Global Citizenship Education

New data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) show that the global number of children and young adolescents not enrolled in school is rising at the same time that the international community is setting a new sustainable development goal that includes universal secondary education. According to UIS data for the school year ending in 2013, 124 million children and young adolescents, roughly between the ages of 6 and 15 years, have either never started school or have dropped out.

Global citizenship is a contested concept in scholarly discourse, and there are multiple interpretations of what it means to be a global citizen. Some have called global citizenship ‘citizenship beyond borders’, or ‘citizenship beyond the nations and states’. Others have noted that ‘cosmopolitanism,’ as a term, may be broader and more inclusive than global citizenship, while still others opt for ‘planetary citizenship’, focusing on the global community’s responsibility to preserve the planet Earth. Global Citizenship Education (GCE) has been applied in different ways in different contexts, regions and communities, it has a number of common elements, which include fostering in learners: An attitude supported by an understanding of multiple levels of identity, and the potential for a ‘collective identity’ which transcends individual cultural, religious, ethnic or other differences;  A deep knowledge of global issues and universal values such as justice, equality, dignity and respect