Linking global citizenship education and critical pedagogy: Women’s leadership and power

Abstract

Global citizenship education (GCE) as a global social justice practice centres on a pedagogy that is responsive to the needs of learners and provides for the reimagining of an educator’s role, and the learner/educator relationship. While the literature on GCE emerged from a western perspective and tended to ignore gender, through gendered GCE, the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, social class and gender reveals the complexity of the influence of these factors and a need for action. This article presents critical pedagogy (CP) as an approach for learner-centred education that activates a GCE process for learners to be co-designers of their learning experience. The defining principles of CP, along with the qualities of an educator within a critical pedagogical practice will feature the tandem relationship of educator and learner. The results are an emerging process of dynamic self-awareness, cultivating a questioning mind and empowering praxis. Disrupting the understanding of leadership, agency and power allows for the emergence of an empowering approach to one’s identity as a leader and social change agent. This provides a new perspective for positioning women’s leadership and power within GCE. This case study reveals that when students connect to a palpable sense of agency, they become learners that know too much to revert to passive receptacles of information. New opportunities await in the development of leadership, social change and GCE when learners bear witness to lived experiences through a critical lens.