This paper reflects on approaches to decolonial Global Citizenship Education (GCED) and their implementation in educational exchange programs. In particular, it draws on the work of Vanessa Andreotti, whose concept of Global Citizenship Education otherwise advances a holistic approach that, alongside (queer-)feminist and decolonial perspectives, explicitly includes nature as an integral part of coexistence. GCED otherwise thus addresses global and social inequalities as part of a transformative educational approach.

The target groups of educational exchange programs in both the Global South and the Global North are affected by intersecting and interrelated dimensions of disadvantage, including social status, gender, financial circumstances, and mobility opportunities. For organizations running such exchange programs, these initiatives function as mechanisms for shaping relationships with project partners in the Global South on more equal terms.

Accordingly, this paper opens up the following questions: What might Global Citizenship Education look like in practice when approached from a decolonial perspective? How can intersectional positionalities be taken into account and critically discussed? Which specific dispositions and attitudes need to be developed in the sense of convivial forms of living together? Under what conditions is it possible—or impossible—to speak? And how do these approaches contribute to transformative learning processes?

The concept of transformative learning represents an attempt to incorporate people’s biographies and lived realities in order to question habitual patterns of thinking and to open them up to possible change. In non-formal settings, spaces for unlearning, dialogue, and possibility are to be created. This vision, articulated within decolonial theories by scholars such as Arturo Escobar (2007), constitutes a key aspect of the transformative potential of decolonial theories and practices. This paper is based on an ethnographic research approach (Breidenstein et al. 2020). The project was carried out as part of an educational journey involving a group from Ghana in early summer 2025. Based on documented participant observations and conversations that took place during the journey, a shared experiential space became visible. The resulting observations were written up in the form of vignettes. This qualitative approach makes it possible to reflect on social interactions at a micro level with regard to their socio-political dimensions (see, among others, Peterlini 2020; Agostini et al. 2023). Central to vignette research is the perception of pre-reflexive experiences and the subsequent reflection on co-experienced situations. Throughout the research process, such “co-experienced” situations and interactions within the pedagogical setting were recorded as precisely as possible (Peterlini 2020, p. 134). Vignette research is based on the phenomenological assumption that the experiences of others can be co-experienced. If experience is the “only evidence” (Laing 2015) through which we understand and reflect upon the world, then co-experiencing—that is, being involved in the experiential processes of others with whom we are connected in a given situation—opens up new possibilities for reflection (Peterlini 2020). The described micro-interactions were validated within a writing and research group, and, based on these, socially relevant insights for pedagogical practice were jointly derived (Agostini et al. 2023).

This paper addresses the question of how Global Citizenship Education can be designed in practice from a decolonial perspective (otherwise). Using the example of a South-to-North exchange program, this paper claims that decolonial perspectives are not merely a theoretical challenge but have concrete implications for pedagogical practice. GCED otherwise demonstrates that seemingly universal educational claims must be critically questioned and expanded to include diverse forms of knowledge. Exchange programs can thus function as learning spaces in which dominant narratives are challenged and alternative perspectives are made visible. Within these learning processes, participants’ respective intersectional positionalities must be considered, as processes are always shaped by social positioning. A decolonial approach therefore requires taking experiences of discrimination seriously and making diverse voices heard through spaces such as safer spaces and brave spaces. Unlearning, dialogue, and the acknowledgment of complexity open up pedagogical spaces in which not only knowledge but also attitudes and relationships can be transformed. In this sense, the pedagogical practice of Global Citizenship Education otherwise also becomes a form of peace education, as defined by Wintersteiner: “peace education is education through peaceful means” and “must also be structured and practiced in emancipatory ways” (Wintersteiner 2009: 16).

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