This paper is linked with a Phd research that seeks to realize a preliminary diagnosis concerning glocal citizenship education (CE) in Ticino (Switzerland). It is centered on lower middle school teachers’ perspectives and suggests some central elements that should be taken into account for further professional development in this field.

In fact in the general study plan for lower secondary schools, as it happens in other regional and national policy discourses around the world, suggests treating topics and skills related to local and global issues linked with CE. By doing so it explicitly refers to a glocal vision of CE. Moreover, as it is a part of the general plan of study, it involves that all lower secondary school teachersshould include glocal CE in their subject and/or at an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary level.

In the last decades, there has been growing attention on global CE as a way for innovating the curriculum worldwide (Gaudelli, 2013). This tendency started in Europe especially as an answer to face complex global issues such as migration, global warming, social justice. On the other side, Ticino citizens approved in 2017 a political initiative willing to re-install a civic education based on a notional approach to the subject. This element might have affected the legitimate space for professional development that should be given deepening the knowledge and skills around a critical notion of global citizenship (Swanson, 2011; Pashby, 2012; Tarozzi & Torres, 2017) named in this paper glocal. This point is mainly due to the fact that history teachers have been focused on the implementation of civic education rather than glocal CE.

The main objective is to identify teachers’ attitudes, possibilities, and difficulties around glocal CE as they are the main actors entitled to this change. Moreover, it seeks also to explore the way a group of lower secondary school teachers understands the concept of citizenship. In fact, the non-neutrality of the word citizenship has pedagogical and didactical implications that should be considered by teachers. As education is an essential element for adapting to the glocalized world we are living in (Robertson, 1992), there is a necessity  (Rogoff, 2009) for doing researches in this field in which the teachers are active participants and knowledge and practice producers. In fact, as the theorists in the field of critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970), I advocate for the crucial role of educators. Teachers embrace the paper of breaking symbolic violence and intellectual violence. This essential role is extremely linked with glocal CE. In fact, a curriculum that takes into account glocal CE is a curriculum fostering active participation in the classroom and skills such as critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity.

Moreover, the link between emotions and reason cannot be taken apart from the concept of citizenship. Affective citizenship highlights the need of extending the debate in CE through rethinking belonging and responsibility, important elements of citizenship and community. As Fortier (2010) explained: “The ‘affective subject’ becomes ‘affective citizen’ when its membership to the ‘community’ is contingent on personal feelings and acts that extend beyond the individual self [ . . . ] but which are also directed towards the community’” (p. 22). This point could be extended for glocal citizenship(s) education as there are elements that transcend the State and belong to the whole humankind community. Art-based methods help to highlight these theoretical elements with teachers.  As Maxine Greene (1995) arts have the distinctive power to open our imagination toward the unimagined and the uncertain. Thus, art-based methods served the explorative character of this research (Barone, Eisner, 2011).

This research is a case study (Stake, 1998) about how the proposal of implementing (world) CE in the curriculum of the Department of Education of Ticino is understood and applied by teachers in order to explore key elements that could help a possible professional development education program in glocal CE. The case study is chosen for its “critical character, meaning that the case allows to confirm, change, modify seeks a better comprehension of a concrete case that disposes of a variety of technics of data collection and analysis (Cebreiro, & Fernández, 2004). A progressive design is being used with different levels of analysis (macro, meso, and micro) in which feedback of the information collected in each stage exists (Latorre et al., 1996). The critical perspective could be highlighted by the fact that I as a researcher, or better said in the process of in-becoming a researcher, I have started this research firmly believing in the fact that education should never foster the development of patriotism or any thoughtless attachment to the nation. (Janowitz, 1983, p.45) Moreover, as Nogueira and Moreira, I also believe “that teachers should be trained or provided with specific knowledge and skills necessary for an effective teaching of civic education” (Nogueira & Moreira, 2012, p.1181) and I would extend this remark to glocal CE, referring to the different forms existing and relating them to the different concepts of citizenships. The case needed different methods of collecting data such as document analysis, semi-structured interviews to key informers (5) and to teachers (9). These teachers also participated in six discussion groups and two class observations for each teacher. Being a participative research, I was open to change the twists of the discussion groups depending on the elements raised in the previous discussion groups or in the interviews. These discussion groups allowed a deeper look into their own perspectives, needs, and difficulties in teaching glocal CE. I have been using art-based research approach, which helped to promote dialogue, and was useful in researching teacher identity (Leavy, 2009, p. 12). In this sense, the production of cartographies, which tend to look more like maps, have helped to gather relevant information to meet the objectives. It also serves to unveil some elements not taken into account while framing the draft of the theoretical framework and also to raise new questions and reflections that can be developed in further studies.

Being an in-becoming case study, I could adapt the design of the methodology while discovering the potential of art-based methods. Trying to break positivism in a research culture made mainly of positivist research was challenging and inspiring. If glocal citizenship education is more about the process of learning than the product of learning, maybe the purpose of this research is also to highlight that educational research in glocal citizenship education should also be working on finding ways to gather information while picturing relevant stakeholders’ perceptions (teachers, students, family, administration...) through a more participative educational research. Through art-based methods I saw aspects such as how the hidden curriculum (Vajargah, Choukadeh, 2006), teachers’ agency (Gaudelli, 2016), school spaces (Onsés, Hernandéz-Hernandéz 2017) play relevant roles in the advancement of glocal citizenship education. This research offered a space for reflection/ meta-analysis for exploring the possibilities given by their curriculum to treat glocal CE while working on transversal competences. During this research I became aware of the difficulties for teachers to make deep curricular changes in their educational plan due to a lack of time, lack of material, and a certain resistance from the educational community (Sadio, 2011). There is also a need for accompanying them in advancing civic education and to create synergies between teachers of several subjects. This study was also important for recognition of some teachers (such as the natural science, the visual art and the English teachers) and of the potential of their subjects for teaching glocal citizenship education. It can also be said that for future teacher professional development blending theory with practice could be worth worthwhile. Art-based technics as cartographies help put theory into practice and foster meta-analysis required for teaching glocal citizenship education at a middle school level (Hernandéz-Hernandéz, Sancho-Gil,& Domingo-Coscollola, 2018).

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