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1. Introduction - What is Global Citizenship?
“I am often asked what can people do to become a global citizen? I reply that it begins in your own community” - Kofi Annan, Former United Nations Secretary-General
It is very common for people to believe that global citizens are those who travelled the world, and have the opportunity to see other places and learn other languages and cultures. While this is an important part of being a citizen of the world you first need to be a member of your own community. Let’s look at some definitions where the connection between local and global are very clear.
UNESCO defines Global Citizens as those people of all ages that assume active roles, both locally and globally, in building more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive and secure societies.
“A global citizen is someone who is aware of and understands the wider world – and their place in it. They take an active role in their community and work with others to make our planet more peaceful, sustainable and fairer.” (Oxfam)
In some contexts, the term citizenship can be problematic, as it could indicate you have an official affiliation to a place or a passport that shows you are a citizen of a certain country, which does not exist for the whole planet. In more recent years, OECD introduced the concept of Global Competence as "the ability to examine issues of local, global and cultural significance; understand and appreciate the perspectives and worldviews of others; engage in open, appropriate and effective interactions across cultures; and take action for collective well-being and sustainable development".
Education New Zealand Manapou ki te Ao (ENZ) has been developing a model for Global Citizenship that is informed and strengthened by Māori worldviews. Māori perspectives and practices can serve as a blueprint for global citizenship — enabling connection between peoples and places that is genuine, productive, and mutually fulfilling. To know your whakapapa is to know your place in the world and your connections to it and across it. Global citizenship is a consequence of our whakapapa, to people, place and planet. Global citizenship is a way to recognise shared responsibilities and reach shared goals across societies, culture, politics and economics.
Global Competence is a multidimensional construct that requires a combination of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values successfully applied to global issues or intercultural situations.
If we break this definition down, we can identify three distinctive components: Understanding the world we live in, intercultural competence and taking action for the common good.
- Understanding the world we live in requires that we first understand the local context in where we live, our own history, how our place is interconnected to other places, the history and the evolution of my community and those around the world.
- Intercultural competence is the ability to engage in open, effective and appropriate interaction across cultures. To be able to engage in that effective manner, we first need to develop self awareness about our own culture, our own perspectives and world view (see Understanding intercultural model in educational contexts).
- Taking action for the collective well being can be framed within the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs). These 17 goals were adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, providing a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.
International education is an excellent vehicle to develop global citizens in learning contexts. They help everyone involved have a broader view of the world and develop their intercultural competence. However, more work needs to be done around taking action for the collective wellbeing and intentional interventions need to be designed to achieve this goal. As explained in Enhancing the international student experience, intercultural learning does not happen purely by travelling and living in another culture. Institutions, teachers and international education professionals have a role to play in creating the right structure for international, and domestic, students to become global citizens.
2. How is your institution doing?
ENZ has been working on bringing global citizenship to the centre of international education. The ENZ vision is to ensure that Aotearoa New Zealand’s unique education is sought after, highly valued and will enhance New Zealand’s global reputation for leading new thinking and making contributions of consequence. ENZ’s four year business plan places Global Citizenship at the core of how we make authentic and legitimate invitations to international students to study with New Zealand. It highlights the importance of schools, universities, PTEs and other education institutions including strategies, courses, programmes and tools that help students develop as global citizens when studying here.
Global citizenship is also a way to foster relationships, partnerships and connections between and across institutions that promote best practices. It is important that New Zealand makes the best possible use of its international education expertise to improve educational outcomes and grow global connections.
There are many ways institutions can promote global citizenship. It is a life long effort which involves whole-of-institution engagement. Global citizenship and competence is not the result of a one off event, but rather a consequence of a well thought process of involving everything and everyone in the effort.
Some areas for consideration can be found below:
- Policy, strategy and vision: consider how your institution approaches diversity, inclusion, intercultural understanding and taking action for the common good. Is this part of your policies, strategy or vision? Does global citizenship have a mention in any of these documents? Setting the values of global citizenship as a core part of your goals should be a first and certain step.
- Curriculum and subject content: understanding issues affecting our local and global community, the interconnectedness of such issues and the role students can play in that context should be part of the curriculum. Ideally they should be discussed not only in subjects like history, geography and language but should be across the curriculum. There are some very useful ideas here.
- International (and intercultural) opportunities: how often do your students get exposed to differences? And how much reflection is encouraged? Both outbound and inbound international students bring a wealth of diversity and richness to the institutions. They get to see the world and make comparisons with their home communities. They are well placed to reflect on differences and similarities and be part of the change they would like to see in their world. You can see Working with the teaching profession for some ideas on how to tap into the diversity in your classrooms to help students develop intercultural skills such as empathy, critical thinking and appreciation for differences.
