Global citizens or global workers? Comparing university programmes for global citizenship education in Japan and the UK

Abstract

The implementation of global citizenship programmes at universities has been taking place against a backdrop of growing internationalisation and marketisation in higher education, leading some to conclude that universities are cultivating global workers rather than global citizens. This small-scale exploratory study aimed to investigate these claims through the comparison of global citizenship education (GCE) programmes in two contrasting contexts – the UK and Japan. Through a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis, our findings suggest that the universities in both the UK and Japanese contexts demonstrate examples of adaptation and localisation of GCE to fit with institutional commitments, and both universities have significant elements of employability agendas infused into their programmes. We argue that while different in many respects, the two programmes both demonstrate an adaptation of GCE to fit within broader internationalisation strategies aimed at maximising global competitiveness and an alignment with the neoliberal trends shaping the global higher education sector.     

Educating global citizens: a good ‘idea’ or an organisational practice?

Higher education emphasises training and skills for employment, yet while the ‘idea’ of educating global citizens appears in university discourse, there is limited evidence demonstrating how the ‘idea’ of the global citizen translates into practice. Recent research emphasises a desire for graduates to be local and global citizens with ethical and critical capacities for global workforce preparedness. The purpose of this paper is to explore the university responsibility for translating the ‘idea’ of the ethical thinking global citizen into practice. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with higher education experts (n?=?26). The interpretive research is discussed through the themes: Constructing the global citizen, Enacting the global citizen, Legitimating the global citizen and The sidelining context (italics used to distinguish research themes in text). The paper contributes to higher education discourse on a contested and topical issue.     

Unemployment in South Africa on the rise: Are schools and universities to blame?

Abstract

Some critics have placed the blame for the rise in unemployment in South Africa at the doorstep of schools and universities since they are the initial formal education providers. This article argues that the notion that initial formal education should prepare the youth for the job market overlooks the core business of schools and universities, and the fact that the job market is not static. The article contends that schools and universities are there to prepare learners for life in all its spheres, through the development of literacy, numeracy and critical thinking skills. It attempts to put into perspective the breadth and depth of initial formal education as a foundation for life in its entirety, not just for labour. It argues that the said skills enable the youth to access the wealth of knowledge locked up in texts that attempt to explain the wide spectrum of human experience and possibilities. These skills are taught within broad contexts of specific study fields that open job and service provision opportunities in the labour market. The article maintains that in cases where initial education institutions had adequate resources to accomplish their role, South African education has earned international recognition and its graduates have accessed job markets both in South Africa and internationally. It further identifies possible causes of the perceived current high rate of unemployment among the youth of South Africa, for example, the economic climate of the country and the legacy of inequalities in educational provisioning among others.

The article concludes that the popular criticism that universities operate as ivory towers has long become a cliché, since universities, apart from the conventional academic and professional qualification programmes they offer, also provide a variety of career-specific short programmes for people already in employment.     

Students’ use of power in the classroom: An investigation of student power,teacher power,and teacher immediacy

The purposes of this study were to examine: (1) students’ use of power to gain compliance from instructors, (2) the association between students’ use of power and their instructors’ power, and (3) students’ use of power and the nonverbal immediacy of the instructor. The results revealed that even though students did not feel they had a great amount of influence with their instructors, they used a variety of behavior alteration techniques (BATs) to gain compliance from them. Specifically, students reported using prosocial strategies most frequently and antisocial techniques least frequently. The results also revealed a positive association between students’ overall sense of power and their perception of their teachers’ power. Instructors’ use of reward power was also related to students’ use of prosocial BATs. Conversely, instructors’ use of coercive power was associated with students’ antisocial BATs. Finally, students tended to use expert power more with nonverbally immediate teachers than nonimmediate teachers. Students’ use of BATs did not depend upon the nonverbal immediacy of the instructor. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.     

Spatial and financial fixes and the global financial crisis: does labour have the knowledge and power to meet the challenge?

Five years after the global financial crisis, and trillions of dollars in stimulus spending later, the crisis not only remains unresolved, but risks entering a new deeper phase in southern Europe. The global turbulence, although experienced with differing degrees of intensity and dislocation around the world, manifests as high unemployment, industrial slow-down, extensive austerity measures and a range of health and financial pressures passed on to working and unemployed people. One response by governments has been a renewed emphasis on ‘skill’ as a means to work through the crisis and reposition the national economy for a post-crisis world. This paper questions this emphasis suggesting that if skill is the answer then the wrong question is being asked. The concept of ‘fixes’ is used to examine changes in production and work, before discussing the limitations of organized labour’s response to the crisis.

The crisis poses questions to the labour movement about its understanding of the changes taking place in the economy, and therefore work, and the alternatives it could be advocating for new less crisis-prone ways of governing the production of goods and services, and the education that might support that.     

The International Baccalaureate and a framework for class consciousness: the potential outcomes of a ‘class-for-itself’

The International Baccalaureate (IB) examination system in early 2010 was on offer in 2700 schools in 139 countries. Since 1999, the Geneva-registered IB has created a platform for image consolidation, product standardization, and technological linkage. Out of this has emerged a globally branded ‘IB World’, educating the ‘IB Learner’, using an outcomes-based ‘IB Learner Profile’, and ‘IB Community Themes’. It is soon to be aligned within an ‘IB Association’. This creates a potential framework for class consciousness. The ‘IB Learner’, forming a ‘class-in-itself’, might form a self-conscious social grouping, a ‘class-for-itself’. This paper explores possible outcomes, within the context of two ‘agendas’. The ‘agenda for global peace’ desires an irenic class, tolerant and culturally aware. Within the context of an ‘agenda for global business’ a more inner-directed class might appear, sympathetic to globalization and the needs of Capital. Alternatively, a ‘third way’ could appear; a class who is business-oriented but socially-responsible.     

Academics and practitioners: Partners in generating knowledge or citizens of two different worlds?

The research reported in this paper explores aspects of the relationship between academics and practitioners in the context of a professional development programme. It is illustrated by qualitative data from a case study of university teachers’ and secondary teachers’ experiences and perceptions of a university-led in-service training course in Greece. Three antithetical pairs: theory versus practice, propositional versus procedural and knowledge producers versus knowledge translators are used heuristically to guide data analysis and presentation, seen as constituting a continuum between two poles. It is indicated that rather than focusing on the ‘gap’ between academics and practitioners, the discussion should be about ‘space’ between the two groups, and that both should inhabit this space and work mutually its boundaries and its purpose, so that a vital partnership will emerge, which in turn can assist university-provided in-service training.     

Re/producing the global middle class: International Baccalaureate alumni at ‘world-class’ universities in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

This research investigated educational pathways into a Global Middle Class characterised by professional or managerial careers and cosmopolitan sensibilities. The focus was International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) alumni with upper-middle-class backgrounds at ‘world-class’ universities in Hong Kong. The first objective was to investigate if and how the education of IBDP alumni at Hong Kong universities shapes self-perceptions of cosmopolitan sensibilities, university experiences, and economic futures. The second objective was to investigate how the IBDP and Hong Kong universities offer an educational pathway for the existing Global Middle Class to reproduce their social position and for local families to enter the Global Middle Class. Interview findings illuminated how cosmopolitan sensibilities meant that the students may be well-positioned for careers and lifestyles of the Global Middle Class. Nevertheless, there were paradoxes of cosmopolitan sensibilities as the students perceived a lack of belonging to their universities and a disconnection with the local society.     

PhD crisis in the Global South: Oversupply or mismanagement of talent?

Rising unemployment rates among PhDs gave relevance to a crisis narrative revolving around the assumed oversupply of doctorate holders. The discourse, which originated in established systems of higher education two decades ago, has not been duly tested in the Global South. Taking Tunisia as a case in point, this article probes the validity of the association between high unemployment rates and the oversupply narrative to answer the question of whether Tunisia actually trains more PhDs than necessary. Using quantitative data from national and supranational databases, the state of affair in Tunisia is put into perspective with some neighbouring and OECD countries along four axes: stock and flow of PhDs, student experience, qualification of academic staff and transition to employment. Overall, the paper's main finding discredits the oversupply claim as Tunisia trails in a number of respects but calls for upgrading the static and rather obsolete doctoral training system. Doctorate holders' unemployment is mainly rooted in structural economic and bureaucratic deficiencies as well as a traditional occupational structure that fails to grasp PhDs outside academia. A more exhaustive policy mix is required to streamline the management of doctoral output and address the signs of a degrading research potential.     

Do ‘global citizens’ need the parochial cultural other? Discourse of immersion in study abroad and learning-by-doing

The discourse of immersion is prevalent but little analysed in the field of study abroad. Linked generally to learning-by-doing, this discourse has significance for ‘intercultural education’. Based on text analyses of three guidebooks on study abroad, this article suggests four effects of the discourse of immersion: It justifies study abroad as different from, if not better than, classroom learning and tourism. It emphasises the difference between students’ home and host cultures and constructs each society as internally homogeneous. It constructs study-abroad students’ home societies as globalised and their host societies as immobile and parochial, creating a hierarchy when globalisation is valorized. Finally, it exoticises the learning-by-doing ‘teachers’ – the host people – by portraying them as parochial ‘cultural others’. This article suggests an uneven process where the call for production of ‘global citizens’ through study abroad constructs host societies as parochial and risks reproducing a colonialist hierarchy of exoticism through intercultural learning-by-doing.     

