Global citizenship education in a post-disaster context in Aceh, Indonesia: perspectives of student teachers

This article examines how student teachers in a post-disaster context make sense of global citizenship education (GCE) through a combination of Pancasila (an Indigenous philosophy derived from Sanskrit) and citizenship education (together referred to as PPKn) in Aceh Province, Indonesia. This qualitative study involved a group of final-year student teachers (6 male and 2 female) who were undertaking teaching practice as part of their teacher education programme in 2020. Based on semi-structured interview data, the findings suggest that participants engaged with GCE in various ways – through formal education, everyday encounters and historical narratives of armed conflict and the tsunami disaster. The authors argue that approaching GCE through a local–global prism provides a nuanced understanding and exposes tensions between the predominantly secular orientation of GCE in the Global North and the Islamic orientation of PPKn in Aceh Province. Their findings highlight how student teachers make sense of the values and beliefs they develop through PPKn and how these resonate with or diverge from normative GCE values. This study makes a significant contribution to knowledge by demonstrating how diverse socio-cultural realities can be meaningfully and respectfully integrated into GCE.