Conference Agenda

The symposium provides a forum for the presentation and discussion of current perspectives on global education research (Scheunpflug, 2021) from a variety of international backgrounds. In a world characterised by numerous inequalities, the European definition of global education (Dublin Declaration, 2022) offers significant themes for consideration, including decoloniality, peace education, human rights education, religious and moral education, intercultural education, antiracist education, and the development of education systems that are more sustainable, resilient, and equitable. The overarching questions of the symposium on global education and learning are: What are the complexities in acting on knowledge of global education and learning? In what ways schools, teachers and teacher students make sense of the intertwined complexities related to social and sustainabality dilemmas? How do they find ways to use the knowledge and act on?

The symposium draws from research in three different European countries and provides novel insights into current challenges to global social justice and to discourses on the role of education in preparing new generations of citizens who are connected to the world around them with respect to each other and the living planet. The three presentations demonstrate how schools and teachers in Finland, Germany, and Poland search for approaches to overcome the global and local injustices and to find ways to respond to social and sustainability related dilemmas they face in work. The complexities are such that teachers may not have been prepared for in their initial or continuing teacher education (Kuusisto, et al., 2025; Layne, et. al, 2025).

The three studies have used qualitative and philosophical approaches with empirical data. They show that integration of global education into established educational frameworks remains a conspicuous task. The results indicate that schools and teachers across contexts experience a sense of overwhelmedness in relation to the intricacies of global social justice, which consequently hinders their ability to implement these concepts and respond to the complexities effectively. Teacher students’ beliefs on global social change suggest that knowledge is to be accompanied with reflections and actions (Timm, Kaukko, & Scheunpflug, 2023).

Knowing of global climate change and shifting global order which increase global injustice requires schools, teachers and teacher education to act on. For this, research with schools, teachers and teacher education is to identify ways that support the acting on and to share findings with practitioners in schools. One key seems to enhance the collaborative agency of all, including teacher educators, teachers and students (Piipponen, 2025).

The symposium provides a valuable opportunity to discuss the strategies for bridging the identified gap between ideals for global citizenship education and the existing social resistance (Aleksiak, Kuleta-Hulboj, & Zielińska, 2023) in the non-ideal world (Kasa, 2025). There is a need for shifting attention to (in)equality, (in)justice and (un)sustainability in initial and continuos teacher education through critical human rights education and global citizenship education, while interacting with social complexities, structures and powers that may hinder collaborative agency.

Global citizenship education in Finland transgresses the curriculum (Finnish National Agency for Education, 2014), for instance, by emphasising eco-social understanding, sustainability, interculturality, equality, democracy and human rights (Kasa et al., 2023). However, studies indicate that the current state of global education in Finland is implicit and fragmented in teacher education (Kasa, 2025) and basic education. This is manifested by irregular pre-service and in-service professional development opportunities (Rajala et al., 2022). Accordingly, the discrepancy between policy and practice is evident. Recent research has explored possibilities to overcome persistent challenges. In this paper, we focus especially on the implementation of human rights education (HRE) in teacher education and whole school approaches to sustainability. Our data draws on a recent PhD (Kasa, 2025) and a postdoctoral project. Kasa’s PhD analysed student teachers’ views (n=300) on the realisation of democratic and human rights education, as well as the past 50 years of project-based development of equality and human rights in teacher education, utilising law and policy documents. Piipponen’s postdoctoral research investigates the implementation of whole school approaches to sustainability (Holst, 2023) by utilising qualitative multi-method research: through participatory ethnography and semi-structured interviews, it analyses, for instance, how leadership and teachers’ collaborative learning contribute to the realisation of sustainability in schools. Based on our research, results indicate the following possibilities to overcome the persistent challenges concerning the implementation of global citizenship education: a dynamic approach to interculturality (Piipponen, 2025), teachers’ collaborative learning, and responsive and participatory leadership. Concerning critical HRE and global citizenship education, explicit teacher education is required, and attention to (in)equality and injustice (Kasa, 2025) is important to be able to intervene in persistent injustices.

Finnish National Agency for Education [FNAE]. (2014). National core curriculum for basic education. Finnish National Agency for Education. Holst, J. (2023). Towards coherence on sustainability in education: a systematic review of Whole Institution Approaches. Sustainability Science, 18(2), 1015–1030. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-022-01226-8 Kasa, T., Karilainen, L., Rajala, A., Cantell, H., & Kallioniemi, A. (2023). Finnish UNESCO school educators’ understanding of global citizenship education: Analysis through typologies, ecosocial understanding, and human rights. Prospects: Quarterly Review of Comparative Education (UNESCO), 53(3-4), 459-476. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-021-09597-z Kasa, T. (2025). Unveiling Injustices: Revisiting Human Rights Education’s Legal, Political and Moral Ideals in a Nonideal World. Dissertationes Universitatis Helsingiensis 5/2025. Piipponen, O. (2025). Resisting neoliberal influences through a dynamic approach to critical intercultural education. In F. Dervin (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Critical Interculturality in Communication and Education. Routledge. Rajala, A., Tasajärvi, A., Holmström, C., & Cantell, H. (2022). Transformer 2030 Tulevaisuuden tekijät: Kestävän tulevaisuuden edistäminen konkreettien utopioiden pedagogiikan avulla. Kasvatus & Aika, 16(3). https://doi.org/10.33350/ka.111486

