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To these authors, global citizenship is an oxymoron promoted by the privileged of the Global North who bask in their Western superior- ity, yet inflict injustices ...
671198 editorial2016

JSIXXX10.1177/1028315316671198Journal of Studies in International EducationEditorial

Editorial

Journal of Studies in International Education 2017, Vol. 21(1) 3­–5 © 2016 European Association for International Education Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1028315316671198 journals.sagepub.com/home/jsi

Increasingly, universities seek to educate global citizens or globally competent graduates, and indeed to define exactly what these ideals look like. Is there evidence to support the educational policies, practices, and approaches to achieving this aim? This Special Issue of the Journal of Studies in International Education brings together a selection of research reports, reviews, and perspectives on this contested topic. Contributing authors discuss theoretical dimensions and practical approaches to the education of global citizens in higher education in different countries and regions. However, this is clearly both a complex topic and an emerging area of research. The theoretical and practical complexity of “educating global citizens” suggests there is room for significantly more research and scholarship in this area. The contributing authors to this Special Issue explore the ethical and collective underpinning of the concept of “the global citizen” and the “globally competent graduate” in higher education. Using a variety of theoretical frameworks, they discuss the importance of such issues as self-reflection, social responsibility, tolerance, engagement, the imagination, reflexivity, relationality, and critical thinking to global citizenship. These discussions are not only fascinating in and of themselves but are also relevant to bigger questions, such as “To what extent do social policies designed to create more inclusive communities, actually result in intolerance and silencing free speech?” (Appiah, 2006) and “Do university policies inadvertently diminish the opportunities for educators and students to engage in open intellectual discourse on different perspectives?” In a realpolitik argument, Jooste and Heleta (2016) highlight the injustices experienced by the Global South. To these authors, global citizenship is an oxymoron promoted by the privileged of the Global North who bask in their Western superiority, yet inflict injustices upon the Global South. Instead, these authors promote global competency, which for them is not a buzzword, as it speaks to skills and attributes that can be taught and measured. Challenging the North/South dichotomy, Aktas, Pitts, Richards, and Silova (2016) explain that different cultural contexts and power relations impact upon inequalities in both the North and the South. Shedding light on how the global citizen is conceptualized by a select group of higher education experts from around the world, Lilley, Barker, and Harris (2016) explain that a majority of their expert interviewees (22 out of 26) accepted the global citizen term as a way to describe the “ideal global graduate.” Furthermore, regardless of the preferred term for the ideal graduate, these experts all expressed a consistent set of descriptions and values. To Jooste and Heleta (2016), words matter; yet, Lilley et al. (2016) believe that ambiguity is inevitable, as global citizenship is a multi-layered

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fluid term that does not fit well with prescriptive descriptions. Nevertheless, universities and academics will adopt the essence of global citizenship in ways that align with their theoretical frameworks and institutional policies. Through a lens of social justice and equity, Aktas, et al. (2016) explore how global citizenship is translated into university learning. They conducted a survey of university websites investigating how universities translate global citizenship into their programs. Their results are discussed through the themes of international travel, language proficiency, learning outcomes and curriculum content, and engagement and service. In an attempt to interrogate the value of learning environments, Boni and Calabuig (2016) explore three different learning spaces to determine whether they fostered global citizenship capabilities. They explain that electives, an international development experience, and a student-led group all hold potential for developing different global citizen capabilities, namely, the narrative imagination, critical learning capability, and agency in a local and global context. Finally, Kahn and Agnew (2015) review global learning as a process. They highlight the importance of learning through diversity, relational understanding, the importance of disorientation and disagreement, critical self-reflection, the ability to navigate between the general and the particular, self- and collective responsibility, and the ability to engage and take action. The discourse similarities from the contributing authors appear to far outnumber the differences seen across the conceptual and practical perspectives. Moreover, it appears that global citizenship, global competency, global citizen learning, and global learning are overlapping terms with similar intentions. For practical reasons, the papers in this issue represent a limited range of views on the topic of global citizenship in higher education today. I urge other researchers to build on this and other work on the topic. Paradoxically, at the time of writing this editorial, contemporary global events are challenging the ethical cosmopolitan underpinning of the concept of the “global citizen” as presented in this volume. For example, the decision of the U.K. referendum that the United Kingdom should exit the European Union (popularly referred to as the “Brexit”), new and ongoing civil and sectarian wars, and continuing acts of terrorism, are antithetical to the ethical global citizenship sought by many. Will the humane aspiration and collective potential of global citizenship be diminished by political and societal change, before gaining more traction in the sector? Or will these issues galvanize individuals and institutions into more concerted action? How will the international educators of today respond to staff and students’ changing sense of global identity in the world in the context of these events? Although these questions remain unanswered here and deserve further investigation, the contributors to this volume give us much to consider on the compelling matter of global citizenship and the higher education enterprise around the world. Kathleen Lilley Editor

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References Aktas, F., Pitts, K., Richards, J., & Silova, I. (2016). Institutionalizing global citizenship: A critical analysis of higher education programs and curricula. Journal of Studies in International Education, 21, 65-80. Appiah, A. (2006). Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers. London, England: Penguin. Boni, A., & Calabuig, C. (2016). Education for global citizenship at universities: Potentialities of formal and informal learning spaces to foster cosmopolitanism. Journal of Studies in International Education, 21, 22-38. Jooste, N., & Heleta, S. (2016). Global citizenship versus globally competent graduates: A critical view from the South. Journal of Studies in International Education, 21, 39-51. Kahn, H., & Agnew, M. (2015). Global learning through difference: Considerations for teaching, learning, and the internationalization of higher education. Journal of Studies in International Education, 21, 52-64. Lilley, K., Barker, M., & Harris, N. (2016). The Global citizen conceptualized: Accommodating Ambiguity. Journal of Studies in International Education, 21, 6-21.