Purpose-This paper aims to explore student learning within a local service-learning initiative that forms part of an Education Studies undergraduate programme at an HEI in the UK with a history of international service-learning programmes.Design/methodology/approach-This paper outlines the context for this form of community engagement in the UK and reflects on the experiences of student participants and the nature of their learning. Ethnographic research into the student experience of international service-learning (ISL) provides a useful framework within which to frame this study.Findings-This research draws on transformational learning theory to describe how students experience a shifting of their world-view through service-learning locally. This study reveals that challenges to stereotypes and personal values, as well as other previously accepted presuppositions, in a domestic context, are not dissimilar from those experienced by students involved in international service-learning initiatives. Research limitations/implications-The framework presented here is a useful tool to explore the dynamic relationship between local and international volunteering and student learning. This particular case study has the potential to add to our understanding of critical pedagogy theory in practice.Originality/value-This article also presents evidence of the complexity of identifying transformative learning. In order to elevate the outcomes of service-learning towards their transformative potential, the opportunities for learning that are afforded by such ventures must be pursued with vigour. The authors advocate a model of community engagement that embeds local service-learning within the curriculum.

Despite a groundswell of evidence for transformative education, manifestos for ‘transformative pedagogy for global citizenship’ remain under-theorised and pay limited attention to implications for practice. This paper connects theory and practice through analyzing a curriculum development project that sought to produce a framework for ‘engaged global citizens’. It considers the political and philosophical framings of the self and other, citizen and world, that underlie this empirical work, especially with reference to reflexivity, hermeneutics, democratic engagement and co-production. The resultant pedagogical framework, based upon concepts of transformative learning, attempted to undercut the homogenizing tendencies within global citizenship education. This discussion highlights the tensions and reifying effects of educational frameworks such as the Teaching Excellence Framework in the UK and the proposed framework for ‘global competence’ in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment. Evidence is presented that frameworks which attempt to make explicit educational phenomena and processes are overdetermined by efficacy and metrics that become perverse ends in themselves. While the anticipated project output here was the framework itself, the substantive output was, in fact, practical: namely the ongoing deliberation and reflection upon the discourses that both do and undo the task of locating the transformative dimension of global citizenship education

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Global citizenship education (GCE) within schools in England is increasingly being reoriented to address a statutory duty to promote fundamental British values (FBV). This multi-method study investigates the influence of critical GCE within initial teacher education in reshaping awareness, understanding and disposition towards FBV amongst beginning teachers. Findings highlight a tension between growing confidence and understanding of how to implement the FBV agenda and the development of autonomous dispositions of the kind demanded for the practice of critical GCE. Four models of teacher orientation toward FBV are developed, demonstrating the role of practice-based learning for the cultivation of critical dispositions.

The early 21st century has seen a period of extreme turbulence in education at all levels in the UK. Although education policy was administrated on a territorial basis before 1999, the 1998–1999 devolution settlement has amplified the complexity of education policy and practice across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Through a comparative review of teacher education across the four nations, this article will highlight aspects of divergence and convergence of policy and practice with a particular focus on education for sustainable development/education for global citizenship (ESD/GC). The implications for ESD/GC will be considered in relation to statutory teaching standards/competencies, values and ideologies, curriculum and pedagogy, and the role of the third sector. This discussion will identify opportunities and challenges facing ESD/GC in teacher education across the four nations.