Global Citizenship & Service-Learning

Both Global Citizenship and Service-Learning are contested terms. Sometimes the connotations associated with them turn people off from these ideas. For that reason, I feel it’s important to briefly define how I approach these ideas.

Global Citizenship Education

In the field of social psychology there is a construct called “attitude.” Attitude refers to a set of beliefs, feelings, and motivations regarding a particular object or situation. Attitude is oriented towards behavior. It’s not just someone’s opinion that they flippantly spout off free of consequences; it exists at a level that motivates particular actions. In fact, social psychologists also talk about a dialectical relationship between attitude and action, where when the two don’t align, it creates cognitive dissonance that forces a reorientation of one or the other. A person will either shift their attitude based on their actual behavior, or will adjust their behavior to align with their attitude.

Global Citizenship Education is about shaping students’ attitude in the world towards one of empathetic responsibility for people and planet outside of themselves. Global Citizenship can easily become abstract when it’s not rooted within one’s local place. Wendall Berry once said, “Unless one is willing to be destructive on a very large scale, one cannot do something except locally, in a small place.” We are embodied beings that exist within a specific time and place; our actions in the world are always within that particular time and place. You have probably heard the phrase “think global, act local.” As with many slogans, this is probably a little too over-simplified. I think a global citizen is one who engages with local people, communities, and issues, is able to analyze these within a larger global context, and then acts for positive change within the local context. Speaking of slogans, I like the one “learn from and act with.” The idea is to learn from the people and communities around you, treating them as the experts that they are when it comes to their lived experience, then acting with those people and communities to support positive change.

Why is the term “global citizen” applicable? It’s not about an elite globalist who exists above national boundaries and identities in the cosmopolitan cities of the world. Rather, it’s about someone, who may be somewhat transient and end up living in different places at different points, who is able to quickly put down roots, assume a level of empathetic responsibility, and learn from and act with those within the place where they find themselves.

Service-Learning

I see service-learning as a practical approach to shaping a global citizenship attitude in students. It’s a form of experiential learning, where students apply what they’ve learned in a curricular unit in school in a way that engages a real-world problem and with a community beyond the walls of the classroom. But I must go back and emphasize the moto of “learn from and act with.” It’s very easy for service-learning units in school to fall into a “learn about and act for” model, which I believe becomes harmful, both to the attitude development of the students and the community partners; a “learn about and act for” model, though it may be well-intentioned, risks the savior complex tendencies of a colonialist mindset. When we “learn about and act for,” we treat community members as objects of our learning and their community challenges as something that we presume we can fix. In contrast to that model, when we “learn from and act with,” we validate community members as experts in their experience, and we draw alongside to support the efforts they have already initiated.

How I can support

I’d be happy to work with schools on how to integrate global citizenship education into their larger educational program. I’d also be happy to work with a group of teachers, or a department, on how to develop service-learning relationship with community partners, and integrate service-learning into curricular units.