The formal education sector is often regarded by governments and non-governmental organisations as having a crucial part to play in alleviating ‘global’ injustices and development problems such as poverty, inequality, conflict and climate change. This global justice agenda is taken up by the loose and highly contested fields of global citizenship education and development education, which encompasses a range of actors including government departments, non-governmental organisations, and individual schools and teachers. Global citizenship education aims to nurture informed and responsible ‘global citizens’ who understand the wider world and their place within it. Within this agenda, the notion of responsibility is central and young, school-aged learners are often encouraged to ‘have’ or to ‘take’ responsibility in relation to global issues such as poverty, conflict and climate change (DfES 2005). This raises questions around the geographies of responsibility in relation to ‘global’ issues. What does it mean to have/take responsibility in relation to global issues such as poverty and conflict/genocide? Who has responsibility? And on what basis? The primary emphasis in UK schools is currently on responsibility as 'taking action' (Bourn and Brown 2011). However, critiques informed by post-colonial theory have challenged the reliance on 'obedient activism' (Bryan and Bracken 2011) and the paternalistic nature of some ‘helping’ responses, instead favouring a more critical engagement based on causal understandings of responsibility (Andreotti 2006; Massey 2004). 

Against this backdrop, this paper grapples with two main themes: firstly how are notions of responsibility in relation to global issues recontextualised within a UK secondary school, and secondly what implications does this have for the way students see themselves as global citizens. Using a combination of ethnographic and discourse analytic techniques I am interested to explore how official policy and curricular guidance is interpreted and how ideas about responsibility in relation to global issues are negotiated and play out at the local level. Being in school and gaining an insight into students', teachers' and parents' perspectives is allowing me to explore some of the complexity and contradiction associated with responsibilities, especially as they interface with the local/global. 

Andreotti, V. (2006) Soft Versus Critical Global Citizenship Education. Development Education Policy and Practice, 3, 83-98. Bourn, D. & K. Brown. 2011. Young People and International Development: Engagement and Learning. London: Development Education Research Centre. Bryan, A. & M. Bracken. 2011. Learning to Read the World? Teaching and Learning about Global Citizenship and International Development in Post-Primary Schools. DfES (2005) Developing the global dimension in the school curriculum. ed. Department for Education and Skills Massey, D. (2004) Geographies of responsibility. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 86, 5-18.