- Taking action: it is important to take action. Using the UNSDGs as a guide, you can embed projects in different subjects, create clubs and engage students in project-based learning around issues affecting their local communities.
- Professional development: an integral part of your institution's approach to promote global citizenship should be the professional development of your staff. How often do teachers and staff have the opportunity to immerse themselves in international and intercultural experiences? Do they have opportunities to develop skills to facilitate intercultural learning in your institution?
3. Learn more about how your institution is tracking
AFS Intercultural Programs developed this Global Competence Index for schools exploring some of the dimensions described above. The Index looks at twelve different elements that nurture global competence and helps you reflect on how your school meets these goals. Once you complete the questionnaire you will receive your school’s readiness profile, plus specific recommendations and resources to identify new opportunities in your own teaching, classroom and school-wide practices to advance your students’ global competence.
4. Working together for success
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
African proverb.
Supporting our students to become global citizens is not an easy task or one that we should be doing alone. Sustainable Development Goal #17 is about partnerships (mahi tahi) and the importance of working together and collaborating with others to achieve these goals. As the world is interconnected and the issues affecting us are complex, working together is our best chance in making a difference.
Partnerships should be embedded in core values. In a New Zealand context, these might include the following values that embody partnership:
- manaaki - kindness or the reciprocity of goodwill
- whanaunga - our connectedness or shared sense of humanity
- mahi tahi and kotahitanga - collective benefits and shared aspiration
- kaitiaki – your responsibilities as protectors and stewards of our intergenerational wellbeing
Collaboration can also come with its challenges. A collaboration is successful when institutions have:
Shared vision: when looking for partners we should look at those organisations, institutions or individuals who share our vision for the future. We need to explore some questions to feel comfortable with our partnership.
- What do these potential partners think of how education should be?
- What is their understanding of global citizenship and the core values of international education?
- What are their core values?
- what would they like to achieve partnering with us? Is this aligned with our expectations?
Mutual benefits: ensuring that there is something for everyone in the partnership is one of the basis of success. What is in it for me? will be a recurrent question keeping the relationship alive. Keep at the forefront the core values of mahi tahi and kotahitanga for collective benefits and shared aspiration.
Open communication and transparency: Long-term success requires honesty and transparency from all partners. That means maintaining open and frequent communication as well as personal interaction as often as possible. All partners should be transparent from the start about what they lack and what they can offer before deciding whether the partnership is a good idea. Transparency and open communication will also help you learn from the hiccups you will encounter along the way.
Ask yourself a few questions:
- What is my institution doing well and can therefore help others?
- What do we need?
- Who might be able to help us with our needs?
- Which organisation’s goals are aligned with ours?
- How can we all benefit from working together?
You could create a map of potential stakeholders and organisations with whom you can collaborate (See How to engage with stakeholders). Then start now! Reach out to others, ask for instructions, attend conferences and networking events where you can find like minded people and institutions. Most importantly, always keep an eye out for potential collaboration and partnerships.
Some inspiring partnerships
If you are ready to get started, but you are looking for some inspiration and a practical example of what a partnership to promote global citizenship could look like, we have collated a few initiatives for you to explore.
5. The Global Competence Certificate - A three-way collaboration
The partnership between ENZ, AFS Intercultural Programs and Massey University Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa to deliver the Global Competence Certificate (GCC) has been an exercise in innovation and business development. This partnership has recently been nominated as a finalist for the PIEoneer Awards in the Public/Private partnership of the Year.
ENZ was initially interested in the GCC as a way to help maintain interest in New Zealand while the borders were shut and ensure that students were still connecting across borders, having the opportunity to develop their global competence.
The AFS Global Competence Certificate is a blended online programme designed to help participants develop their global competence. The program is designed to achieve a specific set of learning learning objectives organised in four areas:
- Self Awareness
- Awareness of others
- Emotional Intelligence
- Building bridges
The programme consists of 20 modules including interactive videos, forums and quizzes that help participants become global citizens. Participants complete these modules on their own time and meet as a cohort online once a week to reflect on the learning.
Live sessions are facilitated by qualified trainers who were specially trained as a professional development opportunity.
The first step that ENZ took was to create their own learner space within the AFS-owned GCC platform, creating the NZGCC with Think New branding and buying programmes in bulk. They ran an original pilot where five schools; five learners per school in New Zealand could undertake the programme free of cost. The results for both teachers and students were very positive, proving significant development in terms of global competencies for both groups. To scale up the impact, ENZ partnered with Massey University to deliver the programme at cost. That meant that Massey would provide the facilitators for the synchronous sessions and could cater to groups from around the world.
