Conference Agenda

To speak about Global Citizenship is to speak about Diversity. This means that to speak about Global Citizenship Education is to speak about pedagogical approaches that aim to sensitize citizens to the value of diversity as a shared common; to prepare citizens to live with the linguistically and culturally distinct Other (through otherness and alterity); to educate critical citizens active in the defense, assurance, and protection of Universal Linguistic and Cultural Rights, in particular, of systematically marginalized and exploited individuals and communities (UNESCO, 1996, 2002, 2005; Council of Europe, 2000). Therefore, we could argue for intercultural education (Vavitsas & Nikolaou, 2021), an educational approach that aims for citizens mindful of diversity, and one of many educational approaches closely linked to global citizenship education, also as an adequate way to educate global citizens (Lourenço, 2018; Faas et al.,2014).

In this paper, we present the findings from a critical literature review whose objective was to identify ontological and axiological connections between global citizenship and diversity through the analysis of pedagogical practices of intercultural education in the formal context reported in the literature.

As Tarozzi and Torres (2018) affirm, diversity can be understood as “the most important conundrum of the new global scenarios” (p.18) that “help to design a new cultural horizon, set in new terms regarding otherness and diversity” (p.18). This new cultural horizon sways education in new (global) directions. Namely, in formal education, as it brings diversity forward to the front stage of teaching and learning, requiring (particularly) teachers to support students’ development of plural and multiple identities. Global citizenship can represent one of those plural and multiple identities, and so, consequently, global citizenship education can represent a way for its development.

Although its multiple and plural interpretations (Goren, H. & Yemini, M., 2017; Oxley, L. & Morris, P., 2013; Pashby et al., 2020) global citizenship education represents an educational approach that emphasizes the development of critical citizens engaged in addressing global issues. It aims to empower citizens to become responsible, informed, and active global citizens who can actively participate in creating a more just and sustainable world. As so, global citizenship education recognizes the interconnectedness of people and issues across the world calling for action toward more equitable solutions, especially, to social and economic inequality. Furthermore, global citizenship education promotes a critical understanding of diversity, particularly for the interest of this study, as it encourages citizens to examine their values, beliefs, and cultural biases, engage in intercultural dialogue, and critically analyze systematic inequalities and challenge systems of oppression (Tarozzi & Torres, 2018). Despite all this, in formal education, teachers and educators find it difficult to understand what global citizenship means.

In the field of intercultural education two concepts that show potential as pedagogical approaches to tackle global citizenship education-related issues in formal education are intercomprehension (Silva, 2018) and linguistic landscapes (Lourenço et al., 2022; Gorter & Cenoz, 2015).

To put it briefly, we understand Intercomprehension as an educational goal to be achieved, at the relational and communicative level which, in a social context marked by complexity and fragmentation, becomes a political and social concept (Pinho & Andrade, 2008). As to linguistic landscapes, what is relevant to say is that as a principle they represent possibilities for global citizens to have quotidian interaction with linguistic and cultural diversity. Regarding the promotion of intercultural education, linguistic landscapes promote greater awareness and openness to linguistic and cultural diversity, encouraging the development of skills and attitudes required from global citizens to participate in multilingual and intercultural contexts.

Over the previous three decades, social justice in education has become increasingly relevant to debates on globalisation, capitalism, and inequalities around the world (Rawls, 1971; Young, 1990; Fraser, 1997; Greene, 1998; Zajda, 2006; Rizvi, 2009; Taylor et al, 1997). In the Latin America context, neoliberalism has become hegemonic in the last 30 years with Peru adopting this model in 1990. However, neoliberalism has affected communities in distinct ways, creating further disparities between a minority who have benefitted from this model and more than one third of the population still living in poverty and exclusion in countries like Peru. Moreover, the neoliberal model has served to marginalise the voices of rural teachers and their practices of social justice in Peru.

