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Perpetuating student inequality? The discrepancy and disparity of global citizenship education in Chinese rural & urban schools

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Abstract

Global citizenship education (GCE) has been implemented in schools as an approach to address growing global issues and increase the internationalization of education. From critical discourse, however, the implementation of GCE seems to be thwarted by neoliberal practices that deepen societal inequality and gaps, and only benefit members of elite groups. This study aims to analyze teachers’ perceptions and the school-based concrete implementation of context-specific GCE in China, unveiling not only the co-existence of neoliberal and moral perspective in teachers’ conceptual framework, but the key role that teachers and schools play in the implementation. It argues that sampled teachers follow inclusive understandings of global citizenship, their definitional frameworks were profoundly shaped by the multiple interplays between global forces, official discourses, and moral tradition. Given that a central characteristic of GCE is working as an “axis” to group the cross-cutting themes or initiatives of global dimensions within a range of courses and across school ethos, extra-curricular activity and international program in particular. The discrepancies and disparities in GCE development seen between rural and urban schools extend education inequality from local to the global sphere, in which underprivileged students have heightened risks of being marginalized in the global world.

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Notes

  1. In 2001, the Ministry of Education formulated Elementary Education Curriculum Reform Summary (基础教育课程改革纲要), it established the three-level curriculum management system, including the national curriculum, local curriculum, and school-based curriculum.

  2. The teacher who is in charge of a class is named class sponsor or class administrator, class sponsors are responsible for students’ study and life in school.

  3. Education development has long been urban centered, and the gap of education quality between urban and rural areas has been extending over the years. This problem has become particularly severe in the last two decades because of a unique household registration (hukou) system.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the China Scholarship Council. The author would like to thank supervisors who provided valuable feedback on draft of this article, particularly grateful to Douglas Bourn, Massimiliano Tarozzi, Frances Hunt for their detailed and thoughtful suggestions and comments. The author wrote this draft at University College London when she studied there as a visiting researcher.

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  1. Faculty of Education, East China Normal University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

    Cuicui LI

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LI, C. Perpetuating student inequality? The discrepancy and disparity of global citizenship education in Chinese rural & urban schools. Asia Pacific Educ. Rev. 23, 389–401 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-021-09708-7

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