Planning,plumbing, or posturing? Explaining the weakness of human resource development structures and policies in South Africa

In South Africa, a national peak structure, the Human Resource Development Council, led by the Deputy President and consisting of key Cabinet Ministers, senior leaders from organised labour and business, community representatives, professional bodies and experts from research and higher education, was established to enable high-level coordination at a strategic level. There is little evidence of achievements of this Council and its associated human resource development strategy. This paper suggests that human resource development strategies in South Africa have been more about posturing to be seen to be doing something, than actually planning the development of the skills of the nation, with one brief period when there was a focus on ‘plumbing’ – or dealing with specifically targeted ‘blockages’ in the skills ‘pipeline’. The underlying problem, we suggest, lies in the very notion of national human resource development, which seems on the one hand to be too broad and unwieldy a concept to be useful to governments; on the other hand, it seems to carry too much of the weight of economic development. These conceptual weaknesses, as well as bureaucratic weaknesses in South Africa, explain the poorly conceptualised structures and processes.     

Individual Development Plans in the Swedish Comprehensive School: Supporting High Quality Learning and Equity,or Rote Learning and Social Reproduction?

In Swedish compulsory school, individual development plans (IDPs) are mandatory for all students up to 6th grade. The purpose is to summarize and facilitate pupils’ learning and tune instruction to national standards. In this study, 233 IDPs drawn up for 5th grade pupils were analyzed with focus on qualities that have been found to impact students’ learning and learner identities. The results show that the IDPs rarely display the qualities that would make them effective as tools for enhancing students’ learning, and that there is a gender difference in the quality of the documents, as well as differences regarding the pupils’ academic background.     

International education as soft power? The contributions and challenges of Canadian foreign policy to the internationalization of higher education

This paper explores the role of the Canadian federal government in two foreign policy areas: overseas development assistance and international cultural relations by providing a brief history of the federal government’s engagement in both policy areas and highlighting the contributions and challenges of Canadian foreign policy to the internationalization of Canadian higher education. More broadly, the paper explores the unique characteristics of the Canadian federal government’s role in higher education policy making, and in particular, its relations with academics and the university community. Ironically in a world increasingly characterized by greater international education flows, in Canada, there has been a narrowing of vision, a focus on more short rather than long term objectives and a limited engagement of dialogue between academics and the government to promote both development assistance and international education as Canada’s soft power.     

Equitable partnerships for mutual learning or perpetuator of North–South power imbalances? Ireland–South Africa school links

This study examines how various components of a school-linking programme between Ireland and South Africa either support Development Education’s goal of sustainable, equitable partnerships that enable mutual learning between Northern and Southern countries or, instead, promote power imbalances that reify stereotypic images of weak, needy Southerners being cared for by powerful, benevolent Northerners. Ethnographic data from schools in both sites suggest that divergent assumptions about and priorities for Development Education in Ireland and South Africa, disproportionate exchange visits, socio-economic differences and an ‘inward’ South African focus versus a ‘global’ Irish focus set the stage for power imbalances within the linking programme. Recommendations for a conjointly conducted revision of the agenda for school-linking programmes are made. These centre on helping learners understand how issues of power and power imbalance function at the local, national and global levels.     

Privatising form or function? Equity,outcomes and influence in American charter schools

The American experiment with charter schools advanced on dual impulses of increasing opportunities for disadvantaged students and unleashing market competition. While critics see these independently managed schools as a form of privatisation, proponents contend that they are public schools because of funding and accountability arrangements and potential benefits, and believe that the economic logic around these schools will produce equitable educational opportunities. This analysis considers how charters are or are not instances of privatisation in education, showing that the marketised environment they are intended to nurture serves as a route for profit-seeking strategies. In reviewing the research on charter school organisational behaviour and outcomes in marketised environments, I find evidence of de facto privatisation in function if not in form. As charter schools often act like profit-seeking entities, but fail to achieve expected academic and equity outcomes, the concluding discussion considers how these schools are placed between conflicting goals, and serve as entry points for private organisations seeking to penetrate the publicly funded education sector. I conclude that perhaps their most important role is in serving as a vehicle for privatising public policy—diminishing the public while enhancing the position and influence of private interests and organisations in education policymaking.     

Doing men's work?: discipline,power and the primary school in Taiwan

This article examines the masculinization of discipline and its interplay with power in the primary school through an exploration of teachers' gender and disciplinary work and roles by drawing on data from an ethnographic study conducted at a primary school in Taiwan. The research findings suggest that discipline was men's work due to women distancing themselves from discipline, the physical advantages of men and masculinity, and parental expectations. However, negative feelings and pressure towards disciplining were also revealed by men. This research evidence also indicates women were, or could be, as tough disciplinarians as men. More importantly, the masculinization of disciplining work and roles was linked to male domination in power. The teacher workplace culture may help to explain discipline as men's work and power as gendered.