness of subjective experience, emphasising its bodily, sensory and pre-reflective constitution (Agostini, 2016).
Phenomenological analysis is not a demonstrative process but rather an exploratory enquiry that refrains from predefined theoretical explanations or ‘rigid interpretative models that would reduce the experience to comparable categories’ (Schratz et al., 2012, p. 39). The primary goal of phenomenological reading, as highlighted by Schratz et al. (2012), is ‘to differentiate the surplus and richness of experiences articulated in the vignettes and to present them in as many facets as possible’ (p. 39).
While phenomenological vignette research is, on the one hand, a highly intuitive process, it also underscores the importance of theoretical depth (Meyer-Drawe, 2012). This deepening involves a productive anchoring in theory (Brinkmann, 2017), which helps to shed light on the ambivalences of the represented experience, offering multiple perspectives.
Finally, the transcription of the dialogical reading conducted within the research team was subsequently analysed adopting key aspects of Mayring’s (2021) content analysis method. The transcribed text was divided into analytical units, from which an inductive thematic system was developed, synthesising the key insights from the dialogical reading and distilling them into essential information.
Findings and discussion
The collected data allow us to identify a set of response registers expressed by volunteers when facing challenging and dilemmatic situations arising from encounters and interactions with the Other. The vignettes describe scenarios in which the Other always manifests as a ‘request’ that is not explicit – a solicitation that can neither be fully satisfied nor entirely assimilated.
To define the different response modalities observed, anchoring them in the themes emerging from data analysis, we adopt the concept of response ‘tonality’ (Tonlagen) developed by Waldenfels (1994, p. 17). This concept does not refer to a specific event or a static response but emphasises the transformative element that manifests in the concrete relationship with the Other.
The responses, recognised in terms of their tonalities, have been grouped into three main response types: response as reproduction; denied response and transformative response. In the following sections, these broader themes will be presented in detail and illustrated by means of concrete examples from the analysed vignettes.
Response as reproduction
Many of the analysed vignettes suggest that volunteers’ responses often conform to pre-existing orders, reinforcing, for example, dynamics of power and cultural superiority or simply reproducing implicitly accepted norms. Faced with the dilemma of how to conduct an English lesson for a class of children due to the unexpected absence of the teacher, the volunteer may resort to familiar lesson formats they had likely experienced during their own schooling, doing so almost automatically and without explicitly expressing their uncertainty. Their response translates into rigid and unengaging teaching methods, which do not consider the children’s actual needs and learning styles. Consequently, the children face an overly complex and inadequate educational experience, which negatively impacts their participation and generates frustration.
In similar scenarios, therapeutic community staff members show how the desire to conform to a predefined order can hinder authentic engagement with complex dynamics and individual needs. This often results in stereotypical responses incapable of recognising the specificities of each person and context. Operators demonstrate an initial openness, however, by offering immediate responses to meet requests. For instance, when they notice that a community member is not eating, they encourage them to do so by offering particularly appetising kinds of food or catering to their preferences. While this approach acknowledges the fundamental need for nourishment, it does not necessarily establish a deeper connection with the individual like volunteer Elena did: ‘With her arm, she encircles his shoulders, embracing him from the side and resting her cheek on his shoulder. Slowly, he turns toward her and says, “Hi, Elena”, then slowly turns back to his plate, takes the fork in his hand, and puts a piece of cake into his mouth’ (Vignette: Elena and Ugo).
Another example, drawn from a different vignette entitled Preparing cakes, concerns a volunteer who teaches an African peer how to bake a cake. In this situation, the volunteer structures his instructions in a way that evokes the well-known pedagogical dynamic of the ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ (Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1968). The volunteer asks questions that follow patterns revealing an implicit distrust of the young man’s skills and cultural background, as, for example: ‘What do we do, Jack, if the recipe gives the quantities for two cakes and we need to make four?’, without considering alternative approaches to the task. By starting from a prejudiced assumption about the young man’s abilities, the volunteer directs him towards solutions tied to his own cultural framework. Thus, the initial power imbalance – shaped by paternalistic cultural dynamics – is perpetuated, crystallising historically and politically rooted colonial roles.
It is interesting to notice how the tonality of this response register resonates with theatrical performance. The reproduction of patterns and predetermined orders makes responding akin to acting out a role, assuming a pre-written part. The analysed vignettes reveal that, in many situations, volunteers’ body language mirrors theatrical gestures, suggesting that perceived insecurity and inadequacy are compensated for by adopting codified behaviours. This response tonality, based on reproduction, prevents full engagement with the Other and the dilemmatic nature of the request being made.
