Europe and North America Regional GCED Network - Research Report

Global citizenship education (GCED), perhaps more than any other educational issue, is the result of conceptual, political, and even pedagogical negotiations. It follows non-linear processes of policy implementation, the contextual development of innovative educational practices, the circulation of information among key institutions, and the conceptual co-construction of GCED ideas through networks. GCED is shaped both through global policy and according to local needs, moving across geographic scales, through various systems, and according to the work of diverse actors. Studying GCED as a Social Network Due to these elements, GCED research requires the use of relational data. It is not sufficient to understand educational phenomena as isolated from social relations. This study addresses an important gap in GCED research by exploring how GCED is constructed and moves across networks of actors, including governments, NGOs, researchers, and educational institutions, among others. While in recent years, some research has explored the role of both offline and digital networks (Twitter in particular) in shaping educational policy, this is the first study to apply social network analysis to GCED educational policy and practice. Social network analysis (SNA) appears to be one of the most appropriate methods for analyzing the structural and functional effects of those phenomena, where social relationships prevail over organizational characteristics.