Although previous educational research in the country has made important contributions in terms of quality education and educational inequalities, the voices of rural teachers from a social justice perspective have not been sufficiently incorporated into these studies. A social justice framework encompasses a set of ideal theories with which to analyse social contexts like the Peruvian case where disparities persist. The praxis of social justice in education is expressed through critical pedagogies.

Thus, the research will explore how do a group of secondary school teachers in rural Peru conceptualise and practice their commitment to social justice through critical pedagogies in a neoliberal context. In particular, the research will delve into the implementation of these critical pedagogies from the voices of seven rural teachers. The theoretical framework discusses distinct social justice traditions (liberal individualist, market-individualist and social-democratic) and the main concepts from critical pedagogy as a praxis of social justice in education. Through the review of authors like Rawls, Fraser, I.M. Young, Freire, Giroux, McLaren, Darder, among other scholars, the theoretical framework presents the implications of social justice and critical pedagogies through the concepts of dialogue, problem-posing and critical consciousness.

Racism is a global phenomenon affecting many of the world’s peoples across all continents including Europe and Australia, with experiences such as prejudice and discrimination well-documented (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), 2018). With the 2020 renewal of, and global interest in, USA’s Black Lives Matter movement, white Australian and European peoples have begun to become more cognizant of our dichotomous positioning as both ‘multicultural’ and highly racialised societies. Immigrants to Australia and Europe experience racisms through the systems of the dominant, neo-liberal, white, patriarchal, capitalist culture. These systems of Whiteness are invisible and ubiquitous, normative, and performative (Ball et al., 2022; Moreton-Robinson, 2015) and result in similar experiences of racisms for many individuals identified as not belonging to the white social. Although the targeted groups may differ, “race…as a technology of power” (Lentin, 2020, p. 82) and the “hierarchy of different races with White people (men) at the top” (Ball et al., 2022, p. 3) drives racisms across multiple facets of society in both the European Union and in the country now known as Australia.

The 2021 report from the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) provides an example of the similarity between experiences of racisms on the European and Australian continents. The experiences of racism in interactions with policing in Europe harms many non-white people, including Roma and people of African descent (Ball et al., 2022), with “discriminatory profiling by the police…a common reality” (FRA, 2018, p. 1). Racial profiling and targeted incarceration (in both adult and juvenile systems) are common experiences for Aboriginal Australian Peoples also. Changes to policy and systems at government levels have failed to demolish institutional/systemic racisms, address white privilege, or deliver substantive improvement to disparities in the wellbeing, life expectancy, and social opportunities afforded non-white peoples globally.

Experiences of racisms in pedagogies, curricula and policy continue to impact educational outcomes for many students of colour around the world, including Roma and Aboriginal Australian students (Ball, 2022; Moodie et al., 2019). The consequent “critical education gap” between Aboriginal peoples and other Australians is mirrored globally. The impact of a lack of cultural safety (Bin-Sallik, 2003) within classrooms on this “education gap” has garnered little attention in mainstream Australia, with student outcomes in education such as attendance, literacy and numeracy and year 12 completion remaining the most common measure of the impact of education on students (Burgess et al., 2019). These outcomes remain consistently unequal when compared to non-Aboriginal students, regardless of unceasing guidance from Aboriginal Peoples (Morrison et al., 2019) and decades of change to Australian federal and state policy and educational practice.

My PhD research is grounded in the need for non-Aboriginal Australian teachers to develop an understanding of the ongoing colonisation of the place now known as Australia, and the detrimental impact this continues to have on Aboriginal students, families, and communities. It seeks to explore how the concept of “racial literacy”, first posited in 2004 by British scholar France Winddance Twine and American scholar Lani Guinier, could provide a bridge for teachers to understand and address the euphemistically described “race relations” (Lentin, 2020) within Australian education. It draws on Decoloniality and Critical Whiteness Theory as frameworks to guide a critical qualitative research study in three phases.