Visions of global citizenship: cosmopolitanism and internationalism in citizenship education policy in Australia

ABSTRACT

The advent of global citizenship agendas marks a transformation in citizenship education policy and practice internationally. However, research has revealed a highly diverse collection of visions and models for global citizenship. This article seeks to make two main contributions to the study of global citizenship in education. Empirically, it aims to identify the kind of global citizenship proposed in state-led Australian citizenship education policy for schools, using a national policy corpus spanning the last three decades. Theoretically, it intends to highlight the relevance of the sociology of citizenship, cosmopolitanism, and internationalism to refine our understanding of visions global citizenship in schooling. Comparing and contrasting ‘global’ and ‘international’ references in the corpus, the analysis reveals that different supra-national visions are associated with global and international lexica. We conclude by highlighting the implications of our analytical model and findings for future research on global citizenship education.

KEYWORDS:

• Global citizenship education
• cosmopolitanism
• internationalism
• policy
• nation-state

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

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Quentin Maire

Quentin Maire is a Research Fellow in the Centre for International Research on Education Systems at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia. His sociological research mainly focusses on international education, inequality and credentialing. He uses comparative methods and historical contextualisation to theorise the relationships between education systems and societies. His first bookCredential market: mass schooling, academic power and the International Baccalaureate Diploma will be published by Springer in 2021.