Aug 2026· International Review of Education· Vol 72, pp. 687 - 706· 0 citations· 29 references
Abstract
This study employed Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional approach to critical discourse analysis to investigate the potential of defamiliarisation, supported by collaborative online international learning, to help pre-service teachers in South Africa and Germany challenge neoliberalism and promote critical global citizenship. A group of pre-service teachers in South Africa and Germany (N = 54) were prompted to critically analyse capitalism’s global influence and articulate their ideas using creative illustrations inspired by the short online film Marx and I. The resulting artwork of a sub-sample of the South African student teachers (n = 7) shows their individual and collective reflections on global injustice, capitalism and human rights abuses, while that of the German student teachers (n = 7) emphasises the refugee crisis in Europe, environmental degradation and social exclusion. The research highlights the usefulness of defamiliarisation in producing context-specific criticisms and transforming student teachers’ perceptions of global socio-political environments. The authors found that defamiliarisation promotes a transdisciplinary approach to teacher education and is valuable for contesting neoliberal beliefs and prevailing narratives, thereby encouraging student teachers’ critical engagement with global challenges.
This study examines the experience of pre-service teachers in the Punjab region of Pakistan with regard to global citizenship education (GCE) in their pre-service teacher education programs. There are many examples of the one-way transportation of global citizenship curricula designed in the Global North to post-colonial settings that lack intentional consideration of the respective local processes of meaning-making. This research sought to answer the question of how belonging, benevolence, and pre-service teachers’ positioning themselves as global citizens make sense in a national education system affected by colonial legacy. A hermeneutic phenomenological approach was used, and 22 semi-structured interviews were conducted with pre-service teachers from three teacher education institutions in Punjab. The interviews were transcribed with AI-assisted transcription software and analysed in NVivo 15 with AI-supported coding in an iterative interpretive writing process based on van Manen’s approach. Four themes were generated: understanding teaching as a legacy of obligations, ambivalence about global belonging, benevolence as a disposition, and the classroom as a site of quiet resistance. The results show that there is no abstract ideal of global citizenship for pre-service teachers; rather, it involves a sense of tension between being rooted in the local and imported notions of global responsibility. This study contributes to the scholarship on post-colonial teacher education by showing how the element of benevolence that is typically taken for granted within teacher education can also become a “colonial legacy” as an unexamined element in shaping teacher identity in certain ways. The implications for teacher education policy and curriculum design in Pakistan and other post-colonial contexts are discussed.
Tahira Batool Bokhari, Naima Qureshi, Razia Boota et al.· Research Journal of Human an...· 0 citations
Higher education in South Africa has been widely critiqued for privileging Eurocentric epistemologies that marginalise local knowledge systems and distance learning from the socio-political realities students inhabit. Such dynamics constrain students’ capacity to critically engage the historical and structural forces shaping identity, belonging, and wellbeing. Responding to these concerns, this study examines how a collaborative, arts-based pedagogical strategy centred on graffiti can advance more inclusive and socially responsive teaching practices for diverse student populations. Grounded in critical pedagogy and decolonial theory and informed by the group psychoanalytic concept of the social unconscious, the study conceptualises a graffiti installation as a participatory archive through which students explore the intersections of identity, power, place, and collective memory. A qualitative, participatory design was employed with 12 postgraduate students (7 psychology and 5 design students) across 2 private South African institutions. Through a series of facilitated workshops, participants engaged in critical dialogue, collaboratively created a graffiti installation in a public campus space, and reflected on the meanings embedded in the evolving artwork. Data were generated through the visual artifact, transcribed discussions, participant reflections, and facilitator notes, and analysed using iterative thematic and visual analysis. Findings indicate that the collaborative process enabled students to articulate complex experiences of identity, belonging, and mental health while situating these within broader socio-historical dynamics. The installation functioned as a dialogical and multimodal learning space that supported diverse forms of expression, legitimised experiential knowledge, and uncovered both visible and silenced tensions. The chapter’s original contribution lies in demonstrating how participatory visual methods can operationalise intellectual decolonisation in practice while advancing inclusive teaching strategies that engage cognitive, affective, and spatial ways of knowing.
