Assessing Global Citizenship Attitudes with Q Methodology

Abstract

This paper discusses the process of designing a quantitative measure of student beliefs and attitudes about social responsibility, global competence, and global civic engagement. First, it includes an overview of the development of a global citizenship Q-sort, the tool used in Q methodology, for assessment. Second, it involves an explanation of the validation process of the Q-sort in three phases to include feedback from scholars in the field, high school teachers, and high school students. Finally, it discusses implications that using this tool can have for researchers analyzing global citizenship coursework and for teachers implementing this coursework.

Effects of Democratic Parenting and Teaching Activities on High School Students’ Global Citizenship: A Multilevel Structural Equation Model with Student Factors as Mediators

“…Moreover, the students should adhere to faith and uphold the democratic regime of government with the King as Head of State. The characteristics of good global citizenship, the citizens must be educated and instilled good concepts to society from the institutions as the main institution responsible for the promotion of dreams, values, attitude, and education for students (Sklarwitz, 2017).…”

The Students’ Intrinsic Motivation for Learning Non-Financial Information Matters from Their Self-Identification as Global Citizens

“…The issue of higher education for sustainability has been the subject of study in countries such as New Zealand [1], Hungary [45], Brazil, Serbia, Latvia, South Africa, Spain, Syria, and the United Kingdom (UK) [3]. Notwithstanding, empirical research focused on millennials' global citizenship attitudes is limited [46], although some recent studies that have been investigating higher education students' predispositions for learning SD-related issues can be found in Australia [19,47], Switzerland and Austria [24], Romania [2], and the USA [46,48].…”

“…In turn, studies such as Sklarwitz [48] have explored education for global citizenship, social awareness, and responsibility in higher education, noting that, for individuals to take steps to address issues of social justice, they must have attitudes supported by the three dimensions of global citizenship, namely, the global competence, global social responsibility, and global civic engagement. The author recognizes that students become involved in GCE courses due to their values and beliefs, and their previous experiences can affect how they engage with the courses.…”

“…Previous literature [2,45,48] has been, therefore, presenting arguments that individuals self-identified as global citizens are more willing to address controversial issues, which may include the reporting of NFI from the accounting students' perspective, as a trending topic considering its latest developments within the corporate reporting area [30,35,39]. According to Aleixo et al [21], students are among the most important stakeholders in the development of more sustainable societies, highlighting that they intend to work in companies that actively support sustainable development.…”

Understanding volunteer commitment to a project: testing a conceptual model

“…The Q methodology technique is useful for exploring attitudes, perceptions and beliefs about a phenomenon, exploratory research, and investigating underlying perceptions (Anandarajan et al, 2006). Q methodology has been adopted across a wide range of fields, for example, to explore perceptions of global citizenship amongst high school students (Sklarwitz, 2017), perceptions in pre-service teachers (Demir, 2016) and approaches to studying in university where Godor (2016) specifically used Q methodology to move away from the surface versus deep learning dichotomy. In the workplace, we see the adoption of Q methodology across a range of areas, for example, medical (Chinnis et al, 2001), energy projects (Cuppen et al, 2016) and construction (Turner et al, 2009).…”