This work forms part of a broader research project entitled Researching new socio-educational scenarios for the construction of global citizenship in the 21st century (R+D+i project PID2020-114478RB-C21 financed by MCIN/AEI /10.13039/501100011033). The objective of the project is to analyse the development of global citizenship among young people aged 12 to 16 years old through socio-educational experiences in formal and non-formal settings. 

This paper presents the results of the first phase of the research project aimed at mapping Global Citizenship Educational (GCE) experiences in formal education in the autonomous community of Cantabria, in the North of Spain. 

The development of the global dimension in educational processes that promote citizenship is a central element of 21st century education given that our current globalised societies have expanded our experience of citizenship from local contexts to more global ones. This change has made us more aware that we are interdependent and eco-dependent beings, something that should be a central focus of formal educational processes as highlighted by organisations such as GENE: Global Education Network Europe (2020) or ANGEL: Academic Network on Global Education and Learning (2021). At a national level current education reform (LOMLOE, 2020) raise, on the one hand, the need to work towards a more sustainable and fairer world through the promotion of the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda at all levels of compulsory education and, on the other hand, the urgent need to develop the global dimension of citizenship based on the special characteristics of each educational community, as already indicated by UNESCO (2015 and 2018). At a regional level, the current Cantabrian Education Strategy for Development and Social Transformation recognises the need to create networks between formal and non-formal education in order to achieve an active learning process aimed at generating a critical awareness of global justice issues and their relationship to our way of life (Gobierno de Cantabria, 2018).

The scientific literature on Global Education and Global Citizenship Education has identified several perspectives ranging from the most liberal, humanistic to the most critical (Oxley and Morris, 2013; Shultz, 2007, VanderDussen, 2018; Bourn, 2014). This is what Andreoti (2006) called soft versus critical GCE in an attempt to highlight the need to base this field on a critical pedagogy that focuses on inequality and global social injustice rather than on poverty and the lack of solidarity and aid between countries or regions. In short, it relates to how power functions in our globalised societies and challenges relations between countries of the global north and south. It is an approach that focuses on the question of how globalisation affects our lives (Calvo 2017). 

Previous research (see Engel, 2014; Calvo, 2020; Blackmore, 2016) has emphasised the need for further research on the pedagogical approach underpinning GCE experiences from at least four perspectives: (1) The typologies of Global Citizenship Education most and least present, (2) The objectives they pursue, (3) The methodologies used and their link to the curriculum and school organisation and (4) The relationships established between what is local and global, as well as the networks that exist between formal and non-formal organisations. 

 The research questions that guided this research were: 

What are the objectives, content and methodologies of the experiences analysed?

What approaches to GCE are present in the experiences under study? 

What relationships and tensions are there between what is local and global? 

In order to map and analyse GCE experiences in the autonomous community of Cantabria a qualitative approach to research was adopted (Flick, 2018). This approach sought not only to describe a reality in-depth but also to offer information to improve it. The work was organised in two phases: (1) Descriptive and (2) Analytics. In phase 1 a search was carried out in order to detect global citizenship experiences developed in formal education contexts aimed at young people aged 12 to 16 years old. This search involved looking at: (a) Schools in the community that had received the national “Vicente Ferrer” award on Development Education granted by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID is the Spanish abbreviation), (b) Schools that form part of the Cantabrian Network of Solidarity Schools (created in 2014 by the Ministry of Education of the regional government of Cantabria), (c) NGO’s involved in the Cantabrian NGO Coordinator which organises educational projects in schools financed by the General Directorate of Cooperation of the regional government of Cantabria and (d) Experiences already documented in the first research project on Global Citizenship Education in Cantabria (Ruiz-Varona, 2012). Phase 2 (Analytics) involved the study and analysis of the selected experiences using the following techniques: (a) Content analysis when the experience had been published previously, (b) Semi-structured interviews with managers and co-ordinators of the selected experiences (professionals from schools and NGO´s), (c) Photo-elicitation with the managers and co-ordinators of the selected experiences (professionals from schools and NGO´s). The interviews and photo-elicitation processes were used to obtain more in-depth and complex information about the experiences which had been selected earlier. Through these techniques it was possible to explore issues such as the definition of Global Citizenship Education and the usefulness of its content, how the approach is implemented in schools, the role of the management team and families, the role of NGO’s, the most significant projects and activities and the assessment methods implemented. For the analysis of the data collected (documents, interviews and photo-elicitation processes) a template was created containing the following items: 1. Objectives (from the charitable-assistance vision to post-development education), 2. Methodologies (taking into account their critical, dialogical and transformational dimension), 3. Content (gender, human rights, sustainability, etc.), 4. Links to the curriculum, 5. Dimensions (education, awareness raising, research or political advocacy), 6. Relationships established between what is local, national, community or global, 7. Typologies (soft, humanistic or critical).

The analysis carried out shows that since 2009, the first year in which a school in Cantabria received the national “Vicente Ferrer” award on Development Education, Global Citizenship Education experiences have been transformed from a charitable-assistance vision to one that is more critical and political and from a national dimension to one that is more global. On the other hand, schools implement their projects in various ways depending on school ownership, i.e. depending on whether it is a subsidised private school (most of them are religious) or whether it is a state school. All the experiences are significantly influenced by international agendas, for example projects led by UNESCO such as the previous Millennium Development Objectives and the current Sustainable Development Goals Agenda. From a curricular point of view, there are still few experiences that arise from a genuine interest in connecting different subjects (mathematics, foreign languages, geography, etc.) with a large number of activities and projects being developed in parallel to the previously established curriculum. From the point of view of content, the majority of experiences work on environmental sustainability through activities such as recycling or fair trade and there are fewer experiences that address the gender dimension whether at a local, national or global level. In the experiences analysed the schools positively value the participation of families and NGO’s which are seen as allies in the development of this educational approach. For their part, NGO’s highlight the difficulty of the sustainability of the projects they undertake in schools if there is no group of teachers committed to the Global Citizenship Education approach and if the management team does not actively promote this approach in their schools.

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