Exploring global citizenship development: from global, to local, to the self

Mason, Stephanie (2025) Exploring global citizenship development: from global, to local, to the self. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Global citizenship (GC) has long been promoted as an educational panacea for a plethora of global crises – from environmental degradation to poverty and war. While garnering popularity, GC has simultaneously evolved into a conceptually ambiguous and contentious concept from the perspectives of both advocates and critics. Further, global citizenship education’s (GCE) historical overemphasis on international mobility pedagogies is considered problematic because such programmes are cost prohibitive and findings from studies attempting to measure the efficacy of such programmes have been mixed. The current study sought to redress the GCE gap between educational aspirations and observed manifestations by investigating GC from the perspectives of diverse GC actors. Under an interpretivist lens, and via an exploratory sequential mixed-methods approach, this study uncovered critical methodological blind spots in prior GC research. The triangulation of quantitative and qualitative data from a scoping audit, survey questionnaire and life-history interviews, enabled the untangling of dominant (idealised and abstracted) conceptions of how GC ought to be from how it is actually embodied (in practice) through observable attitudes, values and behaviours (AVBs). The ‘Prevalence of Ambivalence’ theme that emerged from a reflexive thematic analysis (rTA) confirmed that it is problematic to assume that individuals who work in the field of GC identify as global citizens, embody GC or are even knowledgeable about it. By making such presumptions, I argue, previous studies have stripped research participants of their personal agency and exacerbated the GCE gap by conflating injunctive and descriptive norms. Contrast analysis of self-identifying and nonidentifying global citizen perspectives revealed that key GC actors are not necessarily practising what they are preaching in that not one interviewee appeared to (or claimed to) embody every dimension of GC currently promoted by international organisations (e.g., UNESCO, PISA and Oxfam).

The unbounded and longitudinal aspects of the life-history interviews additionally revealed that critical transformative experiences were mainly associated with what would appear to be seemingly mundane everyday interactions or occurrences. By illuminating successful, locally contexualised pathways to global engagement and global citizenship identification (GCID), which were not predicated upon international mobility experiences, this study has identified more readily accessible roadmaps to GC for educators than proffered by prior literature. Perhaps the most notable discovery this study highlights, however, is potential backlash effects of an ‘Enlightened’ GCID which confound the previously purported relationship between GC identification and embodiment. From this study, it appears that GCID is neither necessary nor sufficient to engender GC AVBs. Based on findings from this study, I argue that preoccupations with fostering global superordinate identities may be counterproductive. This study has provided evidence that GC should be conceptualised in terms of three empirically distinct domains of enactment: identification, embodiment and promotion. The aforementioned findings have significant implications for GC policymakers, researchers and practitioners as well as aspiring global citizens. There appears to exist the propensity for a global citizenship that emanates from self-interest rather than altruism and provides scope for essentially any individual to help make the world a better place in their own capacities and their own contexts.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Subjects: L Education > LB Theory and practice of education; L Education > LC Special aspects of education
• Colleges/Schools: College of Social Sciences > School of Education
• Supervisor's Name: Lido, Professor Catherine and Livingston, Professor Kay
• Date of Award: 2025
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2025-85177
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 11 Jun 2025 10:26
• Last Modified: 11 Jun 2025 10:28
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.85177
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/85177