This research reformulates the notion of the global citizen and global citizenship education from the global south perspectives. The notion of global citizen is currently emerging as an important topic across the world both in global north and global south countries. There are some driving issues that have ignited this classic idea to be hotly debated among scholars across the world. Understanding global problems, supporting political movements, creating global ethic, addressing environmental issues, gender inequality, learning global competences, or even just traveling abroad (Andreotti, 2014; Bates, 2012; Dill, 2014; Dower, 2003). However, I would argue that in the current post-truth era where there are a wide range of information and the fake news are easily spread among people, being global citizen means that people are required to have a fair-minded critical thinking (Brown, 2014), in other words, people are able to have a global consciousness to survive in this globalised world (Dill, 2014). By having those global skills, students are expected able to live in a wider community without boundaries. In order to be able to put a fair-minded critical thinking and global mindedness, there are a variety of ways to educate students to be a global citizen. Global citizenship education is one of the way because it can be integrated towards the schools subjects and activities to teach students to be a global citizen (Al-Maamari, 2022; Bamber et al., 2018; Goren & Yemini, 2016). In addition, being a global citizen also posed some threats for some local culture. Some of them argue that it might affect and losing local culture due to the wide range of penetration from outsider (Abdul-Jabbar, 2023).

Currently global citizen can be defined by different purposes. In the United States, Dill (2014) has argued that it consists of global consciousness and global competences. Global consciousness is believed that people need to have some awareness and understanding towards different groups of people, including their opinion (Dill, 2014). In contrast, global competences, it is believed that people need to have some skills that would enable them surviving in current globalised world (Dill, 2014). Andreotti (2014) differentiates between soft and critical approach towards global citizenship education. The soft approach means that global citizens can be developed through some sort of activities such as student exchange, while the critical approach means that it needs to address a deep roots of thinking towards others (Andreotti, 2014). Oxley and Morris (2013) provide more comprehensive frame of references in defining global citizens. They argued that global citizens have been categorised towards cosmopolitan and advocacy based model. Most of these typologies have been developed in the context of the Global North. It is increasingly important to develop our understanding of global citizenship education in a Global South context, in order to sharpen the framework through which we understand this global phenomenon. This research contributes an insight into the Indonesian context, where I argue that global citizenship is important because it shapes students to have fair-minded critical thinking skills, fostering global consciousness, and therefore the relevant skills to survive in a post-truth era.

According to these current debates and the importance of being a global citizen, the main objectives of this research was to identify teachers and pre-service teachers perspectives towards the notion of global citizenship. Understanding teachers perspectives from Indonesian context would support the current debates among scholars and contributes to the global citizenship education research literature among scholars over the world and in particular in the field of intercultural education research. The research question for this study was “what are the Indonesian teachers and pre-service teachers view towards global citizenship education?”

This research is based on the interviews with twenty professional civic education teachers and ten final year of pre-service teachers at the department of Pancasila and civics education in Indonesia. In particular, this research was focused on teachers perspectives on pedagogies and their understanding towards global citizenship education. Civic education was chosen because this module provide some content knowledge and practices in relation to global issues. In addition, pre-service teachers at department of Pancasila and civics education were chosen because they have preliminary knowledge about the notion of global citizen when studying at the university. The final year students means that they have a one semester teaching experience placed in the schools so that they have applied their knowledge into practice in the schools. By combining between professional and pre-service teachers, it adds rich understanding according to the fresh theoretical knowledge from the pre-service teachers, and deep practical experience from the professional views. The interviews were held face-to-face and lasted for about 40 to 60 minutes. it was also being recorded using Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian language). As an insider, the use of local language would enable research to get a deep understanding and experience without language boundaries. I analyzed the interview of the teachers and pre-service teachers in relation to the work of Dill (2014), and Andreotti (2014) to discuss about the important of global consciousness, critical aspect of global citizenship education, and fair-minded critical thinking skills (Brown, 2014) among students in senior high school. These three perspectives are closely related to the teachers and pre-service teachers of civics education in relation to global citizenship education. By considering some of patterns among teachers about what is global citizen, some teaching materials, including some challenges and difficulties in integrating those aspects towards teaching materials, this study would contribute to the current debate of global citizenship education. In relation to the data analysis, I was using the framework of reflective thematic analysis developed by Braun and Clark (date). This framework is very useful because my research was focusing on finding some themes emerging from the interview with teachers. A step-by-step guide starting from emerging with the data until developing themes is very well-structured so that I can refine the data from the teachers interview.

Global citizenship is signifying ways of thinking for understanding different perspectives. I would argue that it is supporting the notion of global consciousness development by Dill (2014). In Indonesian context, global consciousness can be seen from having a fair-minded critical thinking, having an ability to justify their argument as well as understanding clearly from others who are opposed with, having a foreign language skill such as English, having ability to adapt with different circumstances, and having some understanding towards information technology. To illustrate this, I have uncovered themes from the data. One of the teachers argued that in this globalized era, they are facing difficulty teaching students about finding the truth and justification from the internet. With the spread of accessing internet, students in high school are most likely obtain a daily source of information from social media such as short-video tiktok, short paragraph from twitter, as well as facebook and Instagram. With those kind of social media source, they would not be able to identify the truth because it is not enough to have a fair-minded critical thinking from just reading in social media. Instead, students might need a love of reading literature and books to form their thinking, so that they would not be easily justify the fake news. Finally, the teachers also believe that global citizens have a threat towards national identity and losing some of the local culture. Immersing with a wide range of information from the internet, movies, and some other outsider influence make students losing national identity and starting copying other cultures. In conclusion, global citizenship education has been widely used in different countries. In Indonesia, developing global consciousness and understanding different view would be best explained by the teachers. The finding of this study contributes towards the current debate of understanding global citizenship.

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