The paper presents a study addressing student beliefs on global issues, which has the potential to inform didactics and teaching practices regarding transversal and complex societal issues in a changing world. 

“Global issues“ can be defined as challenges of global relevance which affect “a large number of people on different sides of national boundaries”, are “of significant concern, directly or indirectly, to all or most of the countries of the world”, and have “implications that require a global regulatory approach”, whereby “no one government has the power or the authority to impose a solution, and market forces alone will not solve” the problem (Bhargava, 2006, p. 1). 

Global issues have a long tradition in teaching and learning. Often, they are addressed through so-called “adjectival educations”. Most recently, the concept of Global citizenship education has made ground – albeit no single agenda or set of pedagogical assumptions can be identified (Marshall, 2011; Sant, Davis, Pashby & Schulz, 2018) – in addressing the “global crisis” (Bruce, North & Fitzpatrick, 2019, p. 162), understood as “rampant capitalism, vast international migration, ecological fragility, technological interconnectivity, cultural hybridity and reconfiguration of political power” (Todd, 2009, p. 23). Other educational concepts such as Global learning), Human rights education, Education for sustainable development, and Intercultural education to name but a few, also strive to address social and societal problems. 

Over the last few years, such teaching concepts have been the object of critiques focusing on their “instrumentalist agenda” (Marshall, 2011, p. 418), mostly questioning the legitimacy of the often strong emphasis on action-orientation and values education usually aiming at promoting a social justice agenda (Kürsteiner & Rinaldi, 2019; Pais & Costa, 2020; Wettstädt & Asbrand, 2016), or of the pursuit of a technical economic agenda (Marshall, 2011). While the former critique focuses primarily on a perceived tension between ends and means, the latter argues that the very forces that led to the above-mentioned global crisis might be reinforced if education fails to critically analyse the existing economic and social systems (Bruce, North & Fitzpatrick, 2019). Also, research has shown that teachers often find it difficult to address controversial issues at school, and to reconcile what they consider to be their mandate as a teacher, their own beliefs and the beliefs of their students (e.g. Rinaldi, 2017). 

Student beliefs is a well-researched area of educational studies. Being familiar with such beliefs is important for successful pedagogical practice and thus forms part of teachers’ pedagogical knowledge (Shulman, 1986). In Germany, the role and identification of students beliefs on concepts such as politics and democracy have triggered considerable attention over the last few years (for a collection of methods and empirical studies cf. Lange & Fischer, 2011). Regarding the broader field of global issues, Uphues (2007) developed a typology of student beliefs on globalisation. Krogull (2018) also looked at young people’s world views. Another extensive study about secondary student beliefs on globalisation in Germany, conducted by Fischer, Fischer, Kleinschmidt and Lange (2015), provides insights into various student preconceptions. The authors identified various beliefs that showed a limited understanding of globalisation, paternalistic beliefs about the majority world, and a mostly neoliberal perspective. Several other studies focus on specific topics such as climate change (Chang & Pascua, 2016), right-wing extremism (Fischer, 2013), or sustainability (Holfelder, 2018).

Against this background, the study addresses the following research question: Which beliefs do lower secondary students in Switzerland have about global issues?

The aim is to develop a typology of beliefs on global issue broadly, so as to inform the debate about how teachers can address global societal changes in their classrooms. 

Student beliefs will be studied using a multiple methods design, which combines classroom observations and focus group discussions with students. The study will be conducted in lower secondary classes in the Cantons of Lucerne and Zurich. It takes place within a larger study that analyses how teachers deal with student beliefs on human rights and global issues in science and social studies teaching, which is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Classroom observations will be conducted in forty classes for three lessons each. Teachers are asked to address one of the six topics on sustainable development outlined in the formal curriculum. Also, focus group discussions will be held with students (4 students per group), focusing on the topic chosen by the teachers and using so-called “recall stimuli”. Focus group discussions will be semi-structured. The focus group discussions will be held after the classroom observation, so as to avoid bias. This approach, grounded in a qualitative methodological tradition, is expected to lead to in-depth insights into student beliefs about global issues. The data will be documented as follows: videotapes, where necessary (group work) audiotapes, schedules, and transcripts of relevant events for classroom observations; audiotapes, notes and transcripts of focus group discussions; post-scripts. This data will be analysed through thematic and type-building qualitative text analysis, using the software MAXQDA (Kuckartz, 2014). This method guarantees both the required openness and structured approach to the research process, and leads to a reduction of the large amount of collected data. The analysis of data will start as soon as the first sets of data are available. In a first step, initial work with the text will be conducted and case summaries written. In a second step, the thematic analysis will be conducted. Thereto, the main topical categories will be developed based on theoretical pre-knowledge and the different guidelines. Two coders will then code the available material (consensual coding) using the main categories. Once the entire available material is coded, all text passages of the same main category will be compiled and sub-categories will be created inductively based on this data. All the data will then be coded using the complete category system. The data will then be analysed based on these categories, and the form of type-building will then be determined based on this analysis.

The study is expected to provide useful insights into student beliefs on global issues. Although restricted to lower secondary students in two cantons of Switzerland, the study has the potential to inform the debate about how teachers can address global societal changes in their classrooms in other contexts as well. In terms of wider social impact, the study is expected to - contribute to the ongoing debate about different educational concepts that deal with global issues as well as with criticism around normativity, epistemological diversity and emancipation. - inform future training of teachers in the area of global issues teaching Data collection for this study will take place between March and July 2022. In the paper presentation, preliminary results of the study will be presented and put up for discussion.

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