Over recent decades, globalisation processes have accelerated the development of economic, social, cultural and political transformations, producing an enormous impact on a planetary scale. In addition to the concept of globalisation, others have appeared that are used synonymously (mundialisation, internationalisation, universalisation, etc.). They were originally used to refer mainly to the break-up of financial market borders, since other types of barriers are still in place to prevent, for example, the free movement of people from countries in the South to the North. One of the key characteristics of this term is its markedly polysemic nature. However, it has mostly been applied to three basic issues: the exponential growth of trade on a planetary scale, the prominence that transnational corporations have acquired, and the speculative speed of the movement of financial capital (Morton, 2018; Brand, Görg, & Wissen, 2020). As a consequence of these processes (which have varying repercussions in each context), in recent years it has become increasingly evident that we live in a historical moment of enormous interdependence and eco-dependence (Bourn, 2021).
In order to respond to the inequalities and impact of globalisation, educational processes with different approaches have been developed over recent decades. These initiatives have had a common objective: to train citizens to fight against the negative effects of these processes (economic and gender inequalities, environmental crises, migration, etc.). The focus of educational experiences has varied according to their context of reference.
More specifically, in Spain, the educational response to these processes was initially based on the concept of Development Education (DE), which has progressively evolved in several generations. Currently, there is reference to a sixth generation DE approach. These experiences are based on the concepts of Post-development Education, Critical Global Citizenship Education or Education for Social Transformation. With varying nuances these approaches seek to understand the impact of globalisation processes on citizenship (Mannion, Biesta, Priestley, & Ross, 2011; Rizvi, & Beech, 2017; Stein, Andreotti, & Suša, 2019). At present, debates on Global Citizenship Education (GCE) in Spain highlight the need to move towards more critical models that educate citizens to understand unequal power relations between the countries of the global North and South (Pérez-Pérez, 2016).
The analysis of the recent publication of the organic law regulating the Spanish education system (LOMLOE, 2020) shows that this law aims to promote educational experiences that support justice and sustainability, as well as the development of a more global concept of citizenship. To improve the effectiveness and sustainability of these proposals in the long term, it is necessary to begin with the analysis of experiences inspired by the GCE approach developed over the last few years. To this end, the authors of this work have carried out research focused on finding out how these actions were being developed in order to understand the objective of the pedagogical approach of these GCE experiences. Based on this analysis, they aim to promote new projects inspired by a more critical GCE model, in contrast to other softer models (Andreotti, 2006). This focus is the result of the diagnosis of previous work that identifies the need to analyse the multiple dimensions (goals pursued, methodologies, contents, etc.) of the curricular objectives of experiences that are already in progress (Blackmore, 2016; Calvo, 2017; Santamaría-Cárdaba, Franco, Lourenço, & Vieira, 2022).
This paper presents some process results from an investigation funded by the Spanish Ministry of Competitiveness 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).