Through testing and refinement, they identified the best way to leverage the GCC to deliver on the NZ International Education Strategy and ENZ’s strategic priorities – offering scholarships to strategic partners offshore and to NZ domestic learners, bringing them together in virtual classes. This was titled the matched model.
This partnership is an excellent example of three organisations who had the common goal of helping young people to develop global competencies. They benefited from working together and developed complementary strengths and resources.
However, this is just one of many examples of successful partnerships in promoting global citizenship. Have a look at some other initiatives below.
There are more examples below:
The partnership between the Centre of Asia Pacific Excellence and the University of Waikato allows for the creation of global competencies tools which can be applied and refined by classroom teachers. These tools aid teachers’ self knowledge and reflection and offer resources for considering the impact and development of significant global issues. This partnership provides a model for supporting teacher’s in-service professional development and offers an opportunity to promote the value and interests of the international education sector.
The University of Auckland’s Generation Change Maker introduces international learners to a programme that helps them respond to one of the defining issues of our age. Here international learners who are passionate about climate change are supported in a programme of work where they are working closely with like-minded locals. The Generation Change Maker training includes a weekend workshop and a tree-planting day. If new international learners are encouraged to participate in common good initiatives such as these they learn the benefits of participating in a meaningful activity that supports their social connections and sense of belonging.
Owairoa Primary School models a special way of including parents of primary-aged international learners. Sometimes because of cultural, linguistic, geographical and time differences, parents can become the hidden stakeholders in the sector. Owairoa Primary School brings parents to the fore and celebrates their contribution to their children’s international experience. The blog posts showcase a proactive programme that intentionally includes parents in the learning enterprise and reminds us that international education is very much an investment for more than one family member.
To support global citizenship within New Zealand schools, SIEBA launched a pilot programme in partnership with Education New Zealand Manapou ki te Ao, the Centres of Asia-Pacific Excellence and Value Learning. A network of 20 schools took part, receiving professional advice and support to create, introduce and embed global citizenship strategies and initiatives across their schools. Students and teachers involved had the opportunity to learn more about the meaning of being a global citizen and take a self assessment to determine their starting point in this journey. The schools involved will then draft Global Citizenship strategies linked to a range of programmes throughout the school, including learning content and teaching approaches, co-curricular programmes, professional learning and development, and student-led initiatives. They will examine how Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Te Ao Māori will underpin their global citizenship strategies. Schools will start local, this will be a multi-year journey, and the result will look different in every school.
The Wellington International Leadership Programme (WILP) is a free, self-paced, co-curricular programme aimed at enhancing any degree and making participants more globally aware. This interdisciplinary programme advances students’ ability to critically engage with global issues; presents creative, diverse and innovative approaches to global citizenship while enhancing their intercultural competence, leadership potential, and employability. It also creates opportunities for international experiences and global connections.
6. Conclusion
International education provides us with the best opportunity to help young people develop the skills, knowledge and values needed to become global citizens and make a difference in their communities. Global citizenship helps people better understand the world and engage in an open, effective and appropriate way across cultures.
Promoting global citizenship in your institutions includes curriculum development, intercultural opportunities, attuned policies and the participation of teacher educators. Such an important task can be best achieved with collaborating with others who have common goals, who are looking for mutual benefits and have complimentary skills and resources. In this topic you had the opportunity to assess where your institution stands, mapping your stakeholders and identifying opportunities for partnerships.
Initiatives such as the Global Competence Certificate, the SIEBA Global citizenship project and the ENZ/Future Learn collaboration are excellent examples of successful partnerships.
What are you waiting for? Get started!
7. References
Oxfam. (2023). What is global citizenshihp.
https://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/who-we-are/what-is-global-citizenship/
Preparing Youth for an Inclusive and Sustainable World: The OECD PISA global competence framework. OECD, 2018. Available at:
http://www.oecd.org/pisa/Handbook-PISA-2018-Global-Competence.pdf
Competences for Democratic Culture: Living together as equals in culturally diverse democratic societies. Council of Europe, 2016. Available at:
Deardorff, D. K. (Ed)(2009) The SAGE Handbook of Intercultural Competence. SAGE Publications.
https://www.inc.com/rhett-power/4-ways-to-build-a-successful-partnership.html
Global Citizenship Education: Preparing learners for the challenges of the twenty-first century. UNESCO, 2014. Available at:
