The Power of a Global Citizenship Curriculum on College Students
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Abstract
With the proliferation of globalization in recent decades, it has become integral for learners to understand global issues and become responsible and active global citizens. Educational institutions have recognized this need and have made pedagogical innovations for global citizenship education. One community college in the Northeast region of the United States has created a global citizenship curriculum to become a new instrument for educational change the 21st century society is now calling for. The global curriculum developed by the community college addresses the neoliberal and critical facets of global citizenship. The neoliberal approach to global citizenship focuses on developing “global competencies” that enable students to become internationally mobile and readily employable in a variety of cultural and national contexts, and the critical approach stresses the need to provide opportunities for reflexive learning and critical thinking, allowing students to become responsible and active citizens. This curriculum strives to enable students to move freely throughout the world increasing transnational movement of knowledge and skills and linking global citizenship to global economic participation, while teaching them about social equality, justice, and freedom to instill individual responsibility to societal change through exposure to situations with different cultures and groups. By covering four themes (empathy, active listening, intercultural communication, and globalization) and employing faculty instruction, direct experience, and focused reflection, this curriculum has increased student knowledge, developed skills, clarified values, and advanced their capacity to contribute to their global communities. Student narratives from recent surveys of a pilot study revealed the power of this global citizenship education and how it has instilled global citizenship in their personal, academic, and professional lives.
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