GCE Characteristics

The field of global citizenship education, as we see it, has the following characteristics:

It helps students develop and use critical thinking skills, especially systemic ones, to problem-solve at a global level.
It provides students with educational experiences and materials needed to understand and analyze world problems from a global perspective.
It acknowledges the dilemmas of multiple loyalties that will arise in exploring the meaning of global citizenship and uses frank analyses of these dilemmas as learning activities. It helps students understand their important responsibilities as citizens at different levels ---i.e. local, national, global.
It recognizes that there are many questions about developing a world community which have no easy answers; it makes clear to youth that they are being educated and enlisted to help the world develop answers.
It is interdisciplinary, drawing on fields such as history, geography, social studies, economics, science, and art; it uses active-learning instructional methods and recognizes the need to prepare teachers to master this pedagogy.
It uses a rigorous approach to skills development, academic content and assessment techniques, and sets high academic standards.
It helps students realize that recognizing new questions is an important step in developing a new perspective.
It builds upon work that has been done in related curriculum themes such as peace education and environmental education.
It is a field to be developed globally , i.e. by people from different countries collaborating in the development and implementation of global citizenship education curricula frameworks and materials.
Its pedagogy requires international linkages among communities of learners ; i.e., by its very nature, the study of global citizenship education involves teachers and students from different countries collaborating with one another on joint teaching/learning activities.
It requires approaches to teaching and learning that are both cognitive and affective, and offers opportunities for informed, value-based action.