Acting Locally to Have Global Impact: Citizenship Education in Theory and Practice in England

Abstract

Concepts of global citizenship, rather than citizenship per se, are gaining increasing currency in education (Alexiadou, 2005; Lundahl, 2005). There are specific structures - local, national and international - through which citizens can act in order to have global impacts. Additionally, citizens can engage in both cooperative and integrative activities at local levels to work towards the same results. The question we pose is whether these structures and activities are informing citizenship education in England? To address this, we report data from an empirical study which suggests that while teachers recognise that local actions can have global impacts, they are less likely to engage with the specific political and legal intermediary contexts and structures available to them. We conclude that there are ‘missing links' which citizenship educators need to address.