Teachers’ education in GCE: emerging issues in a comparative perspective

The report draws on a qualitative analysis of nine Global Citizenship Education teacher education programmes across four EU countries: Austria, Czech Republic, Ireland and Italy. It argues that the teacher education programmes examined present a transformational approach to GCE, where the concepts of critical thinking and self-reflection are perceived as the foundations towards action for a more just and sustainable world. The report begins by providing an overview of each national case study before moving on to consider the key thematic areas derived from the comparative analysis of data. In the first section, the report explores the question of how GCE is conceptualised as a framework for teacher education. Interdisciplinarity emerges as a key component of teacher education, where the aim of changing teachers’ perspectives through learner-centred dialogic pedagogies is of importance. In the second section, the report explores the teaching approaches employed in teacher education for global citizenship across value-based contexts. Here the importance of fostering teacher agency though values-based approaches appears pivotal to meaningful teacher education for GCE. In the final section, the report explores the contrasting cultures involved in teacher education programmes and considers how, whilst tensions between the content, methods and broader philosophical positions of actors may present a challenge, collaborative and cooperative approaches to teacher education offer important opportunities in this field. The report then considers how these conceptualisations might frame the political and potentially transformative aspects of sustainable development. In this conclusion, the integration of GCE is proposed as an interdisciplinary matter. GCE teacher education appears not only aa a vehicle for the development of skills but also as a process which may underpin attitudinal change. Learner-centred dialogical methodologies are perceived to offer a gateway for the introduction of GCE, across multiple thematic areas, into teachers’ classroom practice. Finally, the report considers practitioners’ belief in the potential of GCE teachers as participants in transformative modes of education.