Chapter 11: Dialogues About Global Citizenship Education Across Asian Contexts

This volume’s purpose was to bring together studies from various Asian contexts to attend to perceptions and situated practices of global citizenship education (GCE), and build the basis for characterizing GCE’s purpose and enactment. In doing so, we sought to contribute to efforts that seek ways for transforming our world into one that is “more sustainable, equal, and just” (UNESCO, 2014). Inspired by recent advocacy to interrupt colonial and Western-centric portrayals of education in Asia (Chen, 2010), our project encouraged dialogue among scholars to expand discursive horizons, knowledge, and practice regarding GCE.

As discussed in our introduction, we invited authors to identify and construct each chapter through their perspectives. Many of the contributions eschewed the tendency of depicting GCE as a form of educational change that is “linear and uni-dimensional” revolving around “the transformative potential of state-driven school improvement processes and research and policy agendas” and schools’ and education systems’ instrumental successes and limitations in achieving stated goals (Lim & Apple, 2018, p. 140). Rather, the chapters shine a light on often overlooked conceptions of global citizenship, agentic perceptions of curriculum, and empowering pedagogies.