Global citizenship education has been suggested as a strategy to overcome the limitations of national citizenship and to prepare for living in increasingly diverse and globalised societies. The meaning and purpose of global citizenship has remained disputed, with opponents suggesting that the lack of governance at global level renders the concept meaningless and undesirable (Bowden 2003, Heater 2004) and querying the assumed universality of global citizenship and its underpinning values (Marshall 2009).  In contrast, its proponents argue that, if implemented effectively, global citizenship may transform society by enabling people to develop an awareness of global interdependence, respect for diversity, to negotiate identities and, ultimately, to achieve greater equality, democracy and sustainable peace (Appiah, 2006, Nussbaum, 1996). There is greater consensus that a critical approach to global issues beyond charitable notions of the poor Global South (Andreotti, 2006) and/or exotic representations of cultural diversity (Roman, 2003) is crucial to effective teaching and learning about global interdependence.

In societies with community divisions, global citizenship offers an opportunity to critically explore identities, institutions and conflict in a wider, less threatening context than the contested local arena, where such issues may be deeply contentious and regarded by teachers, parents and pupils alike as too sensitive for educators to address in the classroom. 

After thirty years of ethnopolitical conflict and more than a decade of engagement in an ongoing peace process, Northern Ireland remains a divided society, with persistent intergroup divisions between Catholics and Protestants, which are reflected in a segregated education system where less than 10% of pupils attend integrated or mixed schools (Hayes et al, 2007). A rise in immigration and ethnic diversity in recent years (Jarman, 2005) has added to the complex pattern of identities and communities within this society. Accordingly, global citizenship has been implicitly or explicitly incorporated as a statutory component in the Revised Northern Ireland Curriculum, mainly within the themes World Around Us and Personal Development and Mutual Understanding in the Primary and within Local and Global Citizenship in the Post-primary school curriculum although it is intended to infuse all areas of the Curricula (CCEA, 2007a, 2007b).  Northern Ireland thus provides an interesting case study in which to examine how global citizenship education can be effectively implemented in schools. The present research aimed to explore ways in which global citizenship education could encourage pupils’ understandings of global interdependence, responsibility and a sense of global citizenship, which goes beyond locally engrained community identities.  The objectives were to identify dimensions of pedagogical practice in relation to global citizenship education, which teachers could employ to locate and reflect on their own approaches and, in consideration of their own local contexts, develop more effective teaching and learning strategies relating to global citizenship in the context of a divided society.

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