The paper begins by asking how teachers perceive their responsibility with regard to global social justice towards both individuals and society as a whole (Kuhlmann & Drerup, 2023). It presents the implicit orientations of (prospective) teachers regarding their professional contribution to global social justice. Based on empirical findings, the paper specifies challenges for their professional activities and formulates perspectives for initial and continuing teacher training. To answer this question, two studies are brought together in which the action-guiding orientations were reconstructed a) in relation to teaching global (complex) topics (Taube, 2023) and b) in relation to the cultural dimensions of their professional actions (Timm, 2021). For these studies, a) 17 narrative interviews with teachers and b) 32 group discussions with prospective teachers were conducted and interpreted documentarily (Bohnsack, 2010), before being condensed into a typology. These two typologies were then interrelated and subjected to further abduction to develop a four-part typology entitled ‘Dealing with social complexity’. The results show that only one of the four ideal types acts in response to the complexity of global social justice issues. The other three ideal types tend to act in a counterproductive manner either due to a rare reference to civic purposes (as opposed to pedagogical and instrumental purposes, as discussed by Kuusisto et al., 2025) or due to a superficial or purely theoretical engagement with relevant topics such as diversity (as discussed by Rissanen et al., 2023). Responsible action action in support of global social justice can be impeded by pedagogical principles, such as difficult access to the general social dimension of professional activity. However, elements of teacher training and continuing professional development can be identified that encourage professional action in support of global social justice, such as self-reflection on one’s position and an emphasis on teaching values. They are discussed against the backdrop of the current state of research.

Bohnsack, R. (2010). Documentary method and group discussions. In R. Bohnsack, N. Pfaff, & W. Weller (Hrsg.), Qualitative analysis and documentary method in international educational research (S. 99–124). Barbara Budrich. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-317339 Kuhlmann, N., & Drerup, J. (2023). Pädagogische Verantwortung revisited: Neueinsätze zur Bestimmung einer pädagogischen Leitkategorie. Eine Einleitung. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 69(1), 1–5. Kuusisto, E., Rissanen, I., Timm, S., & Kaukko, M. (2025). Civic purposes in teaching: A study among Finnish and German student teachers. European educational research journal, 0(0), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/14749041251359342 Rissanen, I., Kuusisto, E., Timm, S., & Kaukko, M. (2023). Diversity beliefs are associated with orientations to teaching for diversity and social justice: A study among German and Finnish student teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 123, 103996. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2022.103996 Taube, D. (2023). Complexity as a challenge in teaching sustainable development issues: an exploration of teachers’ beliefs. Environmental Education Research, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2023.2255393 Timm, S. (2021). Kulturelle Dimensionen des professionellen Handelns – eine empirische Rekonstruktion der Orientierungen von Lehramtsstudierenden. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, 24(1), 67–89. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11618-021-00990-0

This paper draws on findings from two qualitative studies conducted in Poland in 2022 and in 2024–2025 with in-service teachers and teacher educators to explore why global learning is recognised as important, yet remains difficult to enact in educational practice. The first study examined how in-service teachers in Poland approach Global Citizenship Education (GCE) under unfavourable socio-political conditions. Despite contextual obstacles and anticipated resistance, participants continue to engage with GCE, driven by strong inner motivation and a sense of mission. They employ a range of deliberate and implicit strategies to introduce controversial global issues into their teaching, often “smuggling” GCE content through practices that combine missionary commitment with guerrilla-like tactics. The second study shifted the focus to teacher education and investigated structural enablers and barriers to integrating GCE and Education for Sustainable Development within initial teacher education in Poland. It highlighted institutional, curricular, and policy-level factors shaping what teacher educators are able to do in practice. Taken together, this paper illuminates how individual agency, institutional constraints, and broader socio-political contexts interact to sustain the gap between what educators know about global learning and what they are able (or allowed) to do. It also explores the strategies they employ to include GCE and ESD into their teaching.

Aleksiak, D. & Kuleta-Hulboj, M. (2020) A policy at a standstill: A critical analysis of global education in the Polish national curriculum. Policy & Practice, 31, 32-54. Aleksiak, D., Kuleta-Hulboj, M., & Zielińska, A. (2023). Guerrillas or missionaries? Teachers addressing controversial topics of global citizenship education under unfavourable conditions. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2023.2283501 Hodorovská M., Rankovová K. (2024). Reproducing hierarchisation and depoliticisation: exploring discursive micro-processes in global education. Critical Studies in Education, 65(2). Kuleta-Hulboj M. (2020). Critical and Postcolonial Perspectives on Global Education: The Case of Poland. Journal of Social Science Education, 19(4). Kuleta-Hulboj, M., Aleksiak, D. (2022). Looking for a Better Future? Reconstruction of Global Citizenship and Sustainable Development in Polish National Curriculum. In Öztürk, M. (ed.) Educational Response, Inclusion and Empowerment for SDGs in Emerging Economies. Sustainable Development Goals Series. Springer.