Global Citizenship Education At Canadian Provincial Levels

As a response to globalization,global citizenship education is increasingly seen as the goal of education.However,in Canada and countries around the world,the way in which global citizenship education is implemented in national public education has shown conflicting agendas and insufficient understandings.This study examines ten recently revised courses of politics,history,and economics in the social studies curricula in two Canadian provinces:Ontario and New Brunswick,to investigate the gaps between global citizenship education interpreted in Canada’s curriculum space and as an educational ideal.Conceptualizing global citizenship education as six learners’ attributes(informed,critically literate,socially connected,respectful of diversity,ethically responsible,and engaged)in three domains of learning(cognitive,socio-emotional,and behavioral),this study uses content analysis to analyze the specific learning outcomes in the curriculum documents.Findings suggest that both Ontario and New Brunswick are inclined to develop citizens that are knowledgeable about world events and global interdependence,critically reflect on power dynamics behind issues of inequality and injustice,and readily take ethical responsibilities.However,these students are rarely expected to take an active part in effective civic and social activities and less likely to have a sense of belonging to a common humanity.Rather,there is a focus on Canada’s internal diversity and national identity shaping.In New Brunswick,a disjuncture also lies in the detachment of developing students’economic skills from critical thinking ability and social-justice oriented responsibilities in the economic domain,which denotes inconsistency in curriculum development.This study analyzes potential reasons and provides suggestions for these detected gaps.This study complements investigations of the ideological macro-orientations in Canada’s implementation of global citizenship education by providing more detailed descriptions of the emphasis and de-emphasis of key concepts in global citizenship education,drawing on which the Canadian educational authorities can conduct revisions in curriculum development in order to better accommodate global citizenship education in the Canadian context.