Global Citizenship Globetrotters

April 24, 2025

Global citizenship education is piquing the interest of elite schools around the globe. As we begin to live in an increasingly globalized world, schools are working to make this a priority for students as they begin to approach large global issues. Through this new trend in education, schools are hoping to help students gain a better understanding of their place in the increasingly interconnected world we live in as well as become more aware of how everyone else fits in. This aims to create a sense of community among the people of the world where everyone has a unique place and role. It also aims to create solidarity in solving global issues, empowering students to feel as though they have a stake in world challenges. Furthermore, “it is a form of civic learning that involves students’ active participation in projects that address global issues of a social, political, economic, or environmental nature” (United Nations). Despite these definitions, there remains a lot of discourse around the true meaning of global citizenship, as it means many different things for different institutions around the world.

Students at the Everdeen school in Australia are encouraged throughout their education to think like global citizens and to engage in global citizenship education, which takes a particular form. This involved a variety of experiences both within the school’s curriculum and through extracurricular opportunities. Many of the interviewed students discuss the ways that they can connect with the world in a global sense. For example, Everdeen has a campus in China, which aims to support the globally connected nature of the school. This campus is located right outside of Beijing and caters to Everdeen students who can study abroad, as well as students from China. This works to support their mission of global citizenship, as students can live in China and learn more about the country while simultaneously increasing their social networks and capital through language and culture.

Many Everdeen students engage in global citizenship education through community service projects. One of the interviewed students discussed his experience volunteering in Papua New Guinea with the school. He got to travel there and help with different service projects. He discussed how this made him feel more connected with the culture and the people there that he worked and interacted with. This opportunity, only provided by elite schools like Everdeen, has given its students access to new global experiences as well as deepened cultural understandings. The same student also discussed his volunteer position as a tutor for a Sudanese student. He describes his perceived impact on that student’s academic experience: “It’s opened another door as to how, like, you can help them with their English in a way and try doing it beyond this level”. Through his experiences with Everdeen, engaging in global community service, the student has formed global connections and feels that he has made a global impact. Although that is very impactful for both students involved, it is important to assess how the perceived impact can differ from reality.

Global citizenship education, while seen as successful and valuable by some, has been widely critiqued by others. Scholars who have studied global citizenship education argue that it can be rooted in educational opportunities for students rather than focusing on emphasizing community and humanity (Howard, 2020). This goes along with the many patterns that researchers notice when studying elite institutions. Many elite institutions aim to educate their students in a traditional sense while also working to advance their students socially and economically. Following frameworks like global citizenship education allows elite institutions to promote their students and allows them to access exclusive global opportunities and networks. For students who live in an increasingly globalized world, it continues to become more important that they have global awareness and a sense of working as a collective to solve the world’s problems. As seen in the student example, there is a lot of emphasis placed on what the Everdeen student gets out of their global experiences rather than just focusing on their impact and global citizenship. This calls into question the effectiveness of global citizenship education as it is not completely clear, at least in the case of the Everdeen School, how well the goals of GCE are being achieved.