Curricular Convergences and Divergences Around Global Citizenship Education: Between the Universal and the Pluriversal

The following pages reflect a critical inquiry, guided by postcolonial and decolonial analysis, into how and why a rising tide of global citizenship education has emerged in the early twenty-first century as a transversal curricular project, as well as a challenge to overwhelmingly and increasingly atomized curricula under neoliberalism. To what extent might it indeed unite or encompass previously established areas of curriculum designed to foster a shared sense of rights and responsibilities, respect for and solidarity with others, and interconnectedness on this planet? Is there consensus on what global citizenship education actually consists of? What are its potentialities and possible pitfalls? On the epistemological level, what kinds of knowledge does it give rise to, and what kinds might it suppress? For instance, where would a people’s right (as protected by the United Nations) to collective self-determination and emancipation from imperial and (neo)colonial forces fit into the cosmopolitan scheme of things under global citizenship? What are the ontological implications of global citizenship education? And finally, does this field of educational research and practice hold promise for generating ways of being that uphold cross-cultural social justice, inter-relationality, and interdependent coexistence in the broadest and most historically situated understandings of these terms?