S. Auld· International Journal of Stu...· 0 citations
New social contracts for education, such as those promoted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Dublin Declaration on Global Education to 2050, outline the need to prepare student teachers to be change agents who can help address growing global challenges, using innovative Global Citizenship Education (GCE) approaches. To create and offer their students experimental learning opportunities on how to deal with these challenges, student teachers need to develop global sensitivity and position themselves to think globally, act locally and reflect “glocally”. While various models have been developed to describe these competencies in teacher education, research about their effectiveness is still emerging. The study presented in this article outlines the formal evaluation of an Erasmus+ project on developing global sensitivity in 301 student teachers (187 female, 114 male) from five partner universities. The project developed an interculturally sensitive teacher training concept designed to facilitate an international virtual exchange between the student teachers. It included four key elements: content introduction, lesson planning, international virtual dialogues and reflection. The findings illustrate how the student teachers transferred GCE perspectives into their own teaching practice and outline associated qualification affordances. They also show how didactical arrangements such as international dialogues about “hot topics” influenced the student teachers’ global knowledge, values and dispositions to (at least potentially) better address the pedagogic challenges of teaching global citizenship. Conceptual ideas and empirical results on didactic challenges in the university context are thus reported to stimulate further debate on future GCE implementation in higher education.
Claudia Bergmüller-Hauptmann, Gregor Lang-Wojtasik, M. Hitzelberger· International Review of Educ...· 0 citations
This article presents a comparative analysis of global citizenship education (GCE) in three national contexts: Australia, Colombia and Mexico. The systematic examination of these contexts contributes to understanding GCE through a critical and decolonial lens. The comparative study analyses national education policy discourse as a starting point for systematising experiences. It engages in an epistemic dialogue between the Global South (specifically Latin America/Abya Yala), represented by Colombia and Mexico, and the Global North, represented by Australia. Despite Australias predominantly Global North-oriented education policy, the study also examines student mobilisations and discusses issues such as Indigenous rights and planetary responsibility. These dialogues open avenues for alternative visions, rooted in critical interculturality and planetary care. Methodologically, the study draws on Stephen Balls heuristic approach to analyse education policy through a poststructuralist sociological lens, considering policy context and the influence of policy as discourse. The investigation identifies official pedagogical discourse across the three nations and examines references to GCE and its interpretations in texts, including policy documents and teacher training programmes. It also shares advancements, opportunities, challenges and policy insights in relation to GCE within each national context. The article argues for a plurality of perspectives on GCE and for recognising alternative conceptualisations beyond neoliberal approaches, which are based in epistemologies of the Global North and the capitalist global order.
B. Brown, Cecilia Peraza Sanginés, Nicolás Aguilar-Forero et al.· International Review of Educ...· 0 citations
A sudden shift in teaching and learning modalities since the pandemic has confronted many issues and challenges. This happened in both well-developed and developing countries. Understanding how education remains an equalizer in terms of social justice is a key factor in its concept. Conversely, research on the concept of education for social justice, in the time of digital transformation, especially during and post-pandemic, becomes limited or scarce. This research is intended for the educational managers in the Philippine higher education institutions (HEIs) that were considered the top-performing schools in the 2022 Licensure Examination for Teachers (LET). The Narrative Inquiry is used as the tradition of inquiry through the topical stories of seven (7) school managers during the pandemic, focused on digital transformation and social justice in education. These stories were analysed and presented using Elliot Mishler’s Model of Narrative Analysis. The theoretical basis of this work is Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Systems Perspective. From the narratives of the participants, teacher training and skill development, availability of ICT infrastructures and equipment, and a new culture among teacher education institutions must be established. Further, the significant role of the HEIs and the government in ensuring that education is accessible, equitable, and of high quality was highlighted. The results suggest that a proactive and responsive strategic and action plan must be designed and implemented based on the context of each educational institution to ensure that all concerns are appropriately addressed, mitigations are in place with urgency, and an improvement or enhancement of policies about quality and equity of education across all levels and geographic locations. Further, this will empower the school managers to design and implement action plans based on what is required by the situation and the problem they are experiencing.
This conceptual article aims to enrich critical emancipatory perspectives on global citizenship education by drawing upon the meta-competence “creation of context” introduced by German social philosopher and adult educator Oskar Negt (1934–2024). Negt is well-known in Germany (though not so much elsewhere) for his landmark work on critical theory (in the context of the so-called “Frankfurt School”), social sciences and (adult) education. The authors of this article discuss his seminal perspective with reference to two other theoretical approaches that are also widely discussed in Germany but have yet to enter the debate in education and social sciences elsewhere. First, they address the critical theory on education and liberation proposed by Heinz-Joachim Heydorn in his paper on the contradiction between education (Bildung) and domination. Second, they elaborate on the social diagnosis of the imperial mode of living proposed by Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen, which features in contemporary discourse on the emancipatory power and potential of education in Germany. Both help to underline why “creation of context” might serve as a leitmotif for a critical emancipatory approach to global citizenship education.
Lukas Eble, Simon Kunert, Silke Schreiber-Barsch· International Review of Educ...· 0 citations