Global citizenship and sustainable development as important issues that should be taught in formal education have been on an educational agenda for a long time. However, only recently have they gained unprecedented popularity internationally. It is enough to mention Maastricht Global Education Declaration (2002) and the Global Education Programme of the North-South Centre of the Council of Europe, the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014), or the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Sustainable Development Goals. These initiatives set a course for their local implementations and modifications in diverse national contexts. For Poland, as for EU countries, sustainable development and global citizenship education (GCE) became official educational components in the past decades.

Within the field of GCE, a widespread division into Global North and Global South replaced the stigmatising terms of “Third World”, “developing” and “developed countries”. Although more neutral, it fails like its predecessor in grasping the complexity of the postcolonial and post-cold war world. The binary oppositions of the North-South (and West-East) are unable to embrace the complex condition of the countries situated somewhere “in between” (Chimiak 2016) - not quite Global North, not quite Global South. As several authors argue (Kuleta-Hulboj 2020; Mayblin, Piekut, Valentine 2014; Starnawski 2015), this is the case of Poland. It used to be a former “Second World” country and foreign aid recipient, now - an ODA donor with a growing level of income, quality of life and a stable economy. Poland was one of few EU countries not affected by the 2008-2009 crisis and since 2020 has been facing the impact of COVID-19 pandemic with one of the best economic outlooks in Europe (Błoński et al. 2021). Recently, the country has experienced a significant rise of populist and nationalistic sentiments, in which postcolonial resentment is strongly manifested. Therefore, Poland can be an interesting case study of a semi-peripheral country’s educational response to the greatest challenges of the 21st century.

In the paper, we present the research results of the investigation of the Polish national curriculum (NC), introduced as a result of the 2017 education reform. The aim of the study is twofold: to re-construct discursive conceptualisations of global citizenship and sustainable development in the Polish NC, and to investigate if this curriculum creates the space and opportunities to raise global citizens. We examine whether the Polish NC prepares the young generations for global citizenship and a sustainable future. The Polish case can contribute to the debate on how national education systems position global citizenship and sustainable development.

The research questions are:

- How are global citizenship and sustainable development discursively constructed in the NC?

- How does the curriculum orient students and teachers towards a sustainable future?

- What challenges and opportunities for sustainable development and global citizenship does the NC exhibit in cognitive, attitudinal and behavioural domains?

- What is the possibility of raising global citizens while following the content of the NC?

The study is framed within a social constructivist theoretical framework, with a critical and social justice orientation. We understand and investigate global citizenship and sustainable development as sociocultural, discursive constructs having their own history, linked to various theoretical and ideological contexts, and promoting particular worldviews (see also Oxley, Morris 2013). Some of them may contribute to a more socially just world, while others may fail or even reinforce existing injustice. In our understanding of GCE, we draw on the work of critical and postcolonial scholars who point out the limitations of soft approaches to global education and global citizenship and promote the critical postcolonial ones (Andreotti 2011; Jefferess 2008; Swanson, Pashby 2016).

The emphasis of this article is on national curriculum documents. We employ Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to the national curriculum to investigate the presence (or lack) of global citizenship and sustainable development and how they are conceptualised. CDA is not a research method but a specific problem-oriented interdisciplinary approach to the study of language, discourse and communication (van Dijk 1995; Wodak 2013). In contrast to Discourse Analysis, it aims its attention on power relations, reproduced by institutional, political and media discourses (Mullet 2018) It is eclectic, both in terms of epistemological assumptions and theoretical models, and employs various methods and techniques, which are relevant and useful for education researchers. In our study, we use mainly qualitative content analysis, supported by the analysis of implicit assumptions, phrase choices, collocations, tone and discursive practices of exclusion/inclusion, in order to describe the discursive choices and to uncover the ideologies and identities in the Polish curriculum. We focus on secondary education (age 15-19) and select four curriculum areas for analysis - history, citizenship education, biology and geography - because, as other studies showed (e.g. Świdrowska, Tragarz 2017), they accommodate the most content and goals related to GCE and sustainable development. In coding the curriculum document, we draw on the studies of Cox (2017) and Kopińska (2017; 2018) and distinguish three domains of learning: cognitive, attitudinal and behavioural. Within them, several detailed categories are distinguished. This procedure has proved valid and useful in our previous research (Aleksiak, Kuleta-Hulboj 2020). It allows us to investigate the representations of global citizenship and sustainable future reproduced by national educational institutions.

CDA, informed by critical postcolonial global education, enables us to reconstruct GCE discourse(s) and helps to reveal underlying ideologies and their important sociocultural and educational results. We argue that the national curriculum focal point is situated within the patriotic and national discourse. In line with Kopińska (2020), we claim that the national community is intensively emphasised confining the presence of global citizenship discourses to the minimum. The discursive choices in the national curriculum let us identify the proposed orientation towards a sustainable future. Although the curriculum mentions sustainability and universal values in several parts, it lacks a broader and in-depth reflection on these issues. Therefore, this does not build a foundation for preparing students to face global challenges. Likewise, it fails to engage learners in global issues. This study shows that the curriculum discourse creates little possibilities for developing a complex understanding of global citizenship and sustainable development issues, and developing deep engagement in contributing to “a more just, peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable world” (UNESCO 2014: 11).

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