Cultivating Global Citizens: Global Citizenship Education in a Moment of Neoliberal Globalization

Global Citizenship is a popular ideology that underpins education initiatives in formal, informal, and non-formal settings around the world. Based on concepts such as empathy, sustainability, social responsibility, and cross-cultural understanding, global citizenship education (GCED) is widely criticized for failing to offer a critical pedagogical framework that encourages the examination of political and economic global power structures. This paper identifies the relationship between GCED initiatives and anxiety regarding neoliberal globalization. Based on a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of GCED, including the examination of UNESCO’s Education 2030 Agenda and Framework for Action, this paper suggests that a there is a critical political economy deficit not only in practices of GCED, but also in the foundational policy’s behind such initiatives.