“With my Grade 1 students I have tried to create opportunities to engage reflexively by focusing on themes of identity, difference, power, and relationship. I use a great deal of critical multicultural children’s literature to initiate discussion on these themes, and I emphasize the informal curriculum in terms of intervening in the ways that students relate to one another as primary learning material for engaging these themes.”
–Dr. Angela MacDonald, Ontario Teacher
“Integrating Global Citizenship Education into curriculum requires thoughtful planning and networking. In order to keep it fresh and effective, I have to be very open to learning alongside my students. I bring in as many voices as possible so that different points of view can be heard and considered. Many of these voices come from the non-profit sector in the community.”
–Laurel Labar-Ahmed, Saskatchewan teacher
The scope of global citizenship education is wider than a single scheme of work or subject. It is more than simply looking at social issues in World Issues, or teaching about some distant locality in Geography, or sending school kits to a small village in Mozambique. It is relevant to all areas of the curriculum, all abilities, all age ranges. It can be introduced at any point in a teaching career, from pre-service training to near retirement. There is no pre-set method on how you should teach it.
Education for global citizenship encourages children and young people to explore, develop, and express their own values and opinions, while listening to others’ points of view. It uses participatory teaching and learning methodologies that are well established as best practice in education. In an ideal world, global citizenship education would encompass the work of the whole school because it is a perspective on the world shared within an institution; it can manifest not only in what is taught in the classroom, but in everything the school does.
The outcomes of good global citizenship education, in terms of the knowledge, skills and attitudes conveyed, can be described as follows:
