GCE Conception

Global Citizenship Education (GCE) has received increasing attention as a means of supporting children and young people in developing their knowledge and understanding of multiple global issues (Bourn, 2015; Fricke & Gathercole, 2015). Despite this increasing prominence, it is apparent that GCE remains a highly contested notion (Marshall, 2005; Hartung, 2017; Jooste & Heleta, 2017). The report draws on an analysis of nine Global Citizenship Education teacher education programmes across four EU countries: Austria, Czech Republic, Ireland and Italy. The methodology adopted is a multiple-site case study design (Yin, 2014), using ethnography as main method. The research employed a qualitative framework, seeking a description of practices and meaning making to behavioural patterns. Within each country, the research focused on an analysis of two typologies of settings: a) a training course for in-service primary school teachers organized by the project partner in the framework of the project, b) a training course organized by a different organization on themes related to Global Citizenship Education. The selection of the second setting was based on extreme case sampling.