An ideology critique of global citizenship education

Abstract

In the last two decades, global citizenship education (GCE) has become a catchphrase used by international and national educational agencies, as well as researchers, to delineate the increasing internationalisation of education, framed as an answer to the growing globalisation and the high values of citizenship. These developments, however, have created issues, due to the presence of two conflicting discourses. While the discourse of critical democracy highlights the importance of ethical values, social responsibility and active citizenry, a neoliberal discourse privileges instead a market-rationale, focused on self-investment and enhanced profits. These two discourses are not separated; they rather appear side by side, causing a confusing effect. This article aims to analyse GCE as an ideology, unveiling not only its hidden (discursive) content but also the role played by non-discursive elements in guaranteeing the coexistence of antagonistic discourses. It will be argued that not only the critical democratic discourse does not offer any resistance or threat to the neoliberal structuring of higher education, but also this discourse can function as an apologetic narrative that exculpates all of us who still want to work in universities, notwithstanding our dissatisfaction with their current commodification. ARTICLE HISTORY

Ideological Interaction Theory in Critical Discourse Analysis

“…In Refs. [15,34], the authors believe on multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary educational policy in the field of critical pedagogy. It has a connection to ideology, power, economics, politics, and knowledge diversity.…”

From Sustainability to the Anthropocene: Reflections on a Pedagogy of Tourism Research for Planetary Attachment

“…For many critical scholars, under neoliberalism, higher education is used not to tear apart dominant systems like capitalism itself, through intellectual debate in order to propose alternatives, but, rather, it is used to make these systems more efficient through teaching people to become more competitive, opportunistic and individualistic (Binkley, 2007;Khoo, 2011;Pais & Costa, 2020). Under such circumstances, succeeding in the knowledge economy as a researcher means getting research funding and publishing results, and thus endowing students with research skills who can then collect data, write literature reviews, assist on projects and eventually lead their own projects will be essential to keep this system that researchers find so rewarding afloat.…”

Educación para la Ciudadanía Mundial: Una Innovación Curricular en Ciencias Sociales

“…Cabe destacar que el concepto de ECM ha sido ampliamente discutido en la literatura académica (Andreotti, 2011;Andreotti y Pashby, 2013;Boni, Hofmann-Pinilla y Sow, 2012;Pais y Costa, 2017;Parmenter, 2011;Peraza, 2016;Truong-White y Mclean, 2015;Arthur, 2014;Balarin, 2011;Jooste y Heleta, 2017;Nieto, 2017;Standish, 2014). Entre algunos de los enfoques que proponen una perspectiva al respecto, están el neoliberal, el anti-ciudadanía mundial, el decolonial y el crítico/transformador.…”