Waldenfels (2022) describes the initial phase following a request as:
At first, there is embarrassment, the impossibility of finding a way out, an aporia. In his philosophical inquiries, Wittgenstein formulates the issue simply: ‘I don’t know my way about.’ One is left speechless, unsure of what to do or say when an adequate response is not available. (p. 146)
From this perspective, the response as reproduction does not allow for a transformation in the GCE framework, which would require deeper engagement and a reconsideration of one’s reference schemes. To broaden one’s understanding and change one’s perception of the world, it is crucial to allow for diverse perspectives – both one’s own and others’ – and develop a new way of thinking that is truly ‘otherwise’ (Andreotti, 2014, p. 30).
In this case, the objective of GCE remains unmet, particularly from the critical perspective of Andreotti. The author argues that addressing global issues effectively requires an in-depth analysis of the intricate interconnection between cultural and material processes, both local and global. If this approach is neglected in GCE, there is a risk of falling into a new form of ‘civilizing mission’, perpetuating the notion that one generation must take on the task of saving, educating or civilising the world. As Andreotti (2014) states: ‘Encouraged and motivated to “make a difference”, this generation will then project their beliefs and myths as universal and reproduce power relations and violence similar to those in colonial times’ (p. 22).
According to this response register, not only does no transformation towards a global perspective occur but, rather, pre-existing reference frameworks are reinforced. In the context of North–South international volunteering, this phenomenon translates into the perpetuation of paternalistic, colonial-style dynamics. Instead of fostering deconstruction of stereotypes and simplistic, uncritical views of otherness, the experience reinforces this dynamic and ultimately proves counterproductive in the GCE framework.
Denied response
A second response tonality consists, paradoxically, in denying the response. Following Watzlawick et al. (1971), this negation is still a form of response: in a sense, even a ‘non-response’ constitutes a modality of this register. According to Waldenfels (2022), it is impossible to fully evade a request from the Other, since ‘even avoiding the request is itself a form of response’ (p. 139).
In some vignettes, volunteers’ avoidance of response is primarily expressed through the body, which becomes the medium for conveying intentions. Physical rigidity and withdrawal into oneself delineate an elementary mode of response, a ‘pathos without response’ (Waldenfels, 2022, p. 91). For example, in a vignette set in a shelter for homeless individuals entitled Chiara and the homeless man, a volunteer reacts to a person with extremely poor hygiene by freezing in place and focusing entirely on her own tasks: ‘She keeps staring at the work he is doing; apart from his hands, the rest of his body remains motionless on the chair, hunched over in a curved posture’. Her rigid posture, avoidance of eye contact and lack of explicit reactions create a separation between her and others, marking a boundary of disengagement from both the context and the people around her.
Volunteers who tend to avoid responding may physically withdraw, isolating themselves in a corner of the room and contracting and stiffening their posture, which may result in a paralysis of creative or innovative responses. Even the absence of a response does not fulfil the request and can indicate ‘irresponsibility or a failure of creativity’ (Waldenfels, 2022, p. 106). From a GCE perspective, such a response is counterproductive, as it prevents any transformative engagement with diversity. Instead of fostering critical awareness and interaction, it maintains a ‘dichotomous separation’ from otherness (Peterlini, 2023a, p. 185).
Transformative response
Finally, there is what Waldenfels (2022) defines as ‘extraordinary responding’, a transformation of normal response that, ‘revealing an excess beyond itself, transforms’ (p. 143), challenging the established order.
This is a form of creative action, a ‘doing with’ that generates innovation and transforms the experience by subverting the pre-existing order. Creative action is an extraordinary response because it unlocks a surplus of possibilities. As Waldenfels (2022) states, ‘the new (Neuartiges) … finds its place between “pathos” and response, between what happens to us and response (Antwort)’ (p. 152). Experience thus becomes transformative through a creative response: it is not merely a recognition of the Other (acknowledging the face of the Other) or the mere act of establishing contact and interaction (regularising and normalising this relationship), but rather an elaboration of something pre-existing, leading to a shift in experience. This shift is not limited to recognising one’s own strangeness or that of the Other; it also implies a genuine transformation, something changes in the encounter, going beyond pre-established rules and meanings.
When volunteers’ responses align with this tonal register, they become creative and transformative, reflecting a deeper engagement with the ‘requests’ presented by others in the context of interactions. This is not merely about perceiving the volunteers’ responses as subjective actions; rather, the experience of interacting with the Other involves a true engagement with alterity, both one’s own and that of the Other.
An emblematic example of this transformation is that of Noé, the volunteer described in the vignette above. His change does not stem from an intention to subvert the order or the usual ways of interacting with people receiving aid on the street. Instead, an extraordinary response emerges, not from within himself, but from the Other. Noé does not engage with the homeless man through conventional means; rather, he approaches him differently, physically moving closer to the Other, seeking contact through the mediation of the dog. In this dynamic, the dimension of the ‘in-between’ emerges, highlighting how creative engagement is never purely cognitive but develops in a way that even surprises the volunteer himself. Noé’s creative response emerges in the space between himself and the homeless man, distinctly differing from the standardised responses he had adopted in the past, such as simply offering a cup of hot tea. The relational space is thus reorganised, introducing a fluidity in interactions with the Other and creating continuity between one’s own world and that of the Other. The creative response becomes a means of engaging in dialogue with the Other, touching upon cultural and social diversities, and valuing them as opportunities for dialogue and interaction.
Another vignette, Market day, presents a further emblematic example of a surprising response from a volunteer in his personal growth journey. The scene takes place in an African market, where the young volunteer firmly asserts his intention not to yield to the predictable requests of the vendors to grant credit-based purchases. Despite his initial intention to maintain an inflexible stance, however, the scene depicts a gradual shift that leads him to an unexpected openness to the other’s appeal: ‘Federico stays frozen for a few moments, then turns sharply to Mike and, with a gentle smile, signals him to pass the tomatoes to the woman’. Particularly striking is how this openness occurs in a way that surprises even the volunteer himself, as he finds himself overwhelmed by the challenging reality and the woman’s unfamiliar request. This process gradually enables the volunteer to step outside of himself, allowing the request to transform him without being paralyzed by the dilemmatic situation that challenges his initial stance. Consequently, he momentarily sets aside the part of himself inclined to rigidly adhere to a predetermined response, opting instead to explore the liminal space of the in-between sphere, new and extraordinary.
Another particularly significant scene, previously mentioned, takes place in a therapeutic centre in South America. In this context, a celebration has been organised for a special occasion. Despite the apparent joy and liveliness, however, everyone is focused on a man in distress who has not eaten for days. The general approach to the problem is the same among all the staff members and, as previously discussed, falls within a reproductive register, consisting of various attempts to encourage the man to eat. A volunteer, however, by drawing on an original and surprising response register, unlocks the situation by shifting the focus from the man’s problem to the relationship with him. Through an unexpected gesture – physically leaning on his shoulder – she elicits the hoped-for response: the man begins to eat. In this scene, the in-between sphere that forms between the two becomes visible through their physical contact, the act of leaning that unites them and inverts their roles, in contrast to what occurs in a reproductive response register. In this case, the volunteer does not merely offer support but, by leaning on the man, performs a pre-reflective bodily gesture of closeness, which also acts as a form of empowerment towards the man, who had been relegated to the problematic role of the one who does not eat and whom everyone is concerned about. The immobility characterising the initial scene, contrasting with the lively atmosphere of the celebration, is thus surprisingly broken through an extraordinary response.
This extraordinary response is crucial within the transformative process of meaning perspectives described by Mezirow (1991), which entails a fundamental questioning of the premises that shape one’s understanding of the world. Such a transformation, deeply rooted in the individual, can lead to ‘major life changes’ (p. 109).
From a GCE perspective, the request of the Other serves as a fundamental deconstructive stimulus, a breach that, if left open to the novelty of the request, leads the individual towards a surprising creative response. This response has the potential to transform assumptions tied to a privileged stance, steering the individual towards global citizenship based on social justice, solidarity and sustainability. Transformation occurs within the in-between sphere, integrating the perspective of the Other into one’s personal framework in a truly unexpected, ‘otherwise’ manner (Andreotti, 2014, p. 30).
Conclusions, limitations and future perspectives
The findings emphasise the educational potential of international volunteering as a relational and experiential environment for fostering GCE, in line with the definition adopted here, namely, as an approach that aims to: expand one’s worldview through engagement with the world and with alterity; develop integrated, non-dualistic thinking; foster dialogue and relationships; and encourage cognitive decentring and critical thinking (Tarozzi, 2025). In this perspective, international volunteering appears to offer a transformative opportunity for GCE thanks to encounters with alterity and the dilemmatic situations that emerge within the experience.
What makes international volunteering particularly relevant for GCE is the possibility of engaging in ‘micro-level encounters’, which, as Le Bourdon (2019) argues, are crucial moments of transformation from a GCE perspective and constitute a personal learning process corresponding to ‘the “doing” of global citizenship’ (p. 16). The context of international volunteering thus emerges as a non-formal learning environment for a transformative form of GCE, in line with what is advocated in the Dublin Declaration:
Global Education encompasses a broad range of educational provision: formal, non-formal and informal; life-long and life-wide. We consider it essential to the transformative power of, and the transformation of, education. (Global Education Network Europe, 2022, p. 12)
More specifically, the phenomenological vignettes show that, in responding to the dilemmatic situations elicited by encounters with alterity, volunteers display a spectrum of response tonalities that illuminate the transformative potential of GCE within international volunteering. These insights emerge from the experiences of Italian participants in the Universal Civil Service Abroad programme across diverse European and international contexts (North–North and North–South). These experiences can reveal an initial, pre-reflective openness towards alterity, moving beyond a dichotomous self–Other perspective and creating an in-between sphere of interaction. This occurs by allowing oneself to be permeated by the encounter, by embracing the process of ‘letting come’ (lassen kommen) (Waldenfels, 2022, p. 15), and by being transformed by the Other in a way that even surprises the subject. The willingness to be open – to make space for the unexpected and the novelty introduced by the Other, without denying or avoiding a response – thus translates into an original, creative response, one that is ‘created’ in the moment, as it did not exist before. Such a creative response redefines alterity by challenging one’s existing meaning frameworks, allowing for a shift beyond stereotyped, simplistic and uncritical views of the Other and recognising them in their plurality and complexity.
This process of transformative learning is essential for GCE, considering that it provides a ‘framework of meaning’ (Tarozzi, 2021, p. 40) that enables the interpretation, re-elaboration and appreciation of knowledge, skills, competencies and experiences from a global perspective.
In conclusion, while acknowledging the limitations of this study – particularly concerning the number of vignettes collected – its findings are particularly relevant to understanding transformative learning mechanisms in GCE. Furthermore, it opens avenues for future research aimed at investigating how such processes can be supported educationally. In other words, without denying the pre-reflective nature of response tonalities and the resulting uniqueness and unpredictability of the in-between sphere generated by encounters with alterity, recognising and cultivating one’s openness to such encounters proves crucial to fulfil the GCE goal of ‘opening eyes, hearts, and minds to the realities of the world, both locally and globally’ (Global Education Network Europe, 2022, p. 2).
Therefore, educators should focus on creating spaces that promote a cycle of awareness, reflection, dialogue and action. This approach underscores the importance of critical reflection in developing a more autonomous and conscious understanding of internalised cultural norms (Mezirow, 2000).
In the specific case of this study, the use of phenomenological vignettes proved particularly suitable to address the research question while also offering an innovative methodological contribution, as their application within GCE research remains relatively uncommon. This study, therefore, not only presents relevant findings in response to its specific research question but also introduces an example of the use of phenomenological vignettes as a potential investigative tool for GCE (Peterlini, 2023b). As demonstrated in this study, this tool can be particularly valuable in examining the transformative dimension pursued by GCE, an objective that often remains idealistic and vague due to its inherent complexity and multidimensionality (Akkari and Maleq, 2019; Sant et al., 2018; Tarozzi, 2024).
Furthermore, the emphasis that this tool places on the body and its language can serve as an effective response to the growing recognition within GCE literature of the need to engage not only cognitive aspects but also embodied dimensions (Faggioli, 2023; Le Bourdon, 2021).
Another significant potential of this methodological tool lies in the possibility of using vignettes as pedagogical instruments that foster reflection on the dilemmatic situations they describe. This suggests that vignettes can be employed not only as a research tool but also as a means of learning and training, particularly within GCE, as has already been explored in teacher education contexts (Agostini et al., 2023).
Declarations and conflicts of interest
Research ethics statement
Not applicable to this article.
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Conflicts of interest statement
The authors declare no conflicts of interest with this work. All efforts to sufficiently anonymise the authors during peer review of this article have been made. The authors declare no further conflicts